15. How we use your information to make automated decisions

Here we tell you how we use automated systems to make decisions about you and your money. We also explain the rights you have to challenge decisions made this way.

We sometimes use systems to make automated decisions about you or your business. This helps us to make sure our decisions are quick, fair, efficient and correct, based on what we know. Automated decisions can affect the products, services or features we may offer you now or in the future, or the price that we charge you for them. They are based on personal information that we have or that we are allowed to collect from others.

Here are the types of automated decision we make:

Pricing

We may decide what to charge for some products and services based on what we know. For instance, if you use our online mortgage calculator, it will use the personal financial details you put in to estimate the kind of mortgage we may offer you. If you apply for insurance, we will compare what you tell us with other records to work out how likely you are to make a claim. This will help us to decide whether to offer you the product and what price to charge you.

Tailoring products, services, offers and marketing

We may place you in groups with similar customers. These are called customer segments. We use these to study and learn about our customers’ needs, and to make decisions based on what we learn. This helps us to design products, services and offers for different customer segments, and to manage our relationships with them. It also helps us tailor the marketing that individuals receive or are shown on our own and other websites and mobile apps, including social media.

Detecting fraud

We use your personal information to help decide if your personal or business accounts may be being used for fraud or money-laundering. We may detect that an account is being used in ways that fraudsters work. Or we may notice that an account is being used in a way that is unusual for you or your business. If we think there is a risk of fraud, we may stop activity on the accounts or refuse access to them.

Opening accounts

When you open an account with us, we check that the product or service is relevant for you, based on what we know. We also check that you or your business meet the conditions needed to open the account. This may include checking age, residency, nationality or financial position. It may mean we cannot offer you the account you want.

Approving credit

We use a system to decide whether to lend money to you or your business, when you apply for credit such as a loan or credit card. This is called credit scoring. It uses past data to assess how you’re likely to act while paying back any money you borrow. This includes data about similar accounts you may have had before.

Credit scoring uses data from three sources:

Your application form

Credit reference agencies

Data we may already hold

It gives an overall assessment based on this. Banks and other lenders use this to help us make responsible lending decisions that are fair and informed.

Credit scoring methods are tested regularly to make sure they are fair and unbiased.

This credit score can determine whether we will give you credit, or allow you to take another product or service.

Your rights

You can object to an automated decision we have made, and ask that a person reviews it.

If you want to know more about these rights, please contact us.

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