Employer Privacy Notice

Privacy notice for individual employers and their contacts and those of third-parties acting on behalf of an employer

This privacy notice is aimed at providing general information to employers and specific privacy information to individuals who are:

  • employers (e.g., sole traders); or
  • the representative or contact point for an employer or other relevant third-party.

Employers will provide personal data and may provide sensitive personal data relating to their employees and workers. Employers may engage third-parties to act on their behalf, such as a financial adviser or payroll bureau.

This privacy notice describes how NOW: Pensions Ltd (‘we’, ‘us’ or ‘our’) and NOW: Pension Trustee Ltd (“Trustee”) both of 6 Bevis Marks, London, EC3A 7BA, collects and processes personal data and sensitive personal data related to our website nowpensions.com and the services we provide. It is important that you read this privacy notice together with the privacy policy and any fair processing notices we may provide from time-to-time so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data.

Identity of the data controllers / responsible entities

Employers and the Trustee will process your and members’ personal data and sensitive personal data as data controllers; and we will process personal data and sensitive personal data as data controller if we are required to undertake such processing for our own independent purposes, including for the purposes of providing any specialist services to an employer or the Trustee and to the extent necessary for us to comply with our statutory role as scheme administrator, and in all other cases we will be a data processor acting on behalf of the employer and/or the Trustee. Further details are set out in our Participation Agreement with the employer.

What information is processed (e.g., collected, used, disclosed, stored)?

We collect a range of personal data, either:

  • directly from you when you enter information via the employer portal (and this may be combined with other information collected when you complete a form on our website, or a paper form);
  • from third- parties acting on behalf of the employer such as payroll bureaux;
  • from information that you post online when you contact us on social media; or
  • from third-parties from time to

The information provided by you will include personal data and may include sensitive personal data relating to:

  • you (where you are an individual employer, such as where you are a sole trader, or the representative or contact point for an employer or other relevant third party); or
  • your employees and workers, or those of the organisation that you represent and / or in relation to which you are providing

Information will be provided by you to us regularly whilst the employer’s pension scheme remains with us, and whilst the relevant employees or workers remain in employment with the employer and remains an active member of our pension scheme. Additionally, you / your employer will provide us with your personal data in order for us to manage the pension scheme on behalf of the employer. For example, we may have your personal and contact details as representative(s) of an employer under the Participation Agreement.

You may also provide us with the contact details of other individuals who may be managing the administrative aspects of the pension scheme on your behalf. Where you are providing personal data relating to someone else, you / the employer is responsible for obtaining and maintaining the necessary consent of such individuals or satisfy an alternative legal basis to enable us to process their personal data on the employer’s behalf.

We process (e.g., collect, use, disclose, store) the following information for the purposes explained below:

Data Purpose(s)

(see “Why do we use your information?”)

Your contact details including, but not limited to name, business address, telephone and email address (A), (B), (D), (E), (F) and (G)
Your identification details, including (where relevant) a copy of your ID (A), (B), (D), (E) and (G)
Job title / role details (A), (B), (D), and (G)
Bank account details (B), (D) and (E)
Information about your use of our information systems (including the employer portal and the NOW: Pensions’ website) (C), (F) and (G)

Why do we use your information?

The main reasons that we, together with our third-party administrators and service providers, process your information are for the purposes of:

(A) Legal and regulatory compliance This includes where we are required, permitted or authorised to process your information based on a legal obligation, including applicable laws relating to employment, pensions, tax, establishing, exercising or defending legal claims, and reporting to or responding to requests from regulators such as The Pensions Regulator.
(B) Contract performance and management This includes where processing of your information is necessary to perform the Participation Agreement to provide pensions services to the employer and / or its employees, including to facilitate your access, provide resources to you, contact you about your pension scheme and to notify you about changes to our services.
(C) Improving our products / services This includes where the processing is necessary to enable us to gain insight into your use of our services and information systems (including the employer portal and the NOW: Pensions’ website) in order to make improvements to these, so that we can enhance your experience of using our services.
(D) Managing operations This includes the normal business practices related to our day-to-day business activities, including internal administration within our corporate group, corporate governance, effective systems and process management, planning and budgeting, financial management (including for the benefit of members), resource management, mergers and acquisitions, including due diligence and audits, internal auditing, supplier management and complaints management.
(E) Managing security and preventing fraud or unlawful activities This includes securing our IT network and systems (including the employer portal) and company information, preventing fraud or other unlawful activities such as money laundering, verification and credit risk reduction, processing carried out in accordance with regulatory guidance and reporting possible criminal acts.
(F) Marketing* This includes where processing of your information is necessary to provide you with carefully selected marketing about our products and services (in accordance with legal requirements and your preferences).
(G) Research This includes the requirements placed on us and the Trustee to develop a Scheme that aims at meeting, on an on-going basis, the needs of its members, participating employers, and intermediaries. In order to do so, we and the Trustee may from time-to-time conduct research and/or surveys which may require the use of your personal information. These activities may also include us sharing your personal data with government bodies or departments, as well as with third-party research partners (such as universities, think tanks, market research agencies, survey providers etc.).

NOW: Pensions relies on the following legal basis to process your information:

  • to comply with our legal obligations;
  • for the performance of a contract with you (where you are an individual employer) or to take steps at your request prior to entering into this contract, or
  • for the purposes of our and the Trustee’s respective legitimate interests in ensuring effective operational management and internal administration, network and information security, prevention of fraud and other unlawful activities, research, reporting of criminal acts, verification and credit risk reduction, compliance with regulatory guidance, establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims, product / service improvement and for direct

*You can object to processing based on legitimate interests at any time by contacting us at legal@nowpensions.com. You can also, at any time, unsubscribe to direct marketing by contacting us at mktoptout@nowpensions.com. Please refer to the “Your Rights” section of the privacy policy for more information about how this works and the exceptions to this.

Where we store your personal data

We and the Trustee will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is adequately protected and processed in accordance with data protection laws and this privacy policy. The data that we collect from you will primarily be stored and processed within the United Kingdom. The data that we collect from you may, however, also be transferred to, stored and processed at a destination outside the United Kingdom by us, the Trustee, our group companies, or service providers (see below).

Any transfer of your personal data to a third country or international organisation outside of the United Kingdom will only ever take place where (i) adequate data protection measures are in place for the destination country, as determined by the ICO or (ii) where ICO-approved model clauses are in place between us and any joint controller or processor.

Do we disclose personal and sensitive data to others within or outside of our group companies?

We, the Trustee, our third-party administrators and service providers have access to your personal and sensitive personal data for the purposes stated above. We share information within our corporate group, as necessary for the effective provision of pension services, and for internal administration, corporate governance and legal and regulatory compliance purposes.

The recipients of your personal data outside our group companies may include (as relevant to the services being provided) the following:

  • IT providers (including suppliers of systems, software, maintenance, rectification and hosting services);
  • marketing services and solutions providers;
  • third-party solutions that support our customer relationship management systems, complaints processes and similar;
  • government bodies or departments, as well as with third-party research partners (such as universities, think tanks, market research agencies, survey providers etc.);
  • from time-to-time, specialist consultants (but usually on an anonymised and aggregated basis) and providers of investigation services in relation to “gone away” members;
  • providers of data cleanse services to improve the quality and accuracy of the data held; and/ or

credit reference agencies, identity verification and forwarding providers or similar to carry out address and / or company details verification or address forwarding checks.

Additionally, we or the Trustee may disclose your personal information:

  • if we, the Trustee or our group companies, sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets;
  • in order to enforce other agreements you may have with us;
  • if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation or to protect our rights, property or our safety or the safety of our customers or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of verification, fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

How long do we retain your data?

We and the Trustee retain your personal data only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which this is being processed. As the purpose for our processing your personal data is directly linked to your pension, or the provision of a pension to your employees, we may retain personal data until and following your retirement or the retirement of your employees, to the extent this is required in order to manage our and the Trustees obligations in respect of your pension. Otherwise, we retain personal data in accordance with statutory retention periods, or for so long as necessary for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims.

How do we protect personal and sensitive data?

We take appropriate steps to protect the data provided to us both online and off-line. We use up to date storage and security techniques to protect your personal and sensitive personal data from unauthorised access, improper use or disclosure, unauthorised modification or destruction or accidental loss. All our employees and any third-parties we engage to process data are obliged to respect the confidentiality of such data provided to us and as required under applicable data protection or other legislation.

How can you contact us?

For further information please refer to our privacy policy available at: www.nowpensions.com/privacy-policy.

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy notice or the privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to legal@nowpensions.com. For customer service queries please go to www.nowpensions.com.

We have appointed a data protection officer who can be contacted at DPO@nowpensions.com. If you want to make a request to exercise any of your rights above or you have any concerns about the way in which we have handled your personal data.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO; so please contact us in the first instance.

 

 

Last updated: November 2021