Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We may collect personal and business information when you use our website, complete a contact form, submit an application form, speak to our team, or interact with our advertising. This includes:

• - Your name and business name
• - Business email address and phone number
• - Business address or postcode
• - Company type (limited company, LLP, sole trader or partnership)
• - Company number, where relevant
• - Funding amount requested and purpose of funding
• - Preferred funding term and annual turnover
• - Whether your business takes card payments
• - Information about existing business finance
• - Whether you have recently applied for business funding
• - Homeowner or tenant status, where relevant to matching
• - Date of birth, where needed for identity or fraud prevention checks
• - Details submitted through our contact or application form
• - Communications between you and Avolt

We may also collect technical information when you use our website, such as IP address, browser type, device type, pages visited, time spent on the site, referring website or advert, UTM tracking information, and cookie and analytics data.

2. How We Use Your Information

We use your information to:

• - Respond to your enquiry
• - Assess your business finance enquiry
• - Understand what type of finance or business service may be suitable
• - Introduce you to authorised credit brokers, lenders or selected business service providers
• - Verify business details, including through Companies House where relevant
• - Help prevent fraud or misuse of our services
• - Contact you about your enquiry and provide updates about potential finance options
• - Improve our website, forms, advertising and services
• - Monitor marketing and advertising performance
• - Comply with legal, regulatory and record-keeping obligations
• - Deal with complaints or disputes

We may contact you by phone, email, SMS or other appropriate channels in relation to your enquiry.

3. Our Role as an Introducer

Access Capital Ltd acts as an introducer and intermediary. We may pass the information you provide to authorised credit brokers, lenders or selected business service providers so they can assess whether they may be able to help you.

We do not lend money directly, make lending or credit decisions, provide regulated financial advice, guarantee that you will be approved, or guarantee any particular rate, product, term or provider. Any finance offer will depend on the broker, lender or provider's own checks, criteria and underwriting process.

4. Lawful Basis for Using Your Information

Under UK data protection law, we need a lawful basis to process your personal information. We may rely on one or more of the following:

• - Consent: Where you have asked us to process your enquiry or share your information with relevant brokers, lenders or providers.
• - Legitimate interests: Where it is necessary for our business interests, such as responding to enquiries, managing introductions, improving our services and preventing fraud, provided your rights do not override those interests.
• - Contract or steps before a contract: Where we need to process your information to take steps at your request before you enter into any potential agreement with a broker, lender or provider.
• - Legal obligation: Where we need to keep records or share information to comply with legal or regulatory requirements.

5. Who We Share Your Information With

We may share your information with:

• - Authorised credit brokers
• - Lenders and finance providers
• - Selected business service providers
• - Companies House or company verification providers
• - Credit reference agencies, where relevant
• - Fraud prevention agencies, where relevant
• - CRM, hosting, analytics and marketing technology providers
• - Email, phone, SMS and communication providers
• - Professional advisers such as accountants, lawyers or compliance consultants
• - Regulators, law enforcement bodies or public authorities where required

Where we introduce you to a broker, lender or provider, they may become a separate data controller and will process your information under their own privacy policy.

6. Commission and Referral Fees

We do not charge customers directly for using our introduction service. We may receive a commission, referral fee or other payment from a broker, lender or provider if you proceed following an introduction. The amount of commission may vary depending on the provider, product or arrangement. You are under no obligation to proceed with any introduction or offer.

7. Credit Checks and Eligibility Searches

Some brokers, lenders or providers may carry out eligibility checks, credit checks, affordability checks or fraud prevention checks. Where a soft search is used, it should not affect your credit score. If a hard credit search is required, this should be explained to you before it takes place by the broker, lender or provider carrying out the check.

Avolt does not make lending decisions and does not guarantee approval.

8. Marketing

We may contact you about Avolt services that may be relevant to your business. You can opt out of marketing at any time by:

• - Clicking unsubscribe in an email, where available
• - Replying to a message asking to opt out
• - Contacting us at hello@avolt.financial

We may still contact you about an active enquiry, service matter, legal requirement or complaint.

9. Cookies and Analytics

Our website may use cookies and similar technologies to make the website work properly, improve performance, understand how visitors use the site, measure advertising campaigns, remember preferences, and improve user experience.

Some cookies are essential. Others, such as analytics or advertising cookies, may require your consent. You can control cookies through your browser settings or through any cookie banner shown on our website.

10. How Long We Keep Your Information

We keep personal information only for as long as necessary. As a general guide:

• - Enquiry records may be kept for up to 24 months
• - Introduction and application records may be kept for up to 6 years where needed for legal, regulatory, accounting or complaint-handling reasons
• - Marketing preferences may be kept until you opt out or ask us to delete them
• - Analytics data may be kept for a shorter period in aggregated or anonymised form

The exact retention period may depend on the type of information, why we collected it, legal requirements and whether a complaint or dispute arises.

11. How We Protect Your Information

We take appropriate steps to protect your personal information against unauthorised access, loss, misuse or disclosure. These steps may include secure systems and hosting, restricted access to personal data, supplier confidentiality obligations, encryption where appropriate, secure communication tools, and regular review of data handling processes.

No website or online system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take data protection seriously and work to keep your information safe.

12. International Transfers

Some of our service providers may store or process data outside the UK. Where this happens, we will take steps to ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as using providers covered by adequacy regulations or approved contractual protections.

13. Your Rights

You have rights under UK data protection law. These may include the right to:

• - Access the personal information we hold about you
• - Ask us to correct inaccurate information
• - Ask us to delete your information
• - Object to certain types of processing
• - Restrict how we use your information
• - Request a copy of your information in a portable format
• - Withdraw consent where we rely on consent
• - Complain to the Information Commissioner's Office

To exercise your rights, contact us at: hello@avolt.financial. We may need to verify your identity before responding.

14. Complaints

If you have a concern about how we use your personal information, please contact us first and we will try to resolve it.

Email: hello@avolt.financial
Telephone: 020 3545 2981
Address: Stamford House, Northenden Road, Sale, M33 2DH

You also have the right to complain to the UK data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office.

15. Third-Party Websites

Our website may contain links to third-party websites, brokers, lenders, providers or external services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of those websites. You should read their privacy policies before submitting information to them.

16. Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy from time to time. The latest version will always be available on our website. If we make significant changes, we may notify you where appropriate.