Privacy Policy

About Zuto

This website (the “Website”) is operated by Zuto Limited ("we", "us" or "our"). We are a company registered in England and Wales under company registration number 05722976. By using and visiting our Website and using our service you agree to this privacy policy. We respect the privacy of visitors to our Website and who use our services. We recognise that when you choose to provide us with information about yourself, you trust us to act in a responsible manner in our capacity as a data controller and that's why we have put a policy in place to protect your personal information.

We are registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office with the registration number Z9481655. Our registered office address is Winterton House, Winterton Way, Macclesfield, SK11 0LP.

What information do we collect?

At times we may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information which may include sensitive personal information such as employment details, salary, bank account details and proof of ID. Generally, this information is requested when you apply for our products and/or services.

We may also receive some data from third party companies when you create a My Zuto account. We may offer the option to sign up using a third party (Facebook, Apple, Google) who may share your details with us, depending on how you create your account and if you choose to use one of these third party services to sign in. We will ask your permission before we collect your information from these third parties.

How we use your data and why we are collecting your personal information

We will use your personal information you give to us, or we may collect data from Credit Reference Agencies or other third parties on your behalf as part of our services. This may include personal sensitive information, and we will use this information for the following reasons:

  • To consider and process your application for our products and/or services
  • To communicate with you by telephone, email, text (SMS) message or other electronic means to discuss your application
  • (Only where you have provided your consent) For us to market to you. For more detail, please see the section titled 'How do we use your information for marketing?' below
  • To notify you about changes to our services
  • To ensure that content from our website is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device
  • To aggregate it on an anonymous basis with other data for data analytical and reporting purposes
  • To undertake analysis and profiling of your credit information in order to identify and inform you of credit products that we consider are likely to interest you or be suited to your credit circumstances or to enhance our services.
  • To run credit searches, in order to match you with the most appropriate product and/or service in accordance with the terms of your application. For more detail, please read the rest of this section and the section titled 'It is important that you provide us with accurate information' below;
  • To ensure that the content, services and advertising that we offer are tailored to your needs and interests, to provide products and services that meet the needs and requirements of our customers and to improve how we operate as a business. For more detail, please see the section titled 'Use of Cookies' below; and
  • To transcribe your calls with us for monitoring and training purposes and to provide an accurate record of these conversations to comply with our legal and regulatory responsibilities.

Information we receive from other sources. We may combine this information with information you give to us and use this information and the combined information for the purposes set out above.

Recording telephone calls and other communications. We will use telephone recordings or transcripts of communications to check your instructions to us, analyse, assess and improve our services, for training and quality purposes and for the purposes of investigating any complaint you may make, or as evidence in any dispute between you and us.

Who we may share your data with:

We may need to disclose your data to others to ensure we can efficiently provide the products, services and information you request. Your data may be disclosed to the other parties as described below. These third parties act on our instructions and are processors of your information:

  • We will use and share your information obtained through our application process with selected lenders in order to process your application for finance products / services and to generate a finance quotation.
  • We will use the information you share with price comparison websites; where that data is passed to us in order for us to share with selected lenders to return a finance quote or eligibility check for you which you can choose whether to proceed with.
  • We may disclose personal data to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.
  • We may also share your information with the following types of third-party organisations who may process your data on our behalf:
    • Analytics tools which may monitor your behaviour whilst on the Zuto website to allow Zuto to constantly improve its user journey, design and content layout.
    • Zuto analytics tools to enable us to monitor our services and ensure everything is working correctly
    • Online advertising solutions to allow us to show you relevant content about our finance products / services
    • Customer feedback tools to ensure that we get your feedback that helps us improve our service to you.
    • Live chat services to help us speak to each other.
    • Marketing communications software to help us contact you more effectively.
    • Communication platforms to allow us to contact you regarding your finance enquiry
    • Cloud hosting platforms to securely store your data
    • Social media sites to show you relevant content about our finance products / services;
    • Vehicle valuation tools to allow you to value your vehicle as part of the finance process; and
    • Car dealerships to facilitate selecting a vehicle as part of your application, including arranging test drives for your selected vehicle.
  • In assessing your application for credit, to prevent fraud, to check your identity and to prevent money laundering, we may:
    • search the files of credit reference agencies TransUnion , Equifax and/or Experian (or any other credit reference agency that we may use from time to time) who will record any credit searches on your file. For further information on how credit reference agencies use your personal information, please visit: http://www.experian.co.uk/crain/index.html; and
    • disclose details of how you conduct your account to such agencies. The information will be used by other credit grantors for making credit decisions about you and the people with whom you are financially associated, for fraud prevention, money laundering prevention and occasionally for tracing debtors. Information used for these purposes will include publicly available information such as electoral roll, county court judgments, bankruptcy orders or repossessions.
  • We will share your information obtained through our application process with our KYC ID verification partner for the purposes of verifying your identity.
  • If your application is declined by our available lenders, your personal data and information may be passed to a third party lender for consideration for alternative financial products. You can control whether this happens by opting into this as part of the marketing preference options detailed on the application form. This 3rd party may carry out additional credit reference searches against you.
  • We offer additional products including warranty. Your personal data and information may be passed to our warranty partner and payment provider for the purposes of providing you with this product. You can control whether this happens when speaking to your car buying expert. This 3rd party may carry our additional credit reference searches against you.
  • All telephone calls are recorded for security, training and monitoring purposes.

We may pass on any details you provide to us to affiliates solely for analysis purposes, in accordance with our legitimate interest to assess how you interact with our site and which products and services you are interested in or choose, in order to tailor and adapt our offerings to customers and to improve customer experience. For more detail, please see the section titled 'Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting' below.

We may also send you information from selected Zuto Partners, detailed below:

Who are Zuto's partners?

  • Insurance comparison providers – this allows you to compare insurance products so you can make an informed decision.
  • Credit reference agencies – to help you keep up to date with your credit score and improve it going forward.
  • Alternative lenders – if our main panel of lenders are unable to help you, we may be able to offer you some other alternatives
  • Vehicle maintenance & roadside assistance – to enable you to review complementary products that you may wish to purchase after financing a new vehicle

What is the legal basis for us using this information?

We have appropriate legal bases on which to collect, use and share data about you.

Our lawful bases may include consent (where you have given consent), contract (where processing is necessary for the performance of a contract with you (such as processing a finance quote or application, or to maintain your account) and our own legitimate interests (such as communication to keep you updated on the status of your finance application).

Performance of a contract. We need you to give us the information you provide, and to collect information about you from Credit Reference Agencies, identity protection partners or other third parties in order for us to provide you with our services.

We cannot provide a finance quote or our services to you without collecting the information you give us because we need certain information from you to be able to share with lenders and provide you with suitable financial offers.

For other types of information (such as the information we collect based on your use of the website and information we receive from our sources about you), we process this information for the purposes of providing our services to you as agreed in our contract and for the purpose of to enable us to:

  • provide a secure website to our customers; and
  • analyse our users’ behaviour and preferences, and information collected from users' devices in order to have information required to be able to improve the services we provide to our customers and the user experience on our website.

Consent. We will always seek your consent to process certain types of information where we are legally required to do so. You have the right to withdraw or decline your consent at any time.

Legitimate interests. We may process your personal data for the purposes of our legitimate interests or for the legitimate interests of our suppliers provided that such processing does not outweigh your rights and freedoms.

It is important that you provide us with accurate information

Where we need to collect personal data by law, or under the terms of a contract we have with you and you fail to provide that data when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have or are trying to enter into with you (for example, to provide you with financing or other services). In this case, we may have to cancel such financing or service you have with us but we will notify you if this is the case at the time.

If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details will be passed to fraud prevention agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information. We and other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:

  • Checking details on applications for credit and credit related or other facilities
  • Managing credit and credit related accounts or facilities
  • Recovering debt
  • Checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance
  • Checking details of job applicants and employees

Please contact us at the address shown below if you want to receive details of the relevant fraud prevention agencies. We and other organisations may access and use, from other countries, the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies.

We may ask credit reference agencies to provide a credit scoring computation. Credit scoring uses a number of factors to work out risks involved in any application. A score is given to each factor and a total score obtained. Where automatic credit scoring computations are used, acceptance or rejection of your application will not depend only on the results of the credit scoring process.

Another person’s records will be ‘associated’ with you, by us and/or credit grantors, when: 1. You make a joint application 2. You advise us of a financial association with another person 3. The credit reference agencies have existing linked or ‘associated’ records This ‘association’ will link your records at the credit reference agencies and will be taken into account in all future applications by either or both of you. This shall continue until one of you applies to the credit reference agencies and is successful in filing a 'disassociation'. You MUST therefore ensure when making a joint application or advising us of some other financial association that you are entitled to: 1. Disclose information about your joint application 2. Authorise us to search, link or record information at a credit reference agency/ies about you and anyone referred to by you.

We may keep your information for a reasonable period for these purposes.

By providing us with your personal information you consent to our processing your personal information for the above purposes. You also consent to our transferring your information to countries or jurisdictions which do not provide the same level of data protection as the UK for the above purposes. We work with certain data processors who are based outside of both the UK and the European Economic Area and, with all of these data processors, we have an appropriate contract in place to ensure your information is protected.

Use of Cookies

Cookies are pieces of data created when you visit a website, and contain a unique, identification number. Some cookies are stored in the cookie directory of your hard drive, and do not expire at the end of your session. Cookies do not contain any personal information about you and cannot be used to identify an individual user. When you visit a website, it will recognise your device on future visits. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings to refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon as you visit our site.

Cookies do a number of different jobs such as remembering your preferences and chosen items, assisting you to improve your site experience as well as trying to ensure that the adverts or offers you see online are more relevant to you. For further details of how we use cookies on our website, or to find out about specific cookies we use on our site, please see our cookie policy here.

Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting

We use Google Analytics to track your preferences and also to identify popular sections of our Website. No personal data is included in this. Use of Google Analytics in this way, enables us to adapt the content of our Website more specifically to your needs and thereby improve what we can offer to you.

For more information about Google analytic cookies, please see Google's help pages and privacy policy: Google's Privacy Policy and Google Analytics Help pages

If you do not wish for us to collect and analyse statistical data related to your Website visit you may object to the future use of your data at any time (known as an “opt-out”).

In order to implement your objection it is necessary to install an opt-out cookie on your browser. This cookie will only indicate that you have opted out.

It is important to note, that for technical reasons, the opt-out cookie will only affect the browser from which you actively object from. If you delete the cookies in your browser or use a different end device or browser, you will need to opt out again. For further information about the use of these cookies by Google click here

Google have developed the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on for the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, dc.js).If you would like to opt out of Google Analytics, you can download and install the add-on for your web browser.

Key Stroke Recording

We may use Key Stroke Recording technology on our website. This technology records the information you fill in on our website as you complete it. If you do not proceed to submit your application we may use legitimate interests to contact you using the details you added on the application form, to see if you would like to complete your application. We will not use your contact details for any other purpose.

Don't want to be contacted?

If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us or the Zuto Partners listed above, other than information relating to the goods and/or services which you have requested information about, please DO NOT tick the relevant boxes when submitting your personal information by application, or on one of our sign up forms. Alternatively, please contact us using the details below or simply unsubscribe from any email that is sent to you by Zuto (which will be located at the bottom of the email).

How do we use your information for marketing?

Where you have agreed, we may share your information with our business partners and suppliers for marketing purposes or we may send you information about other organisations' goods and services. We may contact you by mail, telephone, email, SMS or other electronic messaging service with offers of products, services or information that may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive marketing information from us or our business partners, other than on the goods and/or services which you have requested information about, please indicate this when submitting your personal information.

How do we protect your information?

We take appropriate measures to ensure that the information disclosed to us is kept secure, accurate and up to date.

How long do we keep your information?

We will only keep your information for as long as we reasonably need it, which may include:

  • Finance Agreement and Application Form – we may store this information if necessary to ensure we comply with our regulatory reporting and legal obligations.
  • Personal details for marketing – we may store your personal information for marketing activities for the duration of your finance agreement plus 2 years. Alternatively if you have not taken out a finance product, for a period of up to 3 years following your application.
  • Credit Report and Document Proofs – We may store your credit report or proofs of ID documentation only where necessary to fulfil our regulatory responsibilities.

Other Information

You should note that if our business (or any part of it) is sold or transferred at any time, the information we hold may form part of the assets transferred although your personal information will still only be used in accordance with this policy. We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add, or remove portions from this policy at any time so you are encouraged to review this policy from time to time. We will, of course, notify you of any changes where we are required to do so.

You are entitled to the following in relation to your data:

  • Ask for a copy of the information we hold about you;
  • Request the deletion of your personal data (subject to any prevailing regulatory or statutory obligations for Zuto);
  • To have any inaccuracies in your information corrected;
  • To complain to a supervisory authority.
  • Right to restrict processing - You can ask us to stop processing your personal data in certain circumstances (for example, If you want us to establish the data's accuracy).
  • Right to data portability - You have a right to ask us to provide you with your personal data in a form that suits you, and/or to provide your information to a third party.
  • Right to object - You have a right to object to our processing of your personal data

To request any of the above, please either email customerdata@zuto.com or call us on 01625 619 944.

Complaints

If you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed us (or third parties as described above), or how your complaint has been handled, please contact us. For more details on how we handle complaints, please visit our complaints policy and procedure here.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint directly with the UK supervisory authority which is the Information Commissioner’s Office and can be contacted via the details at www.ico.org.uk.