Data protection policy

Yes – almost every website operating in 2019 uses ‘essential’ or ‘necessary’ cookies to operate effectively. Essential cookies help remember browser preferences and the like, making your experience on the website as good as possible.

Like many other websites, our own also uses other cookies used for marketing purposes. This can be for purposes such as (but not limited to):

• Collecting anonymous data about how users find and interact with our website so as to identify trends and bottlenecks and make improvements to the website.
• Building marketing audiences to remarket to via platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, etc.

Our websites use CookieBot, which senses whether you have never visited this website before, and presents you with information about what cookies are in use on the website, allowing visitors to make an informed decision about whether they wish to accept the use of non essential cookies, and informing them how to delete their cookies if needed.

Our full cookies policy including what cookies are currently in use on our website can be found here.

No – at least not directly, however if you submit further data via a submission form (eg, a contact form), we will attempt to collect your IP address.

For ordinary website visits where you do not purposefully submit information via the website, we use Google Analytics to examine the way in which users interact with our website, which will attribute a Client ID to your visit which may hold general location information about where your machine is (such as a town or city), but not your specific IP which is unavailable to us.

As mentioned above, if you decide you wish to make contact with Spencer Churchill Claims Advice by filling in a form on the website or using the livechat function, we will make an attempt to collect your IP address to aid in verifying the request for contact is genuine.

We won’t show targetted adverts to you if you don’t consent to it.

If you wish to visit our website but you don’t wish us to include you in things like Facebook and Google audiences generated by website visits, you must tell us by removing (or never providing) consent using our cookies selection tool.

Upon your first visit to the website, you will be asked whether you wish to ‘Allow all cookies’ including the marketing cookies used for advertising campaigns, or just tell us to ‘use necessary cookies only’.

By doing so, you disable our ability to automatically use cookies to show you related adverts later because of your site visit.

If you previously consented to marketing cookies, but now wish to opt-out from seeing targeted advertisements from Spencer Churchill Claims Advice, you can do so by altering your cookies preferences by following this process:

1. Visit our Cookies Policy Page here: https://getclaimsadvice.co.uk/cookies-policy/
2. Part-way down the page, you will see a blue, highlighted two links inviting you to “change your consent” or “withdraw your consent”.
3. Click which option you would prefer.

Note 1: Removing your consent for us to use the data collected on your visit to show you adverts on other platforms does NOT ensure you will never see an advert for Spencer Churchill Claims Advice. As part of our wider marketing strategy we may, from time to time, use Facebook and Google’s display advertising facility to show a broad spectrum of society our advertisements. Therefore, you may coincidentally see adverts for Spencer Churchill Claims Advice, but not as a result of your use of our website if you have opted out.

Note 2: You may also choose to delete your cookies from your browser at any time in your settings.

We take our duties to secure your visit from prying eyes seriously. Although it may be unwise to go into the security measures we use on our website here, some things should be visible to you now.

For instance, we are secured by an SSL certificate, which means visits to the website go via https rather than http (the ‘S’ stands for secured). This means that data you submit through the website is encrypted for anybody watching you.

This is now a fairly standard part of website security, denoted by the small padlock you should see in the top-left of your browser next to the website address.

Securing the website via an SSL is just one of the many things we do to make your visit to our website secure, however whether the machine or account you are using to visit the website are secure is unknown to us, and outside of our control. It is good practice to ensure the security of your device by using appropriate firewalls, virus checkers and malware/spyware protection.

If you choose to submit personal data via the website such as your name, telephone number and/or email address, either through one of our contact forms or via our livechat/automated service, then the information will be collected, stored and processed in line with our privacy policy, which you should read before submitting any personal data.

The information will generally be used to contact you in regards to the stated reason you submitted the information. This is usually to answer a query you may have about your pension, pension claims or our business and services.

Afterwards, the data may added to more data you consensually submit to us as part of contracted claims services. Otherwise, the information may be retained for a time for our records and to fulfil legal obligations. You can see how we control and process data about you in the privacy policy, including about what rights you have regarding the data we collect, process and store about you.

If you have submitted personally identifiable information such as (but not exhaustively):

• Your name
• Your contact/address details
• Your financial information
• Your employment information

to Spencer Churchill Claims Advice or it’s advertising partners via any medium such as (but not exhaustively):

• Email
• Website contact form
• Telephone conversation
• Social Media

Then that information falls within the scope of our privacy policy and data protection obligations as a Data Controller.

In this case, your information is stored on password-secured systems, accessed via secure machines in our locked premises. We operate a strict IT policy to ensure the security and secrecy of passwords.

If we have a contract with you for claims services, we will obviously need to retain this data in order to fulfill our contractual obligations and share it only with those who it is essential.

Pension claims can be complex depending on the nature of what has happened. In order to properly assess and then process a successful mis-sold pension claim, a number of factors need to be taken into account.

This is because in most cases, the claim will for negligent financial advice. In order to assess and then effectively criticize that advice, we must first understand what basis it was made on – what information did the adviser have about their client on which to give advice?

Once we have the right information, which can include employment details, income, outgoings, health and risk tolerance reports, we can better assess whether a claim can be made.

Then we can use that information to make the claim.

Without sufficient information, we may not be able to proceed with a claim.

This can change depending on how you’ve come across our services, and what sort of claim you will be making. You can see a list of third parties we deal with as standard on our privacy policy.

In most cases, we may be required to contact your previous or current pension provider or financial adviser in order to collect documentation on your behalf, and to make the claim itself (falling back on the FOS or FSCS in some situations).