Privacy Policy - Bud 

This policy describes how Bud Financial Limited also referred to as (“Bud”, “we”, “our” and “us”) will use your Personal Data, through your use of this website, when you use products or services provided by us. It also describes your data protection rights, more information about your rights, and how to exercise them, is set out in the “Your Rights” section below.

This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children.

When Bud is operating as a service provider to other businesses (e.g., a company providing you with a lending product or service), it processes your information on behalf of and at the instructions of those businesses. In that context, those businesses are the data controllers and their privacy policies will apply to the processing of your information. We encourage you to read their privacy policies.

1. Categories of Personal Data we may collect and process about you

Personal data means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which we have grouped together as follows:

2. How is your Personal Data collected?

We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:

• Your interactions with us. You may give us your personal data by filling in online 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;
  • use our products or services; 
  • create an account on our website;
  • 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 about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Notice for further details.
• Third parties or publicly available sources. Bud may also receive Personal Data about you from third parties.

3. Purposes and Legal Bases for Processing

The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal data. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:

To fulfil a contract, or take steps linked to a contract including:

• To provide you with products and services including account consolidation, transaction categorisation, spending analysis and other insights, together with ancillary services such as customer support. 
• Confirming and verifying your identity.
• To send you service, technical and other administrative emails, messages and other types of communications. 

As required by Bud to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, in particular:

• To ensure our products and services are working as intended, including tracking outages or troubleshooting issues that you report to us.
• For the purpose of ensuring the security of our products and services and processing activities.
• For the purposes of detecting, preventing and investigating fraud.
• For analytics and measurement to understand how our products and services are used. For example, we analyse data we collect to optimise product design and for the purposes of product improvement.
• To conduct surveys and other market research to ensure our services are relevant to your needs.

Where you give us consent:

• To access your transaction data from your banking or financial services provider(s) for the purposes of account consolidation, transaction categorisation, spending analysis and other insights.
• For marketing and advertising purposes, such as developing and providing promotional and advertising materials that may be relevant, valuable, or otherwise of interest to you.
• Where we access information from your device using cookies or similar technologies. 
• On other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use the data for the purpose which we explain at that time.

For purposes which are required by law or to fulfil our regulatory obligations, including:

• For “know your client” checks and screening against government, law enforcement agency sanctions lists and other legal restrictions.
• In response to requests by legal or regulatory authorities, government or law enforcement authorities.

4. Disclosure of Personal Data to Third Parties

We may share your Personal Data with the following categories of Third Parties, if we do they will use your data in the ways described below:

5. International Transfer of Personal Data

If we transfer Personal Data outside of the UK or the European Economic Area (the “EEA”), to a Service Provider located in a country that is not subject to an adequacy decision by the UK ICO or the EU Commission, we will ensure that the transfer of personal data is adequately protected through the use of the approved UK or EU Standard Contractual Clauses, as applicable.   

To understand more about the protections we have in place over the transfer of Personal Data, you may contact us using the details in Section 11 below.  

6. Data Security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

7. Data Retention

We take every reasonable step to ensure that your Personal Data is only processed for the minimum period necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. We will retain Personal Data in an identifiable form for as long as we maintain an ongoing relationship with you or your service provider (e.g. you are a user of our services) or if we are required to keep your Personal Data for another lawful basis (e.g. a basic record of any consent you may have provided us with). Once these applicable periods have passed Bud will permanently delete or fully anonymise your Personal Data.

8. Your Rights

You have a number of rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data, including:

To exercise any of these rights you can get in touch with us using the details set out below. 

If you have unresolved concerns, you have the right to complain to a data protection authority where you live, work or where you believe a breach may have occurred. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office.

9. Direct Marketing

If you provide your consent, we may process your Personal Data in order to contact you with information regarding services that may be of interest to you. You may withdraw your consent and unsubscribe for free at any time, using the contact details below or following the instructions in any email marketing you may have received from us. If you opt out, we may still send you other types of emails, such as support, service, and other emails about our ongoing business relationship.

For other marketing services that we provide, such as downloadable reports or fact sheets, we will rely upon our legitimate interests to provide you with those, as you have expressly requested them.  

10. Changes to this policy and your duty to inform us of changes

We keep our privacy policy under regular review. It is important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.

11. Information relating to Bud 

Bud’s address is 167-169 Great Portland Street, 5th Floor, London, W1W 5PF. 

Bud is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number ZA198709. 

Bud is a private limited company registered in England & Wales (registration number 09651629) and is regulated by the FCA under registration numbers 765768 and 793327.

To get in touch with Bud, please email: help@thisisbud.com

For details on what information we may collect when you visit our website, please refer to our Cookies Notice