ME Expert Ltd, the company which owns Money Expert and SimplySwitch, is committed to keeping private, within a secure environment, the data that we collect through the use of our software. We therefore aim to provide an environment in which you know that we respect your right to privacy and will do whatever we can to ensure that any information you provide to us remains private. Any such information will only be used for the purposes described below.
We have implemented policies, rules and technical measures to protect the Personal Data that we have under our control from unauthorised access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorised modification, unlawful destruction or accidental loss. All our employees, who have access to and are associated with the processing of Personal Data, are obliged to respect the confidentiality of our visitors’ Personal Data.
The Data Protection Act, and General Data Protection Regulation (effective 25 May, 2018) requires companies and individuals who process and retain information about their customers to tell the customer how the information will be used and to what purposes it will be put.
This Privacy Policy explains the steps we take to ensure information about you is kept secure and confidential. This Privacy Policy also explains what happens to the information that you supply to us. We will not use your Personal Data in any other way without first informing you.
Please take time to read this Privacy Policy carefully as, once you use our website, you will be regarded as having read and accepted this Privacy Policy. You should not use our website if you do not accept this policy, you may amend your preferences at any time by visiting our preference centre found on the bottom of this page.
We are ME Expert Ltd (company number 10120411). ME Expert complies with the Data Protection Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (as of 25 May 2018), and are registered as a Data Controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office. Money Expert has been operating as an independent comparison site since 2003 and, in this time, we have helped more than 1M customers compare gas and electricity, insurance and financial products.
If you have any queries about this Privacy Policy or any requests concerning your Personal Data, please write to our address below or email us at:
Data Protection Officer
[email protected]
ME Expert,
Huxley House,
Weyside Park,
Catteshall Lane,
Godalming,
GU7 1XE
All definitions are to be expressed in the language of the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2018. Items below are defined in a listed order, for further information on established definitions please don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected].
For further information on definition and the language of the GDPR please have a quick look at the Information Commissioner’s Office website by following this link.
ME Expert collects personal information from you through the use of the enquiry and registration forms as well as any contract applications made via our sites. We collect your Personal Data through your input, either by you filling out a form for a quote, or having one of our agents do so for you.
Depending on our services, the data we collect will include the following:
The Personal Data we collect to provide our services and enhance your experience (your “Personal Data”) is used in accordance with the terms of this privacy policy and related policies (marketing policy, cookie policy) and data protection regulations including the GDPR.
For the use of our price comparison service, we might ask you for Sensitive Personal Data when it is needed to provide you with the most accurate quotes from our partners. For this purpose, your explicit consent will be required each time such data is collected and processed in accordance with this policy.
ME Expert collects and uses your personal details to allow us to provide the service which you are seeking, and to enable us to ensure that our services are as personalised and accurate as possible. Personal Data is required for us to be able to generate accurate quotes for the products that you require, as such your information is processed under the General Data Protection Regulation wherein it is necessary to fulfil the contract formed between ME Expert and yourself. As ME Expert is licensed by the Financial Conduct Authority we are required to hold your Personal Data for a period of no more than five (5) years in accordance with FCA Regulations.
Your Personal Data is also used, with your explicit consent, for direct marketing activities: for more information, please read our marketing policy.
By using our website, and completing an enquiry form, you will be requested to give your consent to ME Expert contacting you by phone, e-mail or otherwise to inform you about products and services that may be of interest to you, this consent is to be formed through an explicit means on the quote submitted to ME Expert, or its partners.
If you provide your consent for this purpose, ME Expert will share your Personal Data with third party email service suppliers to send our customer emails.
If you do not wish to be contacted by us via email in future, please click the unsubscribe link in the email and follow the instructions. We will then cease to contact you via email to offer products and services. You may also edit your marketing preferences by emailing us at [email protected].
You may unsubscribe at any time by emailing us at [email protected], requesting that your email address is removed.
ME Expert’s price comparison service involves us passing the details you input on our website to our partners, or in other cases your information being input directly into their system, please be aware that at any point where you have been forwarded to a third party website it is your responsibility to review their applicable terms of service and privacy policy. This enables our partners to provide us with quotations on the products and services that you have requested. If you do decide to enter into a contract with one of our partners, then the information which we have supplied to them (as well as any further information requested by them to enable to them to complete the contract) will be held by the partner. You are therefore advised to read the partners privacy policy before entering into any contract with them.
We may also share your Personal Data with other professional advisers, financial organisations and advisers, sponsors and advertisers. With respect to these partners ME Expert is a Data Controller for any data input into the MoneyExpert or Simply Switch websites. At times you may be linked to the website of the party offering the service to you to complete an application and, in these instances, ME Expert is to be a Joint Data Controller unless otherwise stated. Such parties may contact you by phone, e-mail or otherwise to inform you about any products and services that may be of interest to you, subject to your consent.
If your enquiry regards Mortgage advice, we will arrange for one of our partners to contact you by phone. In some circumstances, we may arrange for an alternative Mortgage Adviser to contact you. In these cases, we will notify you of the name of the adviser and request your permission for your details to be sent to them before any contact is made.
Further information about who we share your information with can be found in our marketing policy.
MoneyExpert may also disclose your Personal Data to government bodies and regulators where required to do so by law, or where necessary for ME Expert to fulfil our regulatory obligations.
Protecting your information is one of our top priorities, we use a world leading hosting service, who securely hold all of your data, and even host our web services in London. Any individual with access to your data goes through a rigorous reference and disbarring services check, and no hard copies of Personal Data are created at any point. All data transfer is secured using modern encryption technologies.
ME Expert is exclusively a Data Controller with respect to all Personal Data entered into our websites directly. In the event that this information is used by a consumer to form a contract or acquire a service from a party through our services it is often the case that ME Expert will be a Data Controller and maintain a Joint-Controller relationship with this third party, with each entity controlling the Personal Data collected, and ME Expert acting as a Data Processor with respect to the copy provided to the third party. This information is only copied and provided to such a third party in order for a consumer to form contract for services with the third party, and only when explicit consent to do so has been provided by the consumer.
Frequently a consumer may be forwarded to an application hosted directly by the party operating the service applied for, in these instances ME Expert is to be a Data Processor, and any data provided to ME Expert from this party will only be used for the purposes explicitly stated at the time of application for their service.
ME Expert may at times transfer your Personal Data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA). We will only do so when we have utilised means to ensure the level of data protection is equivalent to the level afforded in the UK by law, for example when transferred by use of a data-transfer agreement incorporating standard model protection clauses and ensuring that the party receiving the Personal Data has sufficient security processes in place.
Phone calls to ME Expert may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes, or for the formation of a verbal contract with which a service may be performed. The required consent for this purpose will be obtained in an explicit manner, and the information captured in such a recording may be processed only for the reasons stated.
Please note that we or our business partners may make, or cause searches to be made, at a credit reference agency, or agencies. You should be aware that such searches may be shown in any other searches that are made in connection with credit applications made by yourself or other members of your household. The disclosure of multiple searches may affect your credit profile and your ability to obtain credit.
You have the right to know what Personal Data we hold about you, to whom it has been disclosed, to correct any information which may be incorrect, and to be forgotten, you are under no contractual obligation to complete any service application on the ME Expert or Simply Switch website.
Please write to the address above, confirming that you are making a request for your Personal Data under the General Data Protection Regulation, or simply email [email protected].
ME Expert aims to comply with requests for access to Personal Data as quickly as possible, but within 30 days. Please understand that this request is regularly formed at no cost to yourself; however, should the request manifest unfounded or excessive ME Expert Ltd may charge a reasonable fee. You also acknowledge that ME Expert Ltd retains the right to refuse such a request as dictated solely within the body of the General Data Protection Regulation. This data will be erased or delivered to you as per your request, and to the minimum standard dictated by law, a copy of the Data Subject Access Request will be stored in a registry, and held for a minimum of 5 years from the date on which the request is submitted, you may also object the processing of Personal Data on a number of levels including direct marketing and market profiling.
Please be aware that automated decision-making processes may be utilised to better present options when you request a quote for services, this is done to eliminate incompatible services and stream line the process, it is done without bias, and is meant to assist customers in their decision making only.
If any information we hold is inaccurate, we will make the necessary amendments and confirm to you have that these have been made.
We may be required to restrict the processing of Personal Data in the following circumstances:
Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, 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 Personal Data to these websites.
You do have the right to object to our processing of your Personal Data including where we have legitimate interests or where we use your information to carry out profiling to our customer demographics and market research.
You have the right to raise a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, details on how to do so are found on the ICO website, you can reach them by following this link.
We obtain non-personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. These technologies help us analyse web traffic and lets us know when you visit a particular web page.
We only use cookies and similar technologies for:
Cookies allow web applications to respond to you as an individual. The web application can tailor its operations to your needs, likes and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.
A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us. We know that people have concerns about cookies, but we believe that the benefit we both gain from their proper use is worthwhile. You may change your web browser settings to notify you of cookie placement requests or decline cookies by default.
For more information about how we use cookies, please read our cookie policy.
We may need to amend the Privacy Policy from time to time. Any such amendment will take effect as soon as it is posted on the website. You are therefore encouraged to familiarise yourself with the Privacy Policy on a regular basis.