Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy explains how we will use your personal information when you interact with our Sites so please read it carefully.
SUMMARY
Below is a summary of some key terms of this Privacy Policy. We are committed to protecting your personal information when you use our Site and we want you to be confident that your personal information is safe and secure with us. This Privacy Policy explains how we use your personal information including the following:
where we collect your personal information from;
what personal information we collect;
how we use your personal information;
who your personal information is shared with; and
the rights and choices you have when it comes to your personal information.
Use of our Site is subject to the terms of this Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions. If you do not agree to these terms, please stop using the Site immediately.
The main reason we process your personal data is to provide you with the Services that you request from us (see section 4 below). For certain purposes set out in section 5 below, we may share your personal information with members of our Group, our partners, service providers, and regulatory or governmental bodies. We will only hold your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we hold that personal information.
To make an enquiry or exercise any of your rights as set out in this Privacy Policy, please contact our Data Request Team at: datarequest@moneysupermarket.com.
1. Who are we?
1.1. We are MoneySuperMarket, part of the Moneysupermarket Group, which includes MoneySavingExpert, Decision Technologies, CYTI, and Quidco (all operating in the UK). We will take your privacy very seriously.
1.2. For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, references to "we", "us", "our" or “Site” are to MoneySuperMarket and exclude MoneySavingExpert, Decision Technologies, CYTI (see section 2.1 below for further information), and Quidco who each have their own privacy policies.
1.3. MoneySuperMarket.com Limited (company number 3945937) is a controller in relation to the processing of the personal information that you provide to us when you use our Services. Its registered address is Moneysupermarket House, St David's Park, Ewloe, Chester, CH5 3UZ. If you have any queries relating to our use of your personal information, if you want to contact our data protection officer or if you have any other related data protection questions, please contact our Data Request Team at datarequest@moneysupermarket.com or write to our Data Protection Officer at Moneysupermarket House, St. David's Park, Ewloe, Flintshire, CH5 3UZ.
2. How do we collect personal information?
2.1. From you - Most of the personal information we collect will be directly from you when you use the Services. We will collect this information from you through the websites, mobile applications, or other similar devices, channels, or applications operated by or on behalf of MoneySuperMarket.
2.2 From our partners - If you purchase a product from one of our partners whose products are shown on our Site then they may send us the information they hold relating to the product(s) you have purchased. This allows us to track sales and improve our Services.
2.3 From our channel operators - Whilst the majority of the channels on our Site are run by us or other Moneysupermarket Group companies, some of our channels are designed, maintained, and/or run for us by our trusted channel operators. We may receive your personal information from our channel operators and use it in accordance with section 5 below. Where our channel operators collect your personal information on a channel that is maintained by them, they will be acting as a controller of your personal information. You can see a list of our channel operators including a link to their privacy policies here.
2.4 . From our suppliers - We will sometimes use other companies to collect and process your personal information on our behalf, for example, we may use IT service providers or market research agencies. Where we use third parties we will make sure that they commit to keeping your information safe. We may also obtain data about you from our suppliers – for example, if you use our Credit Monitor Services (either through the Apps or on our website), we will obtain information about your credit history for you (see sections 4.1.7 and 5.2.4 below for further information) and in order to show and send you car tax and MOT reminders, we will obtain the dates these falls due by accessing public sector information (see sections 4.2.5.2 and 5.1.8.2 for further information).
3. What personal information do we collect?
3.1. The personal information we may collect when you use the Services includes your name, address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, driving history, and details about your vehicle/home together with details of your financial information, for example, bank account or payment details. We use this data to obtain comparative quotes for insurance and home services or when searching for money products.
3.1.1. In the course of providing the Services to you, we may also store information about how you use our Site, for example, the pages viewed, the website from which you came to visit our Site, changes you make to information you supply to us, details of the quotes you request and your transactions.
3.2. In order to provide you with a quote we may need to collect personal information which data protection law defines as special category data. This is personal information that is particularly sensitive, such as medical history or criminal convictions. We cannot display quotes for certain types of insurance (such as life insurance or vehicle insurance) without this information. We may also need to share this data with our partners to enable them to generate a quote for you (which we are allowed to do under data protection legislation in order to arrange and/or advise on an insurance contract). For a list of our partners that we share this information with, please see section 5.1 of this Privacy Policy.
3.3. We do not knowingly collect or store any personal information about children under the age of 16 years with the exception of certain travel insurance products. If you are aged under 16 please get your parent or legal guardian to provide us with your personal information.
3.4. If you are providing us with another person's information (for example where you request a policy that includes another person as a joint policyholder or obtaining quotes for a family member) you should first ask them to read this Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions. By giving us information about another person you are confirming that they are happy for you to provide the information to us and that they understand how their details will be used.
3.5. We may monitor or record your calls, emails, SMS, or other communications but we will do so in accordance with data protection legislation and other applicable law. Monitoring or recording will always be for business purposes, such as for quality control and training (e.g. where you email our customer services team ), to prevent unauthorised use of our telecommunication systems and Site, to ensure effective systems operation, to meet any legal obligation and/or to prevent or detect crime.
3.6. If you apply for an offer through our Site, we may use your personal information to enable us to fulfil that offer. Where we use third parties to help us to fulfil offers, we may also need to share your personal information with them. This will also be detailed in the relevant terms and conditions for that offer. Please also see section 5.1 of this Privacy Policy.
3.7. In order to ensure the Services we provide you continue to meet your needs we may ask you for feedback on your experience of using the Site. Any feedback you provide will only be used as part of our programme of continuous improvement and will not be published on the Site.
3.8. Note that it is your responsibility to check and ensure that all information, content, material, or data you provide on the Site is correct, complete, accurate, and not misleading and that you disclose all relevant facts.
4. How do we use your personal information?
4.1. We use your personal information on the following basis:
4.1.1. verifying your identity, managing, running and administering your account or use of any mobile applications if you choose to set up a Site account or download mobile applications. You must be aged 16 years and over to create an account on the Site, please see section 3.3 of this Privacy Policy;
4.1.2. passing it to our partners including companies whose products or services are included on our Site, with a view to them providing you with an online quote or eligibility score for the product/service requested by you. When our partners use your personal information to provide a quote they will act as controllers of your personal information – you can see links to lists of our partners in section 5.1.6 below;
4.1.3. to pre-populate fields on the Site when making return visits to obtain new quotes for the same product(s) or quotes across other channels on the Site. This will make it easier for you to use the Site by storing the personal information you provide to us (for example, your postal address and email address) and store personal data of any individuals associated with your accounts for example a family member or a friend, this can also include personal data of anyone under the age of 18 for life insurance quotes and products and anyone aged between 13-16 years for travel insurance quotes and products;
4.1.4. to enable you to use our eligibility checker services. When you use our eligibility checker services, a credit report will be generated by carrying out a 'soft' credit check. We do not carry out these checks but will pass your personal information to our trusted service providers who will generate these checks (see section 5.2 below for more details);
4.1.5. to process a transaction between you and a third party;
4.1.6. to track sales, which may involve us sharing data with product partners relating to the product(s) you have purchased;
4.1.7. where you use the Credit Monitor Services we will supply you with your credit score and/or credit report (as applicable) from TransUnion each month (see our Terms and Conditions for more information on our Credit Monitor Services). This will leave a footprint (also known as a ‘soft’ search) on your credit file, which does not affect your score and is not visible to lenders, but will be visible to you. We will request this ‘soft’ search on your behalf for at least up to twelve (12) months from when you give us authorisation and will continue to request this ‘soft search’ on an ongoing basis whilst you are still using the Credit Monitor Service. To enable us to supply you with your credit report and/or credit score (as applicable), you will need to authorise us to submit a subject access request to TransUnion for that information under Article 15 of the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) on your behalf;
4.1.8. to enable telematics - if you have chosen to have a telematics in-tele-box fitted to your car and/or to download a telematics app to your mobile device, this will collect a wide range of driving information. Our partners may use the telematics data in a number of ways, as defined in their privacy policies or terms and conditions. The police and certain statutory and/or authorised bodies may request information collected via the telematics device/app to help them with road accident investigations and the prevention or detection of crime. Such information may currently only be obtained via an application to the Courts and we will not provide any information to these organisations except when subject to a Court Order or with your consent;
4.1.9. to enable you to share our content with others (e.g. by using any "Email a friend" or "Share this" functionality on our Site);
4.1.10. to fulfil offers you have applied for through the Site; and
4.1.11. to communicate with you at your request to offer help and support and to resolve any Service issues, including via live chat if you use our energy or life insurance comparison services.
4.2. To communicate with you, including some or all of the following:
4.2.1. sending you information about products and services which we think may be of interest to you – We will only send you this information if you give us your consent for us to do so. We will contact you (depending on your contact preferences) via email, post, telephone, SMS, or by other electronic means such as via social and digital media this may include new product launches, newsletters, and opportunities to participate in market research;
4.2.2. sending you a confirmation email of your quote - When you obtain a quote with us, you will automatically be sent confirmation of your quote by email or SMS so that you have a record of it and can easily retrieve your quote in the future;
4.2.3. informing you of your annual renewal quotes - Based on the information you previously provided to us if you have previously obtained a quote - when our systems indicate that your renewal is due (based on the dates you entered for your most recent quote) we may resubmit your quote details to give you an idea (on your homepage and/or, if you have consented to our marketing, then via email or other electronic means) of what your quotes could be for your next renewal. In order to provide this service to you, we may also send that information to our insurance partners so that they can calculate their quotes. When they do this, our insurance partners may carry out ‘soft’ credit checks on you with credit reference agencies, and these checks may be performed ahead of the renewal date. You may see these ‘soft’ credit checks on your credit report but they will have no impact on your credit rating. Please see section 5.2 for more details on soft credit checks;
4.2.4. sending you information about our innovative savings and credit management services– If you have subscribed to any of these services for example if you:
4.2.4.1. have subscribed to our Credit Monitor Services, then we will contact you (e.g. through email, push notifications, or in-App messaging) to let you know when your eligibility scores, TransUnion credit score, and/or credit report (as applicable) have been updated, how you can access our guides on credit scores and credit reports, or notifying you of significant changes to your credit score or report (see section 5 below for further information);
4.2.4.2. have switched energy supplier with us through our Energy Monitor Services, informing you via email (or, if you are using our Apps, this may also be via in-App messaging or push notification) of when your application to switch energy supplier has been received, updating you as to the progress of your switch (including if your switch has been rejected for any reason) and when your switch is complete (please see section 9 of our Terms and Conditions for further information);
4.2.5.2. opt into our marketing communications then we will send you reminders of when your car tax and MOT are due (please see section 7 of our Terms and Conditions for further information and for more information on data accessed by us from the DVLA and the DVSA, please see section 5.1.8).
4.3. To personalise and improve aspects of our Services including:
4.3.1. to improve our recommendations and insights. The information we collect helps us tailor our content and improve our suggestions to you and other users about products or services that may interest you or them. For example, we may undertake analysis and profiling of your credit information when you use our Credit Monitor services in order to identify and inform you of products that we consider are likely to interest you or be suited to your credit circumstances. We also use that information to provide you with general insights about your credit health;
4.3.2. to match our data with data from other sources - We may validate and analyse your information and, in some cases, match it against information that has been collected by a third party to ensure that the information we hold about you is accurate, consistent and well-organised and in order to continually personalise our Services and make them as easy to use as possible. For example, we may pass your postcode to certain of our third-party partners to facilitate the correct look-up of your street address. We may also match the information you provide us with against that collected by a third party to help gather all the information that is required to carry out the Service you have requested (particularly if some of this information may be difficult for you to locate) and to pre-populate some of the information required to carry out the Service for you by providing estimated figures. For example, as part of a request from you to switch your energy partner, we may match your address to the corresponding MPAN/MPRN (which are numbers used to identify the energy/gas supply points in your home) to help facilitate the switch (see sections 9 and 10 of our Terms and Conditions for more information on our energy products and services). Personalising our Services to you also helps us ensure that any marketing material that we send you is appropriate to your needs; and
4.3.3. to help our partners understand customer behaviours and develop their product offerings we may pass certain personal information to them (e.g. to populate our customer insight products that are available to subscribers).
4.4. For research, such as analysing market trends and customer demographics including:
4.4.1. we may contact you to ask you to assist us with market research by asking you questions about the Services and asking you if you would like to complete a review of the Services. We may sometimes ask market research companies to contact you on our behalf; and
4.4.2. we may use the data relating to your quotes, your personal information, special category data in relation to life insurance quotes, and information about the policies and contracts you have taken out to carry out various research and analysis activities to help us review and improve the Site or our Services. Where you’ve consented, this personal information may include special category data.
5. Who is your personal information shared with (including credit information services) and how is it used by our partners?
5.1. When you use any of our Services, we may disclose your personal information to the following parties:
5.1.1. other members of the Moneysupermarket Group (excluding MoneySavingExpert) in accordance with section 4;
5.1.2. MoneySavingExpert - (i) to communicate with you, including (if you consent) sending you information about products and services which may be of interest to you; (ii) to speed up form filling, or to personalise, or improve your experience on its website, mobile applications or other similar devices, channels or applications; or (iii) in accordance with their privacy policy;
5.1.3. Decision Technologies - where you run an energy price comparison enquiry via Decision Technologies’ partner network we will work with them to generate a quote and enable you to apply and purchase energy products on the sites of Decision Technologies partner network;
5.1.4. CYTI - where you run an insurance price comparison enquiry for life, pet or travel products via CYTI’s partner network we will work with them to generate a quote and enable you to apply and purchase any of these products on CYTI’s partner network; and
5.1.5. our channel operators - When you use the Services we may share your personal information with our channel operators for them to use it in accordance with section 4 above. Where our channel operators collect your personal information on a channel that is maintained by them, they will be acting as a controller of your personal information provided in relation to a quote. You can see a list of our channel operators including a link to their websites here.
5.1.6. our partners including companies whose products or services are included on our Site:
5.1.6.1. in order to display quotes on the Site we will send your personal information to our panel of partners. We need to send them your personal information so that they can generate a quote for us to display on the Site. When these companies use your personal information in this way, they will be acting as controllers of your personal information which means that they are in charge of how they handle your data and we are not responsible for this;
5.1.6.2. to provide you with our eligibility checker service, your personal information will be sent to our panel of credit card and loan partners so that we can show you which credit cards or loans that you’re most likely to be accepted for. If you choose to click through to some of our money partners to submit an application, to make it easier for you to complete your application we may pass the personal information you provide on the Site to our partners to pre-populate fields on our partners’ website to save you having to input your information again; and
5.1.6.3. on some of our journeys you can apply and purchase our partners’ products on our Site (for example energy products, travel insurance and life insurance). When you purchase a Product on our Site any contract will be entered into between you and the relevant product partner and so we will pass your personal information to them.
If you click through to any of our partners' websites, provide them with additional information on their websites, and/or if you decide to purchase a product from any of our partners then they will be controllers of your personal information and you should read their own privacy policy which you should find on their website.
You can see a list of our partners here:
Our partners in Home Insurance
Our partners in Life Insurance
Our partners in Travel Insurance
Our partners in Current Accounts
Our partners in Savings Accounts
Other third parties we work with
5.1.7. other service providers that we engage to help us provide certain services and/or functionality, such as whether products are suitable for you. These include:
5.1.7.1. our service providers who enable our eligibility checker services (see section 5.2 below for more information);
5.1.7.2. UnderwriteMe Limited who will process your personal information to provide fully and partially underwritten life insurance quotations and to deal with enquiries relating to your policy, statistical purposes, claims management, and the prevention and detection of fraud. Where required by law, regulatory requirement, or for the prevention or detection of a crime UnderwriteMe may share your personal information with (i) UnderwriteMe’s group companies and (ii) our life insurance partners. UnderwriteMe will also use data that has been anonymized for underwriting, claims, pricing research, and helping UnderwriteMe better understand consumer behaviour;
5.1.7.3. market research agencies who may contact you on our behalf in order to ask you to assist us with our research;
5.1.7.4. our service providers who help us to fulfil offers that you have applied for;
5.1.7.5. our service providers help us to provide customer insight products to enable subscribers to develop and improve their products for you;
5.1.7.6. our service providers help us by providing your supplier details and energy usage when you run an energy journey, allowing us to find energy deals based on this information; and
5.1.7.76. if you switch energy suppliers with us, to keep you informed as to the status of your switch and to provide you with our Energy Monitoring Services, our third party partners who help us to facilitate your application to switch energy partners and to keep you updated as to the status of your switch, as well as the energy partners themselves. Please see our
Terms and Conditions for more information on our Energy Monitor services.
5.1.8. the DVLA and DVSA:
5.1.8.1. if you give us your driving licence number when obtaining a motor insurance quote, it may be submitted by us or our partners to the DVLA MyLicence service in order to verify the status of your (or any named driver's) licence and entitlement along with any relevant restriction information, endorsement and/or conviction data. The insurers may carry out the searches themselves or we may perform them and then pass the results to the insurers. These driving licence searches may be made when you first use our Services and subsequently throughout the duration of your insurance policy. These searches will not show on your (or your named driver's) DVLA driving licence record. Carrying out these searches may help insurers to prevent fraud and reduce the need for insurers to cancel policies for negligent misrepresentation and non-disclosure of important information. For details of the information about you that the DVLA may hold, please see http://www.mylicence.org.uk/.
5.1.8.2. If you run a car insurance journey on our Site and confirm you have the relevant vehicle we can match your car registration number with public sector information to obtain the dates that your car tax and MOT will need renewing so that we can add these dates to your homepage for you to see next time you log in and, if you opt in to our marketing, send you car tax and MOT reminders via email before these falls due. This car tax and MOT information is accessed by us from public sector information under the terms of the Open Government Licence 3.0. MoneySuperMarket does not warrant the accuracy of any information relating to your vehicle’s MOT and tax status and does not accept any liability for any inaccurate information accessed by it in this way.
5.1.9. Where permitted or required by law or regulation, we may also disclose information about you (including electronic identifiers such as IP addresses) and/or access your account in order to comply with legal or regulatory requirements for example:
5.1.9.1. if required to do so by any court, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) or any other applicable regulatory, compliance, Governmental or law enforcement agency;
5.1.9.2. if necessary in connection with legal proceedings or potential legal proceedings;
5.1.9.3. in connection with the sale or potential sale of all or part of our business; and/or
5.1.9.4. if we reasonably believe false or inaccurate information has been provided and fraud is suspected, details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies to prevent fraud and money laundering.
5.2. Credit Information Services & Soft Credit Checks
When you use the Services a ‘soft’ credit check may be carried out against your credit report by our service providers for the following purposes:
5.2.1. to enable our eligibility checker services (see section 5.2.5 below for more information);
5.2.2. to provide you with your credit history including your credit score and credit report when you use the Credit Monitor Services (see section 5.2.6 below for more information);
5.2.3. on some of our mortgage journeys run by our mortgage channel operator, Podium, including: (i) to enable our mortgage account number retrieval service (see section 5.2.8 below for more information); and (ii) if you apply for a decision in principle from some of our lender partners as part of our re-mortgage journey (when your chosen lender will carry out a soft credit check).
5.2.4. Many of our partners will also carry out checks with credit reference agencies when they generate a quote for comparison both at the time you request a quote and at renewal. You should read their privacy policy for more information on how they carry out these checks (see 5.3.2 for further information).
‘Soft’ credit checks are carried out by using credit reference agencies in order to (i) assess your financial and insurance profile; (ii) verify your identity; and/or (iii) to help prevent fraud. The credit reference agencies may keep a record of the search and you may see this recorded against your credit file but these ‘soft’ credit checks have no impact on your credit rating. ‘Soft’ credit checks are visible on your credit report but do not show up in the same way as a 'hard' check. Where a ‘soft’ credit check is required for our eligibility checker service, our Credit Monitor Services, or our mortgage services we engage the following service providers:
5.2.5. HD Decisions - an Experian business (our trusted service provider) (HD), and some of our credit card and loans partners including Capital One plc (Capital One), and Shawbrook Bank Limited (Shawbrook), who in turn partner with the following UK credit reference agencies: TransUnion and Experian Ltd (Experian) from time to time to enable our eligibility checker services. If you use our eligibility services, a credit report will be generated by carrying out a 'soft' credit check. The ‘soft’ credit checks will be used by HD and other partners, to match against those partners' own lending criteria. This information will be used to let you know your percentage chances of successfully obtaining a credit card or loan. Note that your credit report will not be provided to you directly and we will not receive it either unless you use our Credit Monitor Services (see paragraph 5.2.4). For further information about how your details will be used please see the rest of our Privacy Policy and Capital One's and HD's and Shawbrook's own privacy policy and terms and conditions.
5.2.6. If you use our Credit Monitor Services we will pass on your personal information to TransUnion and your credit history and related information will be obtained from them. References to “TransUnion” in this Privacy Policy mean TransUnion International UK Limited (company number 0496832), which is part of the TransUnion Information Group. TransUnion is a credit reference agency authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority under number 737740, whose registered office is at One Park Lane, West Yorkshire, LS3 1EP. Authorisation can be checked on the Financial Services Register at www.fca.org.uk. To find out more about TransUnion, please visit https://www.transunion.co.uk/consumer-solutions/help/credit-reference-agency. Any county court judgment information that we give to you is also provided by TransUnion. The Credit Monitor Services will leave ‘soft’ credit checks, which are visible to you on your credit report but do not show up to other organisations in the same way as a 'hard' check. For further information about how your information will be used please see the rest of our Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions. Please also read TransUnion's own privacy policy for information about how they obtain, use, and share your personal information.
5.2.7. We also use TransUnion’s services as part of our identity verification procedures. Please see their separate Bureau Privacy Notice for more information about this.
5.2.8. If you use the mortgage account number retrieval service available on some of our mortgage journeys then your mortgage account number will be obtained from Experian by carrying out a soft credit check. Our mortgage channel operator, Podium, will pass your information to Experian to enable this service. Please see Experian’s terms for more information on how they use your details and you can find Podium’s terms here.
5.3. How do our partners use your personal information and who might they share it with?
In order to provide you with a quote, our partners may exchange information about you with other companies and/or carry out checks with various databases. Our partners act as controllers in respect of this use of personal information and we are not responsible for it. We have set out below some of the common ways they will share your information:
5.3.1. Some of our partners will use your personal information to assess your circumstances (including information about any third party who is named on the policy) and verify the information that you have provided before providing a quote to you;
5.3.2. Some partners may carry out checks with fraud prevention and credit reference agencies, both when you first run your quote and when we run an annual renewal quote. Insurers generally run these checks to ensure that they and credit partners have the necessary facts to assess your insurance risk, verify your identity, help prevent fraud, and provide you with their best premium and payment options). If partners do these checks, they will be quotation searches only and do not show up on your credit report in the same way that a ‘hard’ check does, but will be visible to other organisations. Both public data (e.g. the electoral roll) and private data (e.g. your personal credit history) may be checked in this way;
5.3.3. Some partners may carry out checks against data they already hold on you, (or is held by the company whose brand they administer the product for, or members of their group of companies) such as data from existing products, account data, data from previous product transactions, accounts you may hold with them or loyalty scheme data to share with insurers in order to determine your premium;
5.3.4. Our partners may also use the data relating to your quotes and your personal information to create and improve the products and services they offer and to develop and improve their processes, credit risk systems, and policies, so they can better meet the needs of their customers.
5.3.5. Our partners may also exchange data with certain industry databases such as the No Claims Discount Database, the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register, the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (which holds records of incidents reported to insurers that may or may not have resulted in a claim) and the Hunter Database (a central insurance and claims checking system). If our partners carry out these searches, a record of the search will appear on your credit report;
5.3.6. Some of our partners may also check public and private higher education sources to obtain information about your educational background; and
5.3.7. Our partners may also share information with insurance underwriters. These checks are not unique to users of our Services - they may also be carried out if you obtain quotes from other sources.
This information exchange allows our partners to verify the information that is provided during the quote process (including information about any third party who is named on the policy), and also helps to detect fraudulent claims.
If you decide to enter into a contract with one of our partners through any of the Sites, the information you have provided to us, together with any further information requested by, and supplied by you or us to the partner, will be held by the partner for the purposes set out in their privacy policy and they will act as a controller of your personal information. Therefore, you are strongly advised to read your chosen partner's privacy policy and satisfy yourself as to the purposes for which the partner will use your personal information before entering into the contract. We have no responsibility for the uses to which a partner puts your personal information.
6. Legal grounds for processing your personal information?
We will only collect and use your personal information in accordance with data protection laws. Our legal grounds for processing your personal information in the ways described in this Privacy Policy are as follows:
6.1. Performance of a contract – In order to provide you with the Services and manage your account we will: (i) search the websites of our partners to get you the best quotes and/or access information required to provide you with the relevant Service from our third party partners (as described herein for the relevant Service); (ii) process any transaction between you and a third party; (iii) manage, run and administer your account; and (iv) send you an automatic confirmation email of your quote when you enter your personal data to receive a quote on our Site. If you apply for an offer through the Site, we will also use your personal information to assess your eligibility and subject to availability, fulfil the offer where the eligibility criteria has been met. When we do this we are processing your personal information because it is necessary to perform the contract that we have in place with you to provide you with our Services.
6.2. Consent – We will only send you certain marketing emails or alerts if you have confirmed that you are happy to receive this material. Where we have asked for your consent, we will only collect and process your personal information if you have given your consent for us to do so.
6.3. Legitimate Interests – We may use and process some of your personal information where we have sensible and legitimate business grounds for doing so. Under UK privacy laws, there is a concept of “legitimate interests” as a justification for processing your personal information. Our legitimate interests for processing your personal information are:
6.3.1. to communicate with you about the Services. We need to keep you informed about your use of the Services for example:
informing you of your annual renewal quotes (see section 4.2.3 for further information on these services);
if you have logged into our Site or created an account (including through our Apps) and run a car insurance enquiry with us and you confirm that you have the relevant vehicle, we will show you when your car tax, MOT or insurance are due for renewal next time you log in and visit your homepage (see section 7 of our
for further information on these services);
if you have logged into our Site or created an account (including through our Apps) and run an energy enquiry with us, keeping you informed of energy deals available on the market through a range of suppliers and informing you of the progress of your application to switch energy supplier (see section 9 of our
for further information on these services);
if you have logged into our Site or created an account (including through our Apps) and complete an energy switch with us we will save your application information via YourAccount/Dashboard to enable you to quickly switch energy suppliers when your tariff ends; and
6.3.2. to personalise and improve our Services, for example, we may use your personal information to personalise aspects of our service, including to inform you about products and services we think may be of interest to you (this will not include sending you marketing communications unless you have given us consent to receive these); and to allow you to use our eligibility checker services. We constantly aim to improve our Services to you and using your personal information in this way helps us to do this; and
6.3.3. for market research and analysis (see section 4.3.3 for further information about our customer insight products which are available to subscribers). This helps us to regularly review and improve the products and services we or our partners provide. Where possible data that we use/provide in this way will be in an anonymised or pseudonymised format.
6.3.4. You have the right to object to our use of your personal information for these legitimate interests. If you raise an objection we will stop processing your personal information unless very exceptional circumstances apply, in which case we will let you know why we are continuing to process your personal information. Please contact our Data Request Team at: datarequest@moneysupermarket.com if you wish to exercise this right, see section 11 below for further information on your personal information rights.
7. What cookies do we use?
7.1. A cookie is a small text file placed on your computer or device. Cookies help us to:
understand browsing habits on the Site;
respond to you as an individual by tailoring our operations to your needs, likes, and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences;
monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not; and
understand the number of visitors so that we can analyse data about web traffic which helps us improve our Sites.
7.2. For more information on the cookies we use, please see our Cookie Policy.
8. What advertisements do we show on our Site and what online advertising do we use?
8.1. Advertisements on our Site - The advertisements that you see displayed on our Site are delivered on our behalf by certain third-party advertising companies. No information that directly identifies you, such as your name, address, email address, or telephone number, is used to provide this advertising. In order to display advertising most likely to be relevant to you, these third-party advertisers may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. This cookie does not collect personal information about you nor is it linked to any identifiable information about you. It is possible to block cookies by adjusting your browser settings, as mentioned in our Cookie Policy. By using the Services you are consenting to the use of these third party cookies for these purposes.
8.2. If you would like more information about online advertisements and your choices about how this information may be used by these companies, please click here http://www.youronlinechoices.com/uk/your-ad-choices.
8.3. The Site has also implemented and used Display Advertising using Google Analytics which permits advertisements and remarketing to be served on third-party websites across the internet relating to a search made on the Site. The Site and third parties, including Google, use first-party cookies and third-party cookies to inform, optimise and serve such advertisements. You can opt-out of or customise, these advertisements using the Google Ads Preferences Manager.
8.4. Online Advertisements - If you consent to us contacting you for marketing purposes, we may disclose an anonymised version of your personal information such as your name, telephone number, and email address (we use a process called hashing which means that the third party does not receive a plain text version of your personal information to protect your details) to third-party providers to enable them to display our marketing to you via online streaming services, search engines, or social media sites.
9. How secure is our Site and what steps do we take to keep you safe?
9.1. Your personal information’s security is very important to us. This is why, where it’s appropriate, our Site uses HTTPS to help keep information about you secure. However, no data transmission over the internet can be guaranteed to be totally secure. Certain information, for example, your credit card details, is encrypted to minimise the risk of interception during transit.
9.2. You may complete a registration process when you sign up to use parts of the Sites. This may include the creation of a username, password, and/or other identification information. Any such details should be kept confidential by you and should not be disclosed to or shared with anyone. Where you do disclose any of these details, you are solely responsible for all activities undertaken on the Site where they are used. To protect your account, we ask you to choose a strong password to access your information on our Sites. A strong password should be lengthy and include a mixture of letters and numbers. Your password can only be reset with access to the email address registered in our system.
9.3. It might sometimes be necessary for us or our suppliers to transfer your personal information outside of the UK either within the European Economic Area (EEA); or outside of the EEA. However, we will only transfer your personal information out of the UK if we have put in place appropriate safeguards and protections as stated under UK law for example by the use of a data-transfer agreement incorporating certain standard model protection clauses which have been approved by UK GDPR.
10. How can you amend your preferences?
10.1. Any electronic marketing or communications from MoneySuperMarket services we send you will include clear and concise instructions to follow should you wish to unsubscribe at any time. You may also amend your marketing preferences by accessing your personal details via YourAccount/Dashboard, via the link received in emails, or by emailing us at datarequest@moneysupermarket.com.
10.2. To turn off communications from the MoneySuperMarket App, you can go to your MoneySuperMarket App settings or follow the links included at the bottom of the emails you have received (simply deleting the MoneySuperMarket App will not stop these emails).
10.3. To turn off communications from our Credit Monitor service, please email creditmonitor@moneysupermarket.com (simply deleting the App will not stop these emails).
10.4. Should you no longer wish to be contacted by us, you can advise us by contacting our Customers services team on customerservices@moneysupermarket.com
10.4.1. If you no longer wish to be contacted by partners for marketing purposes, please follow the instructions in their marketing communications, or consult their privacy policies for further information about unsubscribing.
10.5. If you would like us to stop processing your personal data with respect to any of the services we are providing to you, please email us at datarequests@moneysupermarket.com, specifying that you no longer wish us to provide you with the relevant service or to process your personal information as part of such service.
11. Your personal information rights and how to contact us
11.1. You have certain rights under data protection legislation in relation to the personal information that we hold on you including:
11.1.1. Right to access - The right to a copy of the personal information we hold about you. We’ll ask you to describe the information you require, as well as letting us know about any other email addresses you’ve used on our Sites, to enable us to trace your personal information. Depending on the nature of your request, we may also ask you for your full name, your date of birth, and your full address and documents to allow us to verify your identity. Requests for copies of your personal information will be dealt with within one month, unless your request is complicated or if you have made a large number of requests. In these circumstances it may take us longer to deal with your request, in which case we will let you know if we need longer than one month to respond;
11.1.2. Right to correct - The right to have your personal information rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete. Requests for us to correct your personal information will be dealt with within one month, unless your request is complicated or if you have made a large number of requests. In these circumstances, it may take us longer to deal with your request, in which case we will let you know if we need longer than one month to respond. If we believe that your personal information is accurate, we will let you know that that we will not be amending your personal information and why;
11.1.3. Right to erasure and to restrict our use of your information - The right to request that we delete or remove your personal information from our systems. Data protection legislation gives exceptions to this right which, if applicable, we will explain in our response to you;
11.1.4. Right to restrict our use of your information - In some circumstances you can ‘block’ us from using your personal information or limit the way in which we can use it;
11.1.5. Right to data portability - The right to request that we move, copy or transfer your personal information; and
11.1.6. Right to object - The right to object to our use of your personal information including where we use it for our legitimate interests or where we use your personal information to carry out profiling to inform our market research and customer demographics. If you raise an objection we will stop processing your personal information unless very exceptional circumstances apply, in which case we will let you know why we’re continuing to process your personal information.
11.2. To make an enquiry, or exercise any of your rights set out in this Privacy Policy please contact our Data Requests Team by clicking here. Alternatively, you can email us at datarequest@moneysupermarket.com.
11.3. If you are not satisfied with the way any complaint you make in relation to your personal information is handled by us then you may be able to refer your complaint to the relevant data protection regulator which in the UK is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
11.4. This Privacy Policy shall be governed and construed in all respects in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.
12. How long do we keep your personal information?
12.1. We will only hold your personal information on our systems for the period necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy or until you request it is deleted (unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law).
12.2. Generally, you can expect us to keep your personal information while you use the Site or if you have an active account with us. Where you have applied for or purchased products or services via the Site we will need to keep your personal information for longer for accounting purposes - up to six (6) years following the date on which it is provided to us.
12.3. If, having registered for any of our Services, you do not use them for a reasonable time (which may vary depending on the Service(s) you’ve registered for) we may contact you to ensure you’re still happy to receive communications from us.
12.4. If one of our partners processes your data in order to provide you with a quote they will be acting as a controller but they should only hold that data for so long as is reasonable in relation to providing you with that quote.
12.5. If you purchase a product then the service provider will keep your personal information in accordance with their own retention periods and so you should check their own privacy policy for further information.
12.6. Even if you delete or ask us to delete your personal information it may persist on backup or archival media for legal, tax, or regulatory purposes.
13. Changes to this Privacy Policy
13.1. We reserve the right to amend or modify this Privacy Policy at any time and any changes will be published on the Site. The date of the most recent revision will appear on this page. If we make significant changes to this policy, we may also notify you by other means such as sending an email. Where required by law we will obtain your consent to make these changes. If you do not agree with any changes please do not continue to use the Site.
Last updated OCTOBER 2022