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Privacy Policy

We are committed to protecting your privacy. We will use the personal information provided to us for the purposes of providing the services and products available on the website and for other related activities. For these purposes we will disclose the personal information to other Friends Life group companies and to our agents and service providers. We will also disclose information where disclosure is required under a legal or regulatory obligation to do so.

This website contains both public and protected pages and links to other Friends Life sites that provide online services. Any information transmitted to Friends Life companies through public pages is not encrypted and could be intercepted by third parties or electronically delivered to parties other than the addressee. Any such information is sent at your own risk and you should therefore carefully consider its sensitivity prior to transmitting it.

Some pages of the website offer the facility to email us with an enquiry. Email is not a secure medium of communication. For this reason, we request that you do not send private information to us by email. Where we do receive personal information from you by email, we will only respond by email if it is through a secure route.

The protected pages of this site, which form our online services, are however protected by access via secure server. Pages utilising this technology will have URLs that start with HTTPS instead HTTP. This ensures all that all information transmitted between your browser and our server is encrypted.

In addition, to use online services, you must have a valid user name and password. Data transmitted via secure server is stored on databases, which are protected by further security measures (such as firewalls), and may only be access by authorised users. We have strict policies on the storing and disclosing of data to prevent unauthorised access.

When processing sensitive personal data, such as health information, we will only disclose this when we have your explicit consent to do so.

The personal information that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside of the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA working for us or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, amongst other things, the processing of any application you make for a product and, the provision of support, administration and IT services. By submitting your personal information, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We put in place contracts to ensure that our service providers protect your information and that it is treated securely and in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998.

The internet is worldwide and if you are visiting this site from outside the UK your visit will necessarily result in the transfer of information across international borders. By visiting this site and communicating electronically with us you are consenting to these transfers. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

We may also include links to third party websites for your convenience. By giving access to such sites, we are not making any statement, warranty or representation as to the quality or contents of the other sites and do not have any responsibility for that site. Please not that when accessing another site by way of hypertext link you may leave the Friends Life site.

Third party websites are not covered by the privacy policy.

Financial crime (Fraud & Money Laundering)

To verify your identity and prevent financial crime we may use and share your information with any company within the Friends Life group, with companies who work for us and with appropriate organisations.

We may also search, send your details to, and use information from third party verification service providers and financial crime and credit reference agencies (Third Parties). This involves checking your details against databases these Third Parties use. Friends Life and these Third Parties may keep a record of the search, the results of the search, any suspicions of financial crime and the details may be used to assist other companies for verification and identification purposes. The search is not a credit check and your credit rating will be unaffected. These activities help to:

prevent financial crime (e.g. fraud, money laundering)
verify the identity of policyholders / ex-policyholders
trace and validate beneficiaries or recover debt
make decisions about your policy.

Appropriate organisations may include (but are not limited to) the Police, Financial Services Authority; Department for Work & Pensions and Association of British Insurers. The third party verification service providers, financial crime and credit reference agencies may include (but are not limited to) 192.com, Callcredit, Equifax and Experian.

By proceeding with access to our website you are deemed to have accepted the Terms of Use for the website and the terms of this Privacy Policy. By accepting/signing our product application form you are giving consent to these activities which will make it easier for you to do business with us and help prevent financial crime. For more information please write to: Friends Life, Group Anti Money Laundering Manager, Financial Crime & Security (BM6L2), Friends Life Centre, Brierly Furlong, Stoke Gifford, Bristol, BS34 8SW.

Marketing

Where we use your information for marketing purposes we will give you the opportunity to tell us that you do not wish for it to be used in such a manner. If you wish to receive marketing information please tick the relevant box on the page where you are requested to enter your personal details for such purposes.

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that some websites place on your computer or other device when you visit.

Websites commonly use cookies to improve the experience of the site or to remember aspects of your current or previous visits. This can include choices you’ve made or preferences you have chosen during that visit.

Session cookies are automatically deleted at the end of each browsing session (typically when the browser is closed).

Persistent cookies remain until the expiry date and time set by the website (or when manually deleted by the user).

How does Friends Life use cookies?

Our policy is to use cookies to improve the way we do business with you or when they are essential to the way the site works. We may use cookies to;

understand how people use our sites so we can improve them, and
present the right information to people who have logged into our sites, for instance to manage their policies.

You can set your browser to reject cookies but if you do so you will be unable to use some areas of our website(s).

For information about how to block and delete cookies please visit AboutCookies.org.

Data Protection Act 1998

The Friends Life group companies comply with their obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998. You have the right to request a copy of the Personal Data we hold on you upon payment of a small fee and to require us to correct any inaccuracies in the Personal Data.