Privacy Policy

About this Privacy Policy

Apricot Insurance is a trading name of Apricot Insurance Services Limited which is registered in Northern Ireland with company number NI607078 and has its registered office at Floor 2, Blackstaff Studios, 8-10 Amelia Street, Belfast, BT2 7GS.

We respect the privacy of visitors to our website. Apricot Insurance Services Limited is registered as a data controller with the Information Commissioners Office; its registration number is Z2697972. When we refer to we, us or Apricot Insurance we are referring to this company.

This policy applies to all users of our website and/or our insurance broker services.

1. What this Privacy Policy applies to

This policy applies to the information about yourself that you choose to provide us with or that you allow us to collect. This includes:

• information you provide during any quoting process, such as your name, your age, and your contact details;
• information you provide when you enter prize draws, competitions or provide reviews;
• the information which we may obtain about you from third parties (for example, because you have given third parties permission to share that information with us);
• information we collect about how you use the website.

2. Our obligations

We are a data controller in relation to the information that you provide us with. As a result, we are legally responsible for how that information is handled.

We will comply with data protection law in the way we use and share your personal data. Among other things, this means that we will only use your personal data:

• fairly and lawfully,
• as set out in the legislation and this policy,
• to the extent necessary for these purposes.

We will take every reasonable precaution to safeguard the personal information that you supply.

If you have any queries relating to our use of your personal information, or any other related data protection questions, please contact us at info@apricotinsurance.co.uk.

3. Our services and the personal information we collect

If you provide us with your information through this website, for instance by filling in one of the forms requesting us to compare insurance quotes, we shall use your information as set out in this Privacy Policy and in the notices we provide when you submit your information. By submitting your personal information, you consent to our use of the information as set out in this Privacy Policy and such notices. You will be able to withdraw that consent at any time by the methods described in this Privacy Policy. In particular, we may need to collect your special categories data to allow us to provide you with quotes, as set out below.

If you give us your personal information, we will use it to provide you with the insurance quotation information you request. If you request an insurance quotation through our website, we will forward the personal information you submit to insurers to enable us to obtain a quote for you. The insurers may use your personal information for their own purposes, as set out further below. We cannot provide an insurance quotation to you unless we are able to share your personal information in this way. Please note that we can offer both online and offline insurance broker services depending upon the product you wish to receive a quote for.

The Privacy Policy applies to any service we have available on our website, www.apricotinsurance.co.uk

Note that it is your responsibility to check and ensure that all information, content, material or data you provide on our website is correct, complete, accurate and not misleading and that you disclose all relevant facts.

We may use external sources to supplement and verify some of the information we collect about you (as set out above). We also may use them to provide the following new information, to help us understand you as a customer:

• Credit and anti-fraud data: We might collect sanctions and criminal offences, bankruptcy orders, individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs) or county court judgments, credit history, credit scores and information received from various anti-fraud databases. A credit search (where carried out) will appear on your credit report and may be visible to other credit providers although it will appear as “soft check” rather than a full credit check . Some of this information (e.g. criminal offences) may include special categories of information about you.

The external sources that provide us with information about you might include: the person applying for the policy (where you’re an individual named under a quote) or anyone authorised to act on your behalf; insurance providers; other third parties involved in the insurance application process such as a price comparison website; credit reference agencies; financial crime detection agencies and insurance industry crime databases such as the Claims and Underwriting Exchange, CIFAS and the Insurance Fraud Bureau; Lexis Nexis in order to assess the validity of the information provided; insurance industry bodies and databases (e.g. Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft register and the No Claims History database); government agencies and bodies such as the DVLA or regulators; and publicly available sources (e.g. electoral roll, court judgements etc).

We make sure that we have appropriate security measures to protect your information (see section 14 Security below). We will periodically review your personal information to ensure that we do not keep it for longer than is permitted by law (see section 9 below which details how long we keep your personal information for).

Special Categories Data

In order to provide you with a quote, we may need to collect personal information which data protection legislation defines as special categories data, such as medical history or criminal convictions. By proceeding with obtaining a quote you give your explicit consent to such special categories of personal information being processed by us and our insurers for the purposes stated in this Privacy Policy, or where appropriate, we may apply a specific exemption for insurance purposes.

Providing data about other people

If you are providing us with another person’s information you should first ask them to read this Privacy Policy and our Terms and Conditions. By giving us information about another person you are confirming that they have given you consent to provide the information to us and that they understand how their details will be used.

4. How we use your data and communications from us

We will use your data in the following ways:

1. use of our services – we will use your personal data to provide you with the service you request. See Section 3 above in relation to our services;
2. for research, such as analyzing market trends and gathering information on how you use our website and pages you have viewed;
3. fraud detection and prevention (as detailed in section 3);
4. to process a transaction between you and a third party (where applicable);
5. to track sales, which may involve us sharing data with any price comparison site that you may have originally got a quotation from. The price comparison website may also send us the information they hold relating to the product(s) that you have received a quote comparison for;
6. to communicate with you as follows:

Quote Confirmation

When you obtain (or request) a quote with us, you will automatically be sent a confirmation of your quote (or confirmation of your quote request when using our offline insurance broker service) by email so that you have a record of it and can easily retrieve your quote (where applicable) in the future. This is a standard part of the service that we offer and by using the service you agree to receive these communications. Being kept up to date by us

Where you tell us you are happy to receive information from us we may send you communications which may include the following:-

• Further information about the services we offer
• New product launches
• Newsletters
• Any interesting competitions or promotions run by us
• Opportunities to participate in market research or provide reviews about apricotinsurance.co.uk

Depending on the contact preferences you select, we may communicate with you by email, SMS, post, and telephone.

Insurance Policy Documentation

As part of our service, if you purchase a policy from us we will send you your policy documentation and/or contact you by post, email, phone and/or SMS. We believe that this is an important part of the service to help ensure your policy is incepted correctly to enable you to send us any documentation we require in association with your insurance policy.

If you make any changes to your policy (e.g. a change of vehicle, or cancel your policy) we will send you further policy documentation and/or contact you by post, email, phone, and/or SMS as part of the service we provide to you.

Renewal Reminders

As part of our service, we may also contact you by post, email, phone, and/or SMS around the anniversary of when you completed your quote in order or purchased your policy to remind you to carry out a new quote for the forthcoming year or to remind you to renew your policy. We believe that this is an important part of the service to help ensure you do not forget to renew your insurance.

If you don’t want to receive communications from us you can let us know at any time by unsubscribing through our unsubscribe page. You can use this unsubscribe option at any time. Also, if you initially decided to receive updates from us but then changed your mind you can always use the unsubscribe link in our e-mail communications.

5. The legal basis for processing your personal information

Data protection law says that we are allowed to use personal information only if we have a proper reason to do so such as consent or legitimate interests.

Our grounds for processing your personal information are as follows:

1. Consent – Where we rely on this legal basis, we will collect and process your personal information only if you have given your consent for us to do so, for example, in respect to the service you ask us to carry out or we will only send you certain marketing emails where you have agreed to this. You can withdraw your consent at any time. Please contact us if you want to do so.
2. Legitimate Interests – A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information. But even then, it must not unfairly go against what is right and best for you. We may use and process some of your personal information where we have legitimate business grounds for doing so. Our legitimate interests for processing your personal information are:

2.1 in relation to certain aspects of our services: the use of data processors in respect to the provision of the services (as described in section 6); processing any transaction between you and a third party, and tracking sales. Using your information in this way is an essential part of us being able to provide the services to you;

2.2 service communications: we need to keep you informed about your use of the services for example sending you a confirmation email of your quote and renewal reminders;

2.3 to monitor and improve our service: we may use your personal information for research, such as analyzing market trends and gathering information on how you use our website and the pages you have viewed; and

2.4 fraud detection and prevention (as described in section 3 above).

You have a right to object to our use of your personal information for these legitimate interests (please see section 13 below).

6. Who do we share your personal information with

When you use any of our services, we may disclose your personal information to the following parties:

1. Insurers This includes companies whose products or services are included on our website, with a view to them providing you with a quote. When these companies use your personal information in this way, they will be acting as data controllers of your information and therefore we advise you to read your chosen insurer’s privacy policy. Some insurers with whom we share your information may use it for analytical purposes.
2. Data Processors In order to provide the services, we may use third parties to process personal information on our behalf for tasks such as vehicle lookup, house rebuild value, postcode lookup, fraud detection and prevention (as detailed in section 3 above) and facilitating email communications with you. Also, for some products, we may use quote facilities used by the insurer to help facilitate the provision of a quote for you. The companies that provide these quote facilities act as data processors for us and/or the provider.

We may also use certain data processors for analytical purposes, for example, to help us understand how well our website is performing and how you use our website.

Where third parties process your personal information on our behalf, we will ensure that they have the necessary high standards of security in place so that your data is kept secure and only used in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

3. Regulatory or governing bodies such as the Financial Conduct Authority for the purposes of compliance monitoring.

Where permitted by data protection and privacy law, we may also disclose information about you (including electronic identifiers such as IP addresses):

• if required or permitted to do so by law;
• if required to do so by any court, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Competition and Markets Authority or any other applicable regulatory, compliance, Governmental, or law enforcement agency;
• if necessary in connection with legal proceedings or potential legal proceedings; and/or
• in connection with the sale or potential sale of all or part of our business.

If we reasonably believe false or inaccurate information has been provided and fraud is suspected, details may be passed to fraud prevention agencies to prevent fraud and money laundering.

7. How do insurers use your personal data

Insurers will primarily use your personal data to provide an insurance quotation for you. When insurers use your information in this way they will be acting as data controllers of your information and therefore we advise you to read your chosen insurer’s privacy policy.

To ensure insurers have the necessary facts to assess your insurance risk, verify your identity, help prevent fraud, and to provide you with their best premium, they may obtain information from third parties at quotation and renewal and in certain circumstances where policy amendments are requested. The checks may be against both public data (such as information from the electoral roll) and private data (such as your credit history).

This information may include a quotation search from a credit referencing agency. This search will appear on your credit report and will be visible to other credit providers. It will be clear that this is a quotation rather than a credit application by you to pay by monthly instalments. This may happen regardless of whether you get a quote via the internet or phone for any of these services. Some insurers may also carry out checks against data they already hold on you (or is held by the company whose brand they administer the product for or members of their group of companies) such as data from existing products, account data, or loyalty scheme data.

Insurers may also exchange information about you through various databases, such as the Claims and Underwriting Exchange (CUE), which holds a record of incidents reported to insurers by policyholders and third party claimants, as a way to help prevent fraud. Insurers may also exchange information with other databases such as the No Claims Discount Database, the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register, run by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), and the Hunter Database (a central insurance and claims checking system). As mentioned above, the exchange of your information in this way allows insurers to verify the information that is provided during the quote process and also helps detect fraudulent claims.

If you provide us with your driving license number (‘DLN’) via our quote form the insurers may pass this information to the DVLA in order for a search to be carried out to confirm your (or any named driver’s) license status, entitlement and relevant restriction information and endorsement/conviction data. Carrying out these searches helps insurers to validate your information, preventing fraud, and reducing incidents of negligent misrepresentation and non-disclosure. DLN searches may be carried out as part of your quote or at any point throughout the duration of your insurance policy. These searches will not appear on your (or the named driver’s) driving license record information. For details of the information about you that the DVLA may hold, please see www.gov.uk/government/organisations/driver-and-vehicle-licensing-agency or https://www.mylicence.org.uk/.

Some insurers who offer products designed for students or graduates may also undertake additional checks against higher education sources to verify your student or graduate status.

If you decide to enter into a contract with an insurer through this website, the information you have provided to us, together with any further information requested by, and supplied by you or us to the insurer, will be held by the insurer for the purposes set out in that insurer’s privacy policy. Therefore, you are strongly advised to read your chosen insurer’s privacy policy and satisfy yourself as to the purposes for which the provider will use your personal information before entering into the contract. We have no responsibility for the uses to which a provider puts your personal information.

8. Contact from us

In relation to our online insurance broker service, if during the quote process you tell us that you are happy to be contacted by us, you agree that your personal data may be used by us to contact you with a view to seeing if you are interested in purchasing the quoted product.

Where our offline insurance broker service is used, we will contact you directly to provide a quote by telephone and where you have provided consent, by email and/or SMS.

9. How long do we retain your personal information

Unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law, we will only hold your personal information on our systems for the period necessary to fulfill the purposes outlined in this Privacy Policy or until you request it is deleted. Even if we delete your personal information it may persist on backup or archival media for legal, tax, or regulatory purposes.

Apricot Insurance Services Limited is regulated and authorized by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for non-investment insurance mediation and credit broking. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for data protection. As part of our FCA authorization, we have to comply with certain requirements in respect of the Financial Ombudsman Service and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. All these obligations place certain recording keeping requirements and the need to co-operate and share information with these legal entities where requested to do so.

We also handle the above data for our own legitimate business interests including but not limited to, the keeping of records and accounts, staff training and monitoring, recording sales or quotation requests generated, communicating with insurers, and marketing out other similar services to you or reminding you if a renewal comes up.

10. Do we pass data to third parties

If you require further information on or wish to complain about, the way that we use your personal information, please contact the Data Protection Officer at Apricot Insurance Services Limited, Floor 2, Blackstaff Studios, 8-10 Amelia Street, Belfast, BT2 7GS. If you would a copy of the information we hold about you, please contact our Data Protection Officer. We may charge you a fee for this service.

11. Transferring your data outside of the European Economic Area (EEA)

From time to time there may be a requirement to process your personal data in other countries outside of the European Economic Area where data protection safeguards differ from those of the UK. Where this is necessary, we will ensure that your data is kept securely and only processed in accordance with the data protection legislation. Your use of our services will be considered to be an indication of your consent to this transfer.

Please note that some insurers may carry out some of their administrative services from outside of the EEA. Where this is the case it will be set out in their terms and conditions and privacy policy.

12. Cookies and IP logging

This website uses cookies. A cookie is a piece of data that may be stored on your computer while you visit a website. The cookie stored by this website will be used to identify your computer. You may disable the use of cookies in your internet browser, but this will restrict your use of our website. In particular, you will not be able to use our insurance broker service.

When you visit our website, our server will automatically record your IP address and the time and duration of your visit. We may also use the records of the pages you visit on this website to analyze trends, administer the site and track your movements through the website so that we can improve the usability of and access to the website.

This website also uses Google Analytics to allow us to monitor how users use our website.

Please see our cookie policy for more information including how you can stop or manage cookies.

Advertisements

Sometimes we may use cookies to show you Apricot Insurance adverts while you are online. You can find out more about this and how to turn off cookies by reading our cookie policy.

13. Privacy Rights

We respect the fact that your personal information is your information so we want to be clear about what rights you have under data protection legislation and how you can exercise them.

1. The right to opt-out of having your information used for marketing

Please see section 4 “How we use your data and communications from us”.

2. The right to have any inaccuracies in your personal information corrected

Please help us to help you by keeping your contact details up to date and letting us know if you spot any errors in the information we hold about you. If it is something you cannot correct yourself online or when carrying out another quote, you should contact us at info@apricotinsurance.co.uk. We’ll update inaccuracies promptly, and within a month where possible if you are requesting a more complex change. If we take the decision not to make a change you have requested, we will explain why. If you disagree with our decision, you have the right to complain to the privacy regulator (details set out below).

3. Your ‘right of objection’ to certain activities

Data protection law gives you the right to express an objection to activities detailed in section 5 regarding legitimate interests. You may believe your privacy rights outweigh the legitimate interest we have as a business in doing those things. Please read that section carefully before getting in touch with us and note that exercising your right of objection may mean that the service will not be available to you.

In relation to our offline insurance broker service, some automated decision-making may take place in relation to the way we pass your details to insurers. This is necessary for providing the service to you. Please do not use our service if you object to the use of your information in this way.

If you raise an objection we will stop processing your personal information unless very exceptional circumstances apply, in which case we will let you know why we are continuing to process your personal information. If you disagree with our decision on this, you have the right to complain to the privacy regulator.

4. Your right to erasure

You have the right to request that we delete or remove your personal information from our systems.

Please see section 9 “How long do we retain your personal information” before contacting us. If you still wish to exercise your right, you should contact us at info@apricotinsurance.co.uk and we will respond to your request within a month.

5. The right to access the data we hold about you

You have the right to request copies of the personal information we hold about you.

Once we’ve received your request we will provide our response within one month. If your request is unusually complex and likely to take longer than a month, we will let you know as soon as we can and tell you how long we think it will take.

6. Your right to restrict our use of your information

You have the right to “block” us from using your personal information or limit the way in which we can use it.

7. Your right to ‘Data Portability’

The right to data portability’ aims to enable consumers to re-use some of their personal information online by making it available in a commonly used, machine-readable format that can be passed to and used by other organizations.

8. Exercising your rights

If you wish to exercise any of your rights set out in this Privacy Policy, make an inquiry or make a complaint then please contact: info@apricotinsurance.co.uk or contact via post at:

The Data Protection Team, Apricot Insurance, Floor 2, Blackstaff Studios, 8-10 Amelia Street, Belfast, BT2 7GS.

We reserve the right, where applicable, to request confirmation of your identity before taking action.

9. Your Right to Complain to the Regulator

If you believe your privacy rights have been infringed, or you disagree with a decision we have made about your privacy rights, you have the right to complain to the privacy regulator. As we are based in the UK, our principal data protection regulator is Information Commissioner’s Office, https://ico.org.uk/.

14. Security

We do our best to keep the information you disclose to us secure. We place a high priority on protecting and managing data in accordance with accepted standards.

We will also, where it’s appropriate, ensure that our website uses HTTPS to help keep information about you secure.

However, we can’t guarantee or warrant the security of any information which you send to us, and you do so at your own risk. By using our website you accept the inherent risks of providing information online and will not hold us responsible for any breach of security.

15. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to change this Privacy Policy from time to time. You should therefore check this Privacy Policy each time you visit our website. Where required by law we will obtain your consent to make these changes. If you do not agree with any changes please do not continue to use this website.

Updated May 2022