Privacy policy

Who we are

PB Loans Limited, company number 07816419, registered office Ava House, 38 Ratcliffe Road, Leicester, England, LE2 3TD, is the data controller for the personal information described in this policy. PiggyBank is a trading name of PB Loans Limited.

Authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FRN 704303. Registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office, registration number Z3212240.

If you have a question about this policy or how we handle your data, email info@pbloans.co.uk or ring 01302 410015, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm.

What we collect

What we hold about you depends on how far your relationship with us goes.

If you get in touch or make an enquiry — your name, email address, phone number (if given), what your message is about, and the message itself.

If you apply for a loan — your identity details (name, date of birth, address), contact details, income and outgoings, employment details, and information from documents you give us such as bank statements or payslips. We may also ask about anything relevant to your circumstances that could affect whether the payments are affordable.

Once you have a loan with us — details of the agreement itself, a record of payments and any missed payments, communications between us, and notes from any conversation about arranging or changing how you repay.

If you tell us about your circumstances — for example a health condition, disability, bereavement, or something else affecting your ability to repay. This can include special category data under data protection law. We only collect this when you choose to tell us, and only to make sure we treat you fairly and adjust how we work with you. See support.

We do not collect more than we need for these purposes, and we do not use your data to make decisions about you without a person’s involvement — see “Automated decisions” below.

Why we use it, and our lawful basis

Data protection law requires us to have a lawful basis for each way we use your data. Here is how ours map out.

• Assessing an application and deciding whether to lend — necessary to take steps towards entering a credit agreement with you, and our legitimate interest in lending responsibly.
• Running the loan — collecting payments, sending statements, answering questions — necessary to perform the credit agreement.
• Checking your identity and preventing fraud or financial crime — a legal obligation on us, and our legitimate interest in protecting you and us from fraud.
• Reporting to credit reference agencies — our legitimate interest in responsible lending, balanced against your rights (see below).
• Adjusting how we work with you because of your circumstances — your explicit consent where special category data is involved, or because it is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest in treating customers fairly and equally.
• Handling a complaint — a legal obligation under our regulatory rules, and our legitimate interest in putting things right.
• Reporting to the Financial Conduct Authority and our other regulators — a legal obligation.
• Sending you marketing — only ever with your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time.

Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies

When you apply, we carry out checks with one or more UK credit reference agencies (CRAs) — companies such as Experian, Equifax and TransUnion operate in this space, though which specific agency or agencies we use is confirmed separately from this policy. A CRA will supply us with credit information, and may keep a record of the search whether or not your application goes ahead. That record may be seen by other organisations when they carry out their own credit checks on you.

We may also share information with fraud prevention agencies. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is suspected, this will be recorded and may be shared with other organisations to prevent fraud and money laundering.

Full detail on how a CRA uses your data is set out in its own Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN), published on that agency’s website.

How long we keep it

We keep records for as long as we need them for the purpose we collected them for, and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations. As a general rule that is six years from the end of our relationship with you, in line with standard record-keeping requirements for regulated consumer credit firms. Some records — for example, where a complaint or a legal claim is involved — may need to be kept longer.

Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not pass your details to other lenders or brokers for marketing purposes.

We share data with:

• Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies, as described above
• Service providers who process data on our behalf under contract — for example our website hosting provider (Vercel) and the service that delivers email from our contact form (Resend). They are only permitted to use your data to provide that service to us.
• The Financial Conduct Authority, the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the Financial Ombudsman Service, where we are required or permitted to
• A debt collection or tracing agent, only if an account falls seriously into arrears and this becomes necessary
• Anyone you have told us we can share your information with, such as a friend, family member or adviser helping with your account

Some of our service providers operate outside the UK. Where that happens, we rely on legal safeguards recognised under UK data protection law, such as the UK’s International Data Transfer Agreement or a provider’s participation in an approved data protection framework, to keep your data protected to UK standards.

Automated decisions

We do not make the decision to lend to you using automated processing alone. A trained member of our team is always involved in assessing your application, alongside any credit check or automated score.

Your rights

Under data protection law you have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Ask us to correct anything that is inaccurate or incomplete
• Ask us to delete your data, where the law allows it
• Ask us to restrict or object to how we use your data, in certain circumstances
• Ask for your data in a portable format, where it applies
• Withdraw consent at any time, where we rely on consent — for example, for marketing

To exercise any of these, contact us at info@pbloans.co.uk. We will normally respond within one month.

Website data

Messages sent through the contact form on this site are delivered to info@pbloans.co.uk by email through Resend, our email delivery provider. We do not run analytics or advertising tracking on this site. See cookies for exactly what this website stores on your device.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time, for example if our services or the law change. The version on this page is always the current one.

Complaining about how we handle your data

Contact us first at info@pbloans.co.uk. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.