Legal & documents

This Privacy Policy is effective from 2025-02-28.

BPCE Equipment Solutions UK Limited (formerly known as Societe Generale Equipment Finance Limited) (“BPCE Equipment Solutions” / « we” / “our” / “us”) is committed to protecting your personal information and complying with all applicable legislation in relation to data protection.

In the course of providing our products and services to you, we will process your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, share and use personal information about you and how you can exercise your privacy rights.

The data controller of your personal information is BPCE Equipment Solutions UK Limited, a limited liability company with registered address at Parkshot House, 5 Kew Road, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 2PR and company registration number 03596854 and which is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office with registration number Z4985712.

BPCE Equipment Solutions UK Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (reference number 717751).

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information, then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

• WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND WHY

• WHEN WE RECORD COMMUNICATIONS

• WHO WE SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH

• LEGAL BASIS FOR PROCESSING PERSONAL INFORMATION

• INTERNATIONAL DATA TRANSFERS

• YOUR DATA PROTECTION RIGHTS

• AUTOMATED DECISIONS

• DATA RETENTION

• OUR COMMITMENT TO PROTECT AND MAINTAIN THE SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

• UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY POLICY

• HOW TO CONTACT US

We, and persons acting on our behalf, may record and/or monitor communications (including telephone conversations over landlines and mobile phones, emails, fax and other electronic communications) between you and us, and between you and our employees, agents, consultants, contractors or other personnel and other people (such as employees of our clients). We only do this to the extent permitted by applicable law for legitimate business purposes or other purposes permitted by law. We collect your personal information for the following purposes:

• recording facts;
• complying with applicable law and regulation;
• complying with internal procedures and policies;
• facilitating administration and support;
• assisting with security, crime prevention and fraud purposes; and
• investigating or detecting unauthorised use, wrongful use or abuse of our services, systems or other materials.

We do not, and will not, sell, rent or trade your personal information.   Your personal information will not be used by these third parties to market their own products and services to you.  They may only send you marketing communications about their own products and services, if they have your consent, or otherwise where the law permits them to do so.

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of recipients for the purposes explained below:

• to our suppliers and partners who are responsible for providing:
  • recording facts;
  • complying with applicable law and regulation;
  • complying with internal procedures and policies;
  • facilitating administration and support;
  • assisting with security, crime prevention and fraud purposes; and
  • investigating or detecting unauthorised use, wrongful use or abuse of our services, systems or other materials.
• to Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) and Fraud Prevention Agencies (FPAs) to help us make the best possible assessment of your financial situation before we decide whether we can provide you with products and services.  We are also required to provide information to CRAs and FPAs so that they can update the information which they hold about you and which they may share with other lenders like us.  For more information about the use of your personal information by CRAs and FPAs, please refer to the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) which can be found at http://www.experian.co.uk/crain/index.html
• to other financial institutions, anti-money laundering check providers and regulatory bodies with whom information is shared for money laundering checks, credit risk reduction and other fraud and crime prevention purposes;
• to our group companies who process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Policy.
• to dealers, suppliers, manufacturers
  • to enable us and them to perform, manage and administer our respective contractual relationships with you, including so we, and they, can report on portfolio management in relation to equipment supplied directly or indirectly by them to you, and which is on finance, with us;
  • to assist us in enforcing our rights under our finance agreement with you, if we need to;
  • to assist us with complaints handling (if applicable); and
  • we may also share information about our relationship with you (for example, that your current finance agreement is coming to an end and you may be interested in hearing about a new finance product that we can offer to you in conjunction with offers these third parties may have available).
• to our Insurer and our Insurance administrator
  • to enable us to manage and administer our assets on finance with you, and to assist us in enforcing our rights under the finance agreement in respect of those asset, if we need to.
• to brokers,
  •  to assist you with complaints, queries or settlement quotes; and
  • to enable us to manage and administer our finance agreement with you, and to assist us in enforcing our rights under the agreement, if we need to.
• to a prospective buyer (and its agents and advisers) in the event we intend to sell any part of our business or its assets or if substantially all of our assets are acquired by a third party, in which case your personal information could form part of one of the assets we sell, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy;
• to any national and/or international regulatory, enforcement body, government agency or court where we believe disclosure is necessary (i) as a matter of applicable law or regulation (including where we are required by law to provide information to organisations such as HMRC), (ii) to exercise, establish or defend our legal rights, or (iii) to protect your vital interests or those of any other person; and
• to any other person where you have consented to the disclosure or where we are permitted to do so by law.

Our legal basis for collecting and using your personal information will depend on the personal information concerned and the specific context in which we collect it.  In respect of the personal information and the purposes for which we may process your personal information which are set out in this Privacy Policy, we have confirmed the legal basis upon which we collect and process your personal information.

If we ask you to provide personal information to comply with a legal requirement or to perform a contract with you, we will make this clear at the relevant time and advise you whether the provision of your personal information is mandatory or not (as well as of the possible consequences if you do not provide your personal information).

Similarly, if we collect and use your personal information in reliance on our legitimate interests (or those of any third party), we will make clear to you at the relevant time what those legitimate interests are.

If you have questions about or need further information concerning the legal basis on which we collect and use your personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.

We store your personal data on our servers located in the EEA and/or the UK.

We also use service providers who are located outside the European Economic Area to process your personal to provide services to us.  Where we transfer your personal data to an organisation in a country or territory outside the European Economic Area, we will ensure that it is protected in a manner that is consistent with how your personal data is protected by us in the EEA and/or UK.

We will do this by ensuring:

• the country or organisation that we send your personal data to, has an ‘adequacy decision’ which determinates that the country or organisation offers a comparable level of protection for personal data as the EEA/UK; or
• the recipient has signed a contract based on “standard contractual clauses” approved by the European Commission or similar clauses provided by the relevant data protection authority (in the UK, this is the Information Commissioners Office), obliging them to protect your personal data.

We may also disclose personal data, upon request, to the official bodies and administrative or judicial authorities of a country, located within or outside the EEA or UK, particularly in the context of the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.   If you would like more information about the safeguards we have in place, please get in touch with us using the details in the ‘How to Contact Us’ section below.

You have the following data protection rights:

• If you wish to access, correct, update or request deletion of your personal information, you can do so at any time by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• In addition, you can object to processing of your personal information, ask us to restrict processing of your personal information or request portability of your personal information. Again, you can exercise these rights by contacting us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• You have the right to opt-out of marketing communications we send to you at any time.  We will explain how you can exercise this right, in the marketing emails that we send to you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us” heading below.
• Similarly, if we have collected and processed your personal information with your consent, then you can withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent will not affect the lawfulness of any processing we conducted prior to your withdrawal, nor will it affect processing of your personal information conducted in reliance on lawful processing grounds other than consent.
• You have the right to complain to a data protection authority about our collection and use of your personal information. For more information, please contact your local data protection authority:

The Information Commissioner’s Office

Water Lane,
Wycliffe House,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire,
SK9 5AF

Tel:    0303 123 1113
E-mail:  international.team@ico.org.uk
Website:  https://ico.org.uk

We respond to all requests we receive from individuals wishing to exercise their data protection rights in accordance with applicable data protection laws.

We may have used an automated credit decision system to assess your application for finance, and where this is the case, this means that our decision on whether or not to approve your application for finance is made automatically on the basis of a computer determination which uses software algorithms without manual review by our staff.  We have implemented measures to safeguard your rights and interests when we use our credit decision including the right to manual intervention or review or to have your concerns heard and investigated if required.   If your application for finance is declined, you can ask to have the decision manually reviewed by us by getting in touch with us using the details in the ‘How to Contact Us’ section below.

We retain personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate need to do so (for example, to provide you with a product or service you have requested us to provide or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).

When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information, we will either delete or anonymise it or, if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

As a member of a responsible banking Group, we are committed to protect and maintain the security of your personal information against any unauthorised attempt to use it, or disclose it, and against any disclosure that does not comply with our data protection commitments or applicable data protection law.

The protection and responsible use of all personal data is central to our activities.  We have policies, procedures and tools in place to rigorously secure our operations and information systems.

We may change or update this Privacy Policy in order to maintain our compliance with applicable law and regulation or following an update to our internal practices. When we update our Privacy Policy, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make.

If you would like to contact us in relation to this Privacy Policy, or anything else in connection with the personal information we collect about you, please contact us using the details set out below.

Email:  compliance-uk-es@groupebpce.com

Post:  Pauline Ward
Head of Compliance & MLRO
BPCE Equipment Solutions UK Limited
Parkshot House,
5 Kew Road,
Richmond,
Surrey TW9 2PR

Telephone:  020 8629 8400

BPCE Equipment Solutions UK is committed to providing a high standard of service to every customer, every time. We do recognise however, that occasionally we will not live up to your expectations or our promises.

If you have a complaint about any aspect of our service then please contact us by telephone, in person, in writing, either by post or e-mail, at:

Customer Services – Complaints Team
BPCE Equipment Solutions UK
Parkshot House
5 Kew Road
Richmond
Surrey TW9 2PR
Telephone: 020 8973 2089
E-Mail:  complaints@sgef.co.uk

To help us investigate and resolve the problem as quickly as possible, please provide the following information: 

• Your name and address, telephone number and your agreement number
• A clear description of your concern or complaint
• Details of what you would like Societe Generale Equipment Finance Ltd to do to put it right
• Copies of any relevant documents

It is our intention to try to resolve your complaint immediately and with the minimum of inconvenience to you. We will therefore try to obtain as much information as possible from you in order to really understand what the problem is and what we can do to put it right. If the complaint is then resolved by the close of the third business day following receipt of your complaint we will send you a Summary Resolution Communication.  However sometimes it is not possible to resolve the problem immediately.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint by the close of the third business the day after we received your complaint, we will send you a written Acknowledgement Letter and provide you with a copy of these procedures.

Following the written Acknowledgment Letter and within eight (8) weeks from the receipt of your initial complaint; we will continue to investigate and will either:

• (a) send you a written update on what we are doing, with details of who is handling the complaint;
• (b) send you a letter setting out our final response to your complaint and provide details of how to refer your complaint to theFinancial Ombudsman Service (FOS) (if applicable), in the event you remain dissatisfied with our response.

If we have been unable to resolve you complaint within the eight week (8) period we will send you a letter explaining why we have been unable to form a response, by what date we intend to respond to you and informing you of your rights (if applicable) to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS).

It is our aim to resolve all complaints as quickly as possible and to the complete satisfaction of our customers. If for whatever reason you are not satisfied with the outcome of your complaint, you should get in touch directly with the person who handled your complaint. They will then agree with you what the next steps are.

If you are an Eligible Complainant, you have the right to refer your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), a body set up to independently review any eligible complaints made by personal customers or small business customers, which we are unable to resolve satisfactorily. If this is the case we should have already sent you a copy of the FOS explanatory leaflet ‘Your Complaint and the Ombudsman’ but if you require a further copy we would be happy to provide this together with confirmation of your eligibility to complain to the FOS. If you wish to refer a complaint to the FOS you should do so within six months of our summary resolution communication or our final response.

You can contact the Financial Ombudsman Service directly at:

E-mail: complaint.info@financial-ombudsman.org.uk

Website: www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk

How to Complain: https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/consumer/complaints.htm

Consumer Helpline:
Monday to Friday – 8am to 8pm / Saturday – 9am to 1pm
0800 023 4567 calls to this number are now free on mobile phones and landlines
0300 123 9 123 calls to this number cost no more than calls to 01 and 02 numbers

Postal Address:
The Financial Ombudsman Service
Exchange Tower
London
E14 9SR

We are also members of the Finance & Leasing Association (FLA) and use its Business Finance Code.