BMW GROUP UK Privacy Policy 

These are the main ways we collect your information:

• If you contact us directly via our websites or via our customer hotlines to request information about our products and services
• If you buy a product or service directly from us (e.g. lifestyle shops)
• If you reply to our direct marketing campaigns (e.g. filling out a response card)
• If your contact details are transferred from Partners or other third parties
• If other BMW Group legal entities or business Partners transfer your personal data to us
• If we acquired your personal data from other sources, for example social media sites
• When you apply for finance from us or from a Partner.

If you give information on behalf of someone else you must ensure that you have their permission and that they have been provided with this Privacy Policy before doing so.

If you are under 16 please do not provide us with any of your information unless you have the permission of your parent or guardian.

Please help us to keep your information up to date by informing us of any changes to your contact details or privacy preferences. You may change or review your preferences by clicking here.

Use of personal information under UK data protection laws must be justified under one of a number of legal grounds and we are required to set out the grounds in respect of each use in this policy. An explanation of the scope of the grounds available can be found here.

The main uses of your information are:

Customer Support and Marketing, to respond to enquiries and complaints and to bring you news and offers.

• ALPHERA may use your personal data for customer care and for personalised communications of BMW Group product and service information, with your consent where necessary. For these purposes, ALPHERA may transmit this data to authorised dealerships and brokers.  
  
  In order to ensure that you receive relevant and personalised communications, we will use some of your data to create an individual customer profile and we may share your personal data with our authorised Partners. This may include data you have provided to these companies, or which is generated by your use of our products, for example contact details, preferences, customer history, vehicle data, app usage and online behaviour.
  
  ALPHERA may pass on your agreement details (term, monthly payment, rate, mileage, final payment, and agreement number and vehicle details) to the Partners who sold your vehicle to you to discuss your end of contract options, and if you have consented, we can discuss any future financing with ALPHERA.

Vehicle Finance – to assess your eligibility for finance to comply with contractual obligations and for legitimate interests. For example, to ensure that the services function correctly, to prevent fraud and money laundering and to ensure that your records are accurate and up to date.

When you apply for finance from ALPHERA you must provide certain personal information. We will share the information with Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention Agencies to help us decide whether to offer you finance. Using information about you in this way is necessary for us to make this decision and if you do not provide it to us we may not be able to offer you finance. Your information will be used by us and these agencies as follows:

• ALPHERA will check records about you and others held by them and by Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention agencies, for example to assess your application for credit and verify identities to prevent and detect crime and money laundering. The Credit Reference Agencies will place a search footprint on your credit file that may be seen by other lenders. They will supply public information (for example information held on the electoral register) as well as shared credit and fraud prevention information. The Fraud Prevention Agencies will use your personal information to prevent fraud and money-laundering and to verify your identity.
• If you are making a joint application or if you advise us of a director or that you have a spouse or financial associate, they will link your records together so you must be sure that you have their agreement to disclose information about them. Credit Reference Agencies also link your records together and these links will remain on your and their files until such a time as you, a director or your partner successfully files for a disassociation with the Credit Reference Agencies to break that link.
• If you give us false or inaccurate information or we suspect or identify fraud, we will record this and may also pass on the information to Fraud Prevention Agencies and other organisations involved in crime prevention. Law enforcement agencies may also access and use this information. If fraud is detected, you could be refused certain services, finance or employment.
• ALPHERA and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by Fraud Prevention Agencies, which may be publicly-available sources.
• Your data may also be used for other purposes for which you give your permission or, in limited circumstances, when required by law or where permitted under the terms of relevant data protection and privacy law.

If you would like full details about how your information will be used by us, Credit Reference Agencies and Fraud Prevention Agencies, including details of your rights in relation to your information, or you would like to obtain contact details of the Credit Reference Agencies, please: visit www.experian.co.uk/crain and www.transunion.co.uk/crain and Fraud Prevention Agencies please: visit www.cifas.org.uk/fpn and www.nhunter.co.uk  

ALPHERA FS uses the following credit reference agencies and they can be contacted in the following ways:

• Experian.  0344 481 0800; Experian, PO Box 8000, Nottingham, NG80 7WF
• TransUnion 0330 024 7574  TransUnion Information Group, One Park Lane, Leeds, West Yorkshire LS3 1EP

ALPHERA FS uses the following Fraud Prevention Agencies and they can be contacted in the following ways:

• National Hunter Limited. www.nhunter.co.uk; National Hunter, PO Box 4744, Stone, ST15 9FE.
• CIFAS.  0330 100 0180.  Cifas, 6th Floor, Lynton House, 7-12 Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9LT.

ALPHERA uses automated decision-making tools to help it to decide whether to offer you finance. Based on the information you provide us, we will compare this against different metrics to determine whether you meet the eligibility criteria for finance or to determine whether you will be able to make repayments on a vehicle without difficulty. If your application for finance is rejected using automated means alone, you will be given the opportunity to ask for the decision to be reviewed manually. This does not mean that the decision will be changed.

ALPHERA does not share credit and anti-fraud information with Partners, BMW Holdings or BMW AG.

ALPHERA will also use your personal information to manage its contractual obligations and to enforce its rights under the finance agreement. For example, if you fall into arrears or break any other term of the agreement, ALPHERA may pass on your details to a debt collection agency for the purpose of collecting the debt or to a vehicle recovery agent to repossess the vehicle or to solicitors to issue court proceedings against you. BMW FS may review publicly available information to trace your whereabouts. For full details of how BMW FS processes your personal information please refer to the “Use of Your Information” clause in your finance agreement.

Compliance with legal requests for your information – to comply with our legal obligations to law enforcement, regulators and the court service

We may be legally required to provide your information to law enforcement agencies, regulators, courts and third party litigants in connection with civil or criminal proceedings or investigations anywhere in the world. Where permitted, we will direct any such request to you or we may notify you before responding unless to do so would prejudice the prevention or detection of a crime.

The use of your information set out above is permitted under UK data protection law on the basis of these principal legal grounds:

• Where you have consented to the use you will have been presented with a consent form in relation to any such use and may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us through the ALPHERA Customer Information Centre or
  • on 0370 5050 115 (calls are free of charge plus your phone company's access charge)
  • or sending an email to customer.services@alpherafs.co.uk
  • or by writing to us at:
     

    ALPHERA Customer Information Centre
    Adwick Park
    Swinton
    Rotherham
    S63 5NA

    ​

• Where necessary to enter into or perform our contract with you
• Where we need to use it to comply with our legal obligations
• Where necessary in order to protect your or someone else’s vital interests (in life threatening situations, such as following an accident)
• Where we use it to achieve a legitimate interest and our reasons for using it outweigh any prejudice to your data protection rights (our legitimate interests include promoting the BMW Group business and tailoring news and offers to your profile, research and development of vehicle related products and services, assessing your credit-worthiness, detecting fraud and criminal activities).

There may be uses that are permitted on the basis of other grounds; where this is the case we will use reasonable endeavours to identify the ground and communicate it you as soon as possible after becoming aware of the new basis.

Third parties to whom we may transfer your data

Personal information which we collect may be transferred to or accessed by third parties on our behalf, with your consent where necessary.

The types of third parties apart from the BMW companies already stated are:

• Marketing and research companies who run and manage marketing and research campaigns
• Event companies who run and manage sponsored events
• ALPHERA’s Customer Interaction Centre who provide customer support
• Partners who provide services to you
• IT providers who provide us systems and services for customer support
• Card Payment Services providers who operate payment platforms
• Logistics and courier companies who transport our products to you
• Companies who provide transport to you or offer you mobility services (e.g. chauffeurs)
• Law firms who provide legal advice to us (e.g. where there is a customer dispute).

This is only shared in a secure manner, using a consistent security protocol. When we share with other parties we ensure that they only use your personal data for the purpose it was collected and do not allow them to abuse this agreement.

BMW Group UK may also transfer your personal information to a third party without your consent if it is in its legitimate interest or if there is a contractual obligation to do so. For example, ALPHERA may pass on your personal details to a third party debt recovery agent if you fail to make the payments due under your finance agreement or to a vehicle recovery agent to collect the vehicle at the end of your finance agreement. For full details of how ALPHERA uses and shares your personal information please refer to the “Use of Your Information” clause in the finance agreement.

We retain your information only as long as is necessary and only for the purpose for which we obtained them. We restrict access to your information to only those persons who need to use it for the relevant purpose.

Our retention periods are based on business needs and your information that is no longer needed is either irreversibly anonymised or destroyed securely.

Use for end of contract options:

We retain your personal information for as long as is necessary, but only for the relevant purpose that we collected it for. 

Use to perform a contract:

In relation to your information used to perform any contractual obligation with you, we may retain that data whilst the contract remains in force plus six years to deal with any queries or claims thereafter.

Where claims are contemplated:

In relation to any information where we reasonably believe it will be necessary to defend or prosecute or make a claim against you, us or a third party, we may retain that data for as long as that claim could be pursued.

You can change your marketing privacy preferences, or withdraw your consent in relation to how BMW UK, BMW FS or BMW AG uses your personal information in one of the following ways:

• You are able to request information about your data stored at BMW UK as well as request the correction, deletion or restriction of your personal data for analytics and/or marketing use.
• By contacting the BMW Customer Information Centre on 0800 561 0666*
• Or by sending an email to customer.services@alpherafs.co.uk
• Or by writing to us at:
• ALPHERA Customer Information Centre
  Adwick Park
  Swinton
  Rotherham
  S63 5NA

*Calls are free of charge plus your phone company's access charge.

LEVEL 3: Reference text linked in section 2:

If you have questions in relation to our use of your personal information you should contact the relevant Data Privacy Officer:

BMW Financial Services (GB) Ltd trading as ALPHERA Financial Services
Data Protection Officer
DataPrivacyOfficer@bmwfin.com
 

BMW (UK) Holdings Ltd
Data Privacy Officer
DataPrivacyOfficer@bmw.co.uk