Privacy Policy

Last updated: 27/09/2023

We recognise and respect the importance of protecting the privacy of visitors to our website. This privacy policy explains what information we collect about you through our website, how we use that information and the procedures that we have in place to safeguard your privacy.

We reserve the right to amend or modify this privacy statement at any time and in response to changes in applicable law. If we change our privacy policy we will post the changes on this page, and may place notices on other pages of our website, so that you are aware of any amendments.

Collection of Personal Information

We need to collect certain personal details when you use the services available through our website in order to facilitate the provision of these services and to maintain our quality standards.

Information you give to us:

In the case of Clients, these details may include:

When we collect it

What we collect

When you contact a Professional through VouchedFor

Name

Address

Email

Phone number

Depending on the service requested, we may also collect other basic information such as occupation, age, income, bank details and savings/pensions/investment levels

When you leave a review on VouchedFor

Name

Phone number

Email

Postcode

Your ratings of a Professional

Your opinions on a Professional

Optional socio-demographic information such as age, gender, marital status.

When you leave a review on VouchedFor

When you claim a promotional offer

In some cases, we may ask for evidence of your relationship with a Professional

In the case of Professionals, these details may include:

When we collect it

What we collect

When you create or update a VouchedFor account

Name

Occupation

Photo

Professional details such as experience or qualifications

Detailed contact information

Information about regulatory status and personal FCA ID

Information about your services

When you create or update a VouchedFor account, or update a Firm profile

Relevant business details e.g. your Firm details

As a professional, you can amend or update the information you have entered into the website at any time, by logging into your account.

In the case of Firm users, these details may include:

When we collect it

What we collect

When you create or update a VouchedFor Firm account

Name

Email

Role at company

Where a firm has signed up to use the VouchedFor service at a business level, a firm user may upload details about the professionals employed by them, in line with the professional details listed above. Users represent and warrant that they have the right to upload such Personal Data to us for the purpose of receiving the Service and are responsible for providing all required notifications to such professionals to enable them to provide such information to us and to grant to us the rights set forth in this privacy policy.

Information we collect from 3rd parties:

We may collect data from 3rd parties (including the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or other regulatory bodies, services such as Smartsupp.com, or our marketing partners) in order to deliver our services, verify the status of Professionals, or for the purpose of improving our website.

Security of Personal Information:

The transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data whilst it is being transmitted to or from our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

Personal data will be held by VouchedFor using appropriate safeguards to maintain its privacy and security. For example, we use https on the vouchedfor.co.uk website, ensuring that data entered cannot be viewed by a third party. VouchedFor data is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a highly scalable cloud computing platform with end-to-end security and privacy features built in. See https://aws.amazon.com/security/ for details. We are careful to ensure this data can only be accessed by vetted staff members within the office.

Use of Personal Information

We collect and process information about you only where we have legal bases for doing so under applicable UK and/or EU laws. The legal bases depend on the services you use. This means we collect and use your information only where:

We need it to provide you the services, including to operate the services, provide customer support and personalized features and to protect the safety and security of the services;

It satisfies a legitimate interest (which is not overridden by your data protection interests), such as for research and development, to market and promote the services and to protect our legal rights and interests; You give us consent to do so for a specific purpose; or We need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation. If you have consented to our use of information about you for a specific purpose, you have the right to change your mind at any time, but this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. Where we are using your information because we have a legitimate interest to do so, you have the right to object to that use though, in some cases, this may mean no longer using the service.

Our legitimate interest

Legal basis

What we use your information for

To run our core business functions that enable clients to search for, check, contact, or review a professional on VouchedFor

Legitimate interest

To allow clients to search for, check, contact or review a professional

To run our core business functions that enable professionals to create and maintain a VouchedFor account

Legitimate interest

To allow professionals to sign up for and use VouchedFor services

Providing you with relevant information pertaining to the services on our website

Legitimate interest

Communicating with you as part of the VouchedFor service

To send you promotional emails about our own or third parties’ new products, research projects or special offers, or other information which we think you may find interesting

Consent

To inform consumers of new offers and services

To send you emails about our own or third parties’ new products, research projects or special offers, or other information which we think you may find interesting

Legitimate interest

To inform Professionals or Firms of new offers and services

To ensure that professionals listed on VouchedFor are registered with the relevant regulatory authority and provide genuine details about themselves. To ensure reviews left by clients are genuine

Legitimate interest

To detect and manage fraudulent activity

To ensure that you are satisfied with the level of service you are receiving from VouchedFor and professionals (as appropriate)

Legitimate interest

To monitor the provision of our services

To inform firms on the progress on the website of any Professionals who are linked to and/or employed by their firm. This will help firms better support their Professionals and improve client outcomes

Legitimate interest

Contract in some cases

To provide data on Professionals and their related Client feedback to the firm they are currently employed by, or affiliated with if self-employed, or the principal firm responsible for their authorisation

If you have previously consented to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by contacting customer_service@vouchedfor.co.uk. When you provide feedback in relation to the service, you will be given the option of keeping your identity secret from other users.

We will not share, trade or sell your information to any company or parties not directly associated with its proper use within the website or as described above, except when you give us explicit permission and we give you an opportunity to opt out of having your personal information shared.

In certain circumstances we may have a legal obligation to disclose personal information, and we reserve the right to do so.

Contact information

We do not publicly display any contact details or other sensitive information on our site. All communication takes place securely through the website.

Professional contact information

By registering on the website, Professionals consent for their contact details (work email address and phone number) to be forwarded to clients or potential clients who submit an enquiry through the service. Professionals who have provided their home address can choose not to display this on VouchedFor and can instead specify the area within which they are willing to meet clients or potential clients.

Client contact information

If you send a message to a Professional via the service then in doing so you are providing your chosen Professional and the firm they work for, with the information in that message. VouchedFor will not have any responsibility for how the professional uses this information. Professionals are subject to Data Protection regulations and are responsible for protecting and using your data in accordance with those regulations.

Phone Calls

Please note that calls may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes.

How long do we keep data for?

We keep your data only for as long as we need it. How long we need data depends on what we are using it for, whether that is to provide services to you, for our own legitimate interests (described above) or so that we can comply with the law.

Collection of Technical Data and Cookies

We may collect technical data about the type of browser software or operating system you are using for the purposes of tracking website use, or improving the service offered through our website.

We may also place a 'cookie' on your hard drive to help us operate the website, make improvements to the experience, to deliver more relevant content to you and to show you advertising. You may see ads for VouchedFor on other websites including social media as a result. Using cookies helps us to improve our website and to deliver a better and more personalised service. We may also use cookies to identify repeat visitors. Where we use cookies or any other technical data collection method that is not strictly necessary, we will ask for your consent. If you do not consent, this data will not be captured.

Why we place this

When we place this

Cookie

To track use of the website, and improve our service

  • When you search for or contact an adviser on VouchedFor
  • When you leave a review on VouchedFor
  • When you sign up for VouchedFor as an adviser
  • Google Analytics

    To deliver ads which are relevant to you on social media platforms, to limit the number of times that you see an ad, and to help us measure the effectiveness of our marketing.

  • When you visit our blogs hosted on insights.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • When you search for an adviser on VouchedFor
  • When you submit a request on discover.vouchedfor.co.uk or offers.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • Meta pixel

    To deliver ads which are relevant to you on social media platforms, to limit the number of times that you see an ad, and to help us measure the effectiveness of our marketing.

  • When you visit our blogs hosted on insights.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • When you search for an adviser on VouchedFor
  • When you submit a request on discover.vouchedfor.co.uk or offers.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • LinkedIn

    To enable the call to be scheduled in your calendar, and to improve the experience of scheduling a call.

  • When you schedule in a call with a member of our team using one of our online forms to do this
  • Calendly

    To track use of the website, and improve our service.

  • When as an adviser you visit your account at accounts.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • When as a firm administrator you visit your firm portal account at firms.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • Microsoft Clarity

    Sleekplan will use this information for the purpose of adding context information to manually submitted feedback by users, for analysis of feedback items, and generated reports in the dashboard of Sleekplan.

  • When as a firm administrator you visit your firm portal account at firms.vouchedfor.co.uk
  • Sleekplan

    Third party vendors, including Google, show our advertisements on sites on the internet and use cookies to serve advertisements based on a user's prior visits to this website. Users may opt out of Google's use of cookies by visiting the Google advertising opt-out page. You can remove cookies from your computer at any time, and choose to disable cookies in your internet browser settings.

    Your Rights and Choices:

    We want you to be in control of how your personal information is used by us. Under the terms of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the following rights:

    Requesting your data:You can ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you; we will provide this free of charge

    Updating your data: You can inform us of any changes to your personal information, or if you want us to correct any of the personal information we hold about you

    Erasing your data: In certain situations, you can ask us to erase the personal information we hold about you, or object to particular ways in which we are using your personal information. Please note that we may need to retain certain information for recordkeeping purposes, to complete any transactions that you began prior to your request, or for other purposes as required or permitted by applicable law.

    Consent: Where we are using your personal information on the basis of your consent, you are entitled to withdraw that consent at any time.

    Moreover, where we process your personal information based on legitimate interest or the public interest, you have the right to object at any time to that use of your personal information by contacting customer_service@vouchedfor.co.uk For security reasons we may ask for proof of your identity before we disclose information about you, or to you, via email or over the telephone.