Protecting Your Privacy

Student Loans Company Limited, a company incorporated in England and Wales (Company number 02401034) whose registered office is at 21 St Thomas Street, Bristol BS1 6JS ("We") are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

We are a limited company established to administer the student loans scheme according to the legislation for the purpose of implementing a student loan scheme in the United Kingdom being the Education (Student Loans) Act 1990, the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, and regulations made thereunder (the “Student Loans Scheme”).

This policy (together with our terms of use and any other documents referred to on it) sets out the basis on which any information we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be collected, processed, used and disclosed by us.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding such information and how we will treat it.

By accessing our site you agree that we can collect, process, use and disclose any information we collect from you, or that you provide to us, in accordance with this privacy policy.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 (the “Act”) we are the data controller in respect of such information. We are registered as a data controller in the United Kingdom under the Data Protection Act 1998. In respect of any personal data contained within such information we will act in accordance with legislation in force with regard to the processing of such personal data.

Our nominated representative for the purpose of the Act is Christine McConnell.

1. Information we may collect from you

We may collect, process, use and disclose the following information:

• Information that you provide by filling in forms on our site.
• Information provided at the time of registering to use our site.
• Information provided when you report a problem with our site.
• If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
• We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
• Details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes, fraud prevention purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.
• Any information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, concerning your obligations in respect of debts owed by you to us under any pre-existing agreement you have with us for the provision of financial support under the Student Loans Scheme (your “Student Loans Account”).
• Any information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, concerning the making of repayments in relation to your Student Loans Account.
• Any other information that we collect from you, or which you provide to us, in respect of your application to and participation in the Student Loans Scheme.

2. IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our service providers. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. Cookies are temporary internet files which contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive. Our cookie files only remain valid when you have an active session with our site. Our cookie files expire when you log out of our site and / or close your browser. Our cookie files contain no information personal to you and are not used to track your usage or return visits to our site. Our cookie files help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

• To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.
• To improve your ease of use of our site.
• To speed up your use of our site.

3. Transmission and storage of information

The information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area ("EEA"). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our service providers. Such staff and service providers maybe engaged in, among other things, the administration of the Student Loans Scheme, the collection of repayments made by you in relation to your Student Loans Account and the provision of support services to us. By accessing our site, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing.

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that the information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

All personal data you provide to us is stored on our secure servers or those of our service providers and any repayment transactions will be encrypted.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect any personal data contained within information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, we cannot guarantee the security of such personal data during its transmission to our site. Accordingly, any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received any personal data contained within information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access. We will oblige our service providers in a similar manner.

4. Passwords

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a login and / or password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this login and / or password confidential. We ask you not to share this login and / or password with anyone.

5. Use and disclosure of information

We will process, use and disclose information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, in the following ways:

• To help provide services to you.
• To administer your participation in the Student Loans Scheme.
• Where authorised by you, to arrange for the collection of repayments made by you in relation to your Student Loans Account.
• To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
• To provide you with information on services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you.
• To carry out our obligations and exercise our rights arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
• To allow you to participate in interactive features of our service, when you choose to do so.
• To notify you about changes to our service.

If you make repayments in relation to your Student Loans Account using our site we will disclose information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, to Bibit Global Payment Services, P.O. Box 70, 3980 CB Bunnick, the Netherlands and Stichting Trusted Third Party Bibit Internet Payments, a foundation registered under Dutch law at the Chamber of Commerce in Utrecht under number NL30160208 (hereinafter jointly referred to as “Bibit”). Bibit provide repayment collection services to us. Bibit act as data processor on our behalf in this respect. Bibit shall process the information you provide on our behalf only to process the collection of funds related to your repayment instruction. Bibit will not pass the information you provide to any third party other than the financial institution managing the chosen repayment method on your behalf. For further information in this respect you are recommended to examine the privacy policy of Bibit.

We may disclose any information collected from you, or that you provide to us, to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 736 of the UK Companies Act 1985.

We may disclose information collected from you, or that you provide to us, to third parties:

• In the event that the administration of the Student Loans Scheme or any part thereof or any of the obligations owed to us thereunder are transferred to a third party, in which case we may disclose information collected from you, or that you provide to us, to that third party.
• If we are under a duty to disclose or share information collected from you, or that you provide to us, in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our organisation, other participants in the Student Loans Scheme, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection, crime prevention and credit risk reduction.

6. Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process any personal data contained within the information that we collect from you, or that you provide to us, for marketing purposes.

We will usually inform you (before such collection or provision) if we intend to use your personal data for such purposes or if we intend to disclose your personal data to any third party for such purposes.

[You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the forms we use to collect such personal data. You can also exercise the right at any time by contacting us at Student_Loan_Repayments@slc.co.uk.]

7. Third party websites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from or automatically forward you onto the websites of related organisations, our service providers and other third parties.

Please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any information to these websites.

8. Access to information

The Act gives you the right to access personal data we hold about you.

Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act.

Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the personal data we hold about you.

9. Corrections

Should you discover that we are holding information relating to you which is inaccurate, please notify us as soon as possible. We will then correct such information, and notify any third parties to whom such information may have been disclosed.

10. Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by e-mail.

11. Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to Student_Loan_Repayments@slc.co.uk.