Privacy Policy
This privacy notice explains how Lonsdale Services uses any personal information we collect about you. Please note that Lonsdale Wealth Management, Lonsdale benefit consultants and Lonsdale Mortgages are trading names of Lonsdale Services.
We take your privacy seriously and are committed to handling your personal information lawfully, fairly and transparently under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
This privacy notice explains how we collect, use, share, store and protect your personal information – including where we use artificial intelligence (AI) or automated tools.
Contact details
Please contact your financial adviser by email if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you, or:
Via post: Lonsdale Services, 3 Curo Park, Frogmore, St Albans, AL2 2DD
Via phone: 01727 845500
Via email: ku.oc.secivreseladsnol@seiriuqne
What personal information we collect
We will collect or use your personal information when you engage us for financial planning / financial advice / mortgage advice / investment management services. This information may include:
- Personal identifiers – details that help us to confirm who you are, such as:
- Your name, date of birth, address, contact details
- National insurance number
- Identification documents (passport, driving licence)
- Financial and professional information – Information that helps us understand your financial position including:
- Your income and regular spending
- Details of your assets, liabilities, pensions & investments
- Tax information
- Bank account details
- Employment information
- We may also need to use special category information, but only, where relevant and with your explicit consent. This could include:
- Health information (for example, when providing insurance advice) Racial or ethnic origin
- Political opinions
- Religious or philosophical beliefs
- Trade union membership
- Genetic information
- Biometric information (where used to identify someone, such as for access or payment purposes)
- Sex life information
- Sexual orientation information
- Emails, notes of telephone calls, meeting notes
- Records required to meet the FCA’s requirements
How we collect your personal information
We collect personal information from:
- Direct interactions. You may give us your data by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise. This includes personal data you provide when you:
- apply for our products or services;
- subscribe to our service or publications;
- request marketing to be sent to you;
- enter a competition, promotion or survey; or
- give us feedback or contact us.
- Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect technical data which may include internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website with your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies. We may also receive technical data about you if you visit other websites employing our cookies.
- Third parties or publicly available sources. We will receive personal data about you from various third parties such as financial product providers, credit reference agencies, introducers, and publicly available sources.
How we use your personal information
We use your personal information to help us deliver the services you’ve asked for. This may include:
- Understanding your financial situation so we can give you the right advice
- Providing recommendations that meet FCA rules on suitability
- Applying for or arranging financial products on your behalf
- Carrying out identity, fraud and anti money laundering checks
- Keeping accurate and compliant records
- Communicating with you about your services, plans, policies or investments
Who we share your personal information with
- Financial product providers such as insurers, investment platforms and pension providers
- Compliance consultants, auditors and professional advisers who help us meet regulatory requirements
- Discretionary investment managers where relevant to your service
- IT service providers and secure cloud platforms that support our systems and newsletter broadcast services
- Regulators and authorities such as the FCA, HMRC and the Financial Ombudsman Service
- Credit reference agencies, but only when necessary
- We never sell your personal information to anyone.
You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) / automated tools to process your personal information
We may use AI tools to help us review information more efficiently and provide you with faster, more accurate services. The AI doesn’t make decisions about you on its own — a human always checks the results. When we do:
Purpose of AI use
AI tools may be used for:
- Draft or summarise internal documents (e.g., meeting notes)
- Identify patterns or errors in data
- Enhance compliance monitoring
- Support risk assessments or vulnerability detection (non decision making)
We do not use any systems for making automated decisions. All outputs and decisions made by AI are subject to human review and approval before being used or relied on.
Purpose and lawful basis for processing
The purpose of processing your personal information using AI is to support the services we provide to you.
Our lawful basis for using AI to process your personal information is the performance of a contract and our legitimate interests in improving the efficiency and accuracy of our services.
Human review
Any AI assisted output is reviewed by a human adviser before being used or relied on.
Data sharing and storage
Where AI tools are used we:
- Ensure only the minimum necessary personal information is processed
- Anonymise or pseudonymise, where possible, personal information
- Ensure processing occurs in secure, regulated systems
- Do not use AI tools that use your personal information to train public models
Your data protection rights
You have several rights under data protection law. This helps you understand and control how your personal information is used.
- Right to be informed - You can ask us to explain how we collect, use, share, and store your personal information.
- Right of access - You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you, along with details of how we use it.
- Right to rectification - If you think any of your information is wrong or incomplete, you can ask us to correct or update it.
- Right to erasure - In some situations, you can ask us to delete your personal information.
- Right to restrict processing - You can ask us to limit how we use your information in certain circumstances.
- Right to object - You can object to us using your personal information, for example for direct marketing.
- Right to data portability - You can ask us to send your personal information to you, or directly to another organisation, in a structured, commonly used electronic format.
- Rights related to automated decision making and profiling - If a decision about you is made without human involvement, you can challenge it and ask for someone to review it.
We will respond to any request you make about your data protection rights within one month.
To make a request, please contact us using the contact details at the top of this privacy notice.
Our lawful bases for processing your personal information
UK data protection law requires us to have a valid legal reason—called a ‘lawful basis’—for collecting and using your personal information. The UK GDPR sets out the different lawful bases.
The lawful basis we rely on may affect which data protection rights apply to you. Below, we’ve listed your rights in brief.
You can read more about your data protection rights, including any exceptions, on the ICO’s website: For the public | ICO
We must have a valid legal reason (a ‘lawful basis’) for collecting and using your personal information. For the financial planning, financial advice, mortgage advice and investment management services we provide, we rely on the following lawful bases:
Contractual obligations
This is the main reason we use your personal information. We need certain details from you so we can deliver the services we’ve agreed to provide.
Legal obligations
Sometimes the law requires us to collect and use specific information. For example, UK anti money laundering laws require us to verify your identity.
Consent
In some situations, we may need your explicit consent to use special category information (listed below). We will always explain why we need this information and ask for your clear agreement before using it.
Special category information (used only when relevant and only with your explicit consent):
- Health information (e.g. for insurance advice)
- Racial or ethnic origin
- Political opinions
- Religious or philosophical beliefs
- Trade union membership
- Genetic information
- Biometric information used for identification (e.g. access or payment systems)
- Sex life information
- Sexual orientation information
We also ask for your consent if you would like to receive updates about products or services that may interest you.
If we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time.
Legitimate interests
We may keep certain personal information because we have a legitimate business reason to do so, for example, to check the suitability of our services, respond to any complaints in the future, or to meet the requirements of our Professional Indemnity insurer.
International transfers
Many of our external third parties are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK.
This may include transfers to service providers such as analytics providers, cloud hosting services, and IT support providers.
Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.
Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK. Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
How long we keep your personal information
We keep the personal information we need to provide our services to you, and we take reasonable steps to make sure it stays accurate and up to date. Some information must be kept minimum periods set by our regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA):
- Investment business - 5 years
- Mortgage business - 3 years
- Pension transfers and opt outs - kept indefinitely
- Insurance business - 3 years
Where regulatory requirements require us to retain information for longer periods (for example, pension transfer and opt-out business), these requirements will override our standard retention periods.
We also have to keep Identity verification documents (required under UK anti money laundering rules) for:
- At least 5 years after our relationship with you ends
- Up to 10 years if we still have an ongoing relationship
Because these are legal requirements, we cannot delete your information before these time periods have passed.
We may keep your personal information for longer if we have a legitimate business reason to do so, however, we will not normally keep it for more than 5 years after our relationship with you ends, unless we are required to retain it for legal or regulatory reasons.
You can ask us to delete your personal information. We will do so unless we are required to keep it for legal or legitimate business reasons.
If you would like more information about how long we keep your personal information or how we decide this, please contact us.
Information about connected individuals
We may need to collect personal information about your close family members and dependents to provide our service(s) effectively. If this is the case, you are responsible for ensuring you have their consent to share this information with us.
If you act as a trustee or attorney, we may also need information about the relevant beneficiaries or donor(s).
We will give them a copy of this privacy notice or ask you to pass it on if that’s more appropriate.
Using cookies
We use cookies to:
- Understand how visitors use our website
- Help us create reports and improve our site
If you’d like to learn more about cookies, you can visit: www.allaboutcookies.org.
You can change your browser settings to block or delete cookies at any time. The website above explains how to do this. Please note that if you choose to block cookies, some parts of our website may not work as expected.
We use the following cookies:
- Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
- Analytical or performance cookies. These allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
- Functionality cookies. These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
- Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.
You can find more information about the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:
|
Cookie Title/Name |
Purpose |
|
Strictly necessary cookies |
|
|
Google Analytics cookies |
We use Google Tracking cookies to customise visitors’ experiences while browsing. Our use of Google Analytics requires us to pass to Google your IP address (but no other information) – Google uses this information to prepare site usage reports for us, but Google may also share this information with other Google services. In particular, Google may use the data collected to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network. Related information: |
|
Other third-party tracking cookies |
From time to time we may install other third-party tracking cookies such as HotJar. We use these types of cookies to tailor the visitor experience while using the website. These cookies will expire when we delete the tracking facility from our website. Third-party cookies can be disabled by changing your browser preferences. |
Marketing
We would like to send you information about Lonsdale Services products and services which may be of interest to you. If you have agreed to receive marketing information, you may opt out at a later date. However, please note that the Lonsdale Services newsletter is included as part of our ongoing customer service contract with you and may form part of our ongoing service communications.
You have a right at any time to stop us from contacting you for marketing. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please speak to your financial adviser or contact us by post or email us.
Other websites
Our website contains links to other websites. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy statements. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
If you need to make a complaint
If you have any concerns about how we use your personal information, you can contact us using the details at the top of this privacy notice.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you can also complain to the ICO.
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Website: https://www.ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint
Last updated
This privacy notice was last updated on 15/06/2026
