17. FINANCE AND LEASING BY MERCEDES-BENZ FINANCIAL SERVICES UK LTD (MBFS)
Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Limited Privacy Notice
Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Ltd (MBFS) is a subsidiary company of Mercedes-Benz AG, owners of the Mercedes-Benz brand. MBFS works with other subsidiary companies which includes our Agent partners and Dealer Network in the UK to provide finance, leasing and related services to Mercedes-Benz and smart customers.
How your Personal Information is used
MBFS takes your privacy seriously. Unless you have agreed otherwise, your personal information will only be used to provide the financial services you have requested from us and to administer your agreement.
Your details will be shared with third parties who include our agents, credit reference and fraud agencies, group companies and the Mercedes-Benz Agent / Dealer supplying the vehicle.
Details may be transferred out of the European Economic Area and will at all times be held securely and handled with the utmost care. Your details will be stored, but will not be retained longer than necessary. Your personal data is protected by legal rights which are detailed later in this document.
MBFS may disclose the data provided by or about you to a third party in connection with our corporate finance purposes, which may include granting such third parties the right to receive amounts you owe us.
For the purposes of (further) development and reporting, the data from past credit checks over the last three months before the final credit decision is processed in pseudonymous form. The credit checks that are performed for corporate customers during the term of the agreement in order to review or adjust the line of credit is also processed in pseudonymous form for this purpose. During the term of the financing agreement, for the purposes of (further) developing risk instruments and reporting, pseudonymous information about your payment history will be processed. This information on your actual payment history during the term of the agreement will be paired with the data from the credit checks
Your Eligibility for Credit
In order to process your eligibility check, we will perform credit and identity checks with one or more Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs). We will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will provide us with information about you.
MBFS uses CRAs to help make its lending decisions and to identify its customers by supplying public and shared credit information. Public information includes: information from the electoral register to help confirm names and addresses, information on County Court Judgments, Scottish Decrees, Bankruptcies, Individual Voluntary Arrangements and Administration Orders. Shared credit information includes information relating to both your current financial situation and history, in addition to information used for the purposes of fraud prevention.
We will use this information to:
Assess your creditworthiness, such as assessing how you have maintained previous and current credit commitments; and
Trace you at your supplied address(es) using publicly available information.
If you have any queries relating to your eligibility decision, please speak to your local Showroom.
You can also contact the Credit Reference Agency directly for a copy of your statutory credit report; they may charge a fee for this. Our information provider is :
Equifax Ltd
Customer Service Centre
PO Box 10036
Leicester
LE3 4FS
www.equifax.co.uk
Your Application for Credit
In order to process your application, we will perform credit and identity checks with one or more Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs). We may also make periodic searches at CRAs to manage your agreement with us.
We will supply your personal information to CRAs and they will provide us with information about you. CRAs will supply public (such as the electoral register) and shared credit information. This will include information relating to both your financial situation and history in addition to information used for the purposes of fraud prevention.
We will use this information to:
Assess your creditworthiness and determine whether you can afford to take the vehicle
Verify the accuracy of the data you have provided to us
Prevent criminal activity, fraud and money laundering
Manage your account(s)
Trace and recover debts
Ensure any offers provided to you are appropriate to your circumstances.
We will continue to exchange information about you with CRAs while you have a relationship with us. We will also inform the CRAs about your settled accounts. If you borrow and do not repay in full and on time, CRAs will record the outstanding debt. This information may be supplied to other organisations by CRAs.
When CRAs receive a search from us, they will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders.
If you are making a joint application, or inform us that you have a spouse, partner or financial associate, we will link your records together. Please ensure you discuss this with the relevant parties, and share this information with them, before lodging the credit application. CRAs will also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such time as you or any other individual involved in a joint application successfully files for a disassociation with the CRAs.
If you are making this application as a partner in a firm or as the director of a limited company, MBFS may also carry out searches with credit reference and/or fraud prevention agencies in respect of other partners and directors. By making this application you warrant that your partners or directors understand that MBFS will be carrying out such searches and using their personal information.
The identities of the CRAs, their role also as fraud prevention agencies, the data they hold, the ways in which they use and share personal information, data retention periods and your data protection rights with the CRAs are explained in more detail in the Credit Reference Agency Information Notices (CRAIN). CRAIN is accessible from each of the three CRAs listed below:
Call Creditwww.callcredit.co.uk/crain
Equifaxwww.equifax.co.uk/crain
Experianwww.experian.co.uk/crain
The personal information we have collected from you will also be shared with fraud prevention agencies. It will be used to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity. These checks require us to process your personal data. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment. The Fraud prevention agencies used are:
CIFAS – https://www.cifas.org.uk/contact-us
National Hunter - https://nhunter.co.uk/contact-us/The personal data provided will be used to prevent fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity. This includes but is not limited to your name, address, date of birth, contact details, financial information, employment details, device identifiers including IP address and vehicle details. We, and fraud prevention agencies may also enable law enforcement agencies to access and use your personal data to detect, investigate and prevent crime.
We process your personal data because we have a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, and to verify your identity to protect our business, and to comply with the law. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of our provision of financial services.
Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time, and if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, your data can be held for up to six years.
Data is also shared with Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG for credit checking. The processors used by /Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG can only process date for us and not for their own purposes, they are required to comply with the standards of the Mercedes-Benz Group
Automated Decisions
As part of the processing of your personal data, decisions may be made by automated means. This means we may automatically decide that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk if our processing reveals your behaviour to be consistent with that of known fraudsters or money launderers, or is inconsistent with your previous submissions, or you appear to have deliberately hidden your true identity.
Consequences of Processing
If we, or a fraud prevention agency, determine that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the financial services you have requested, or we may cease to provide existing services to you.
A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by fraud prevention agencies, and may result in others refusing to provide services, finance or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us on the details below.
Transfer of Data
Whenever fraud prevention agencies transfer your personal data outside of the European Economic Area, they impose contractual obligations on the recipients of that data. This protects your personal data to the standard required in the European Economic Area. They may also require the recipient to subscribe to 'international frameworks' intended to enable secure data sharing.
Your Legal Rights
Your personal data is protected by legal rights which include your rights to object to us processing your personal data, and to request that your personal data is erased or corrected. You may request access to your personal data. To exercise your data protection rights, please contact us using the contact details below. You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office which regulates the processing of personal data. Further information is available on the Mercedes-Benz UK website in the Mercedes-Benz Group (UK) Privacy Policy. You may also contact the Data Protection Officer, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services UK Ltd, Tongwell, Milton Keynes MK15 8BA. Tel: to 0808 208 1701 or email MBFSUK.DPA@Mercedes-Benz.com