Privacy statement
Privacy statement of The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, its subsidiaries and associate companies*
The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, its subsidiaries and associate companies (the bank, we, us, our) treat personal information we collect through this website, associated websites, mobile sites, mobile applications and other channels as private and confidential.
Collection
We collect personal information directly from you by telephone or online channels such as our website, mobile applications, or electronic messaging platforms.
We also collect personal information about you from other sources where lawful and reasonable, such as reputable third parties that you deal with or that the Standard Bank Group interacts with for the purposes of conducting its business. These third parties include:
- Business partners (including partners and participating partners involved in reward programmes, campaigns or other business activity, joint-venture partners, social media and platform partners) or companies that we may acquire or that merge with us.
- Service providers (including payment processors, card network providers, debt collection and tracing agencies, credit agencies and bureaux, electronic communication service providers, public and private data and data verification providers including data registries, aggregators, search engines, social media and marketing list providers).
- Employers, advisers, agents, associates, assignees, cessionaries, successors in title, trustees, executors, curators and appointed third parties (including lawyers and contractors).
- Government departments, regulatory authorities, courts of law and law enforcement agencies, ombudsmen and tax authorities.
If you are a third-party service provider, we may collect personal information about you as a data subject in order to ensure that the business relationship and matters relating to the agreement between you and us can be fulfilled. You warrant that, if you provide us with any personal information about other persons, such as employees, shareholders or your directors, you are authorised to share their personal information with us for purposes set out in this statement.
Providing your personal information to us is usually voluntary. However, it may be mandatory under certain circumstances, for example when you apply for products and/or services or to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. If you fail to provide us with your personal information when requested, we may not be able to provide the products or services to you or comply with our legal obligations.
Whenever you provide us with the personal information of third parties, you must inform them that you need to disclose their personal information to us. We will process the information in accordance with this statement.
What is personal information, and what types of personal information do we collect?
Personal information is any information from which you can be identified. The personal information we may collect about you includes:
- name, age, gender, sex, and identifying numbers;
- physical and email addresses and contact numbers;
- online identifiers and your online behaviour, such as cookies and IP addresses;
- engagements with us, including the use of products or services, transactions, requests, queries, applications and complaints;
- financial information, including with regard to financial behaviour, goals and needs;
- internal reports and other derivative data based on the personal information we collect
We use your personal information to:
Lawful obligations
We may need to process your personal information for the following purposes:
- To complete integrity and business conduct checks required for compliance purposes including due diligence and onboarding processes, monitoring and assurance reviews and conducting sanctions screening against any sanctions lists.
- To comply with other risk management, regulatory and legislative requirements.
- To comply with voluntary and mandatory codes of conduct.
- To detect, prevent and report theft, money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption or other potentially illegal activity, or activity that could lead to loss.
- To process and settle transactions and payments.
- To conduct research and analysis (which may include assessing product suitability, credit quality, insurance risks, market risks and affordability, developing credit models and tools and obtaining related information).
Legitimate Interest
The Standard Bank Group may process your personal information in the regular management of its business and to protect the interests of the Group and its clients, depositors, shareholders, employees and other third parties, including our business partners and members of the general public. The Standard Bank Group may process your personal information in order to:
- Maintain, monitor, improve and develop our business policies, systems and control;
- Maintain and improve data quality;
- Design, develop and test products, services and solutions for clients, which may include combining sources and types of your personal information across multiple entities and countries, subject to compliance with applicable laws;
- Personalise and customise products, services and solutions, messaging and advertising;
- Respond to client enquiries and communications and to record these interactions for the purpose of analysis and improvement;
- Manage business emergencies and stress events;
- Process and settle transactions and payments;
- Meet record-keeping
- Conduct research and analysis (among other things, to assess product suitability, credit quality, insurance risks, market risks and affordability, to conduct behavioural profiling, to develop credit models and tools and to obtain related information);
- Enable clients to use value-added solutions and participate in reward programmes
- Achieve other related purposes.
Without your personal information, we may not be able to provide or continue to provide you with the products or services that you need.
Your consent
We will process your personal information if you give us your consent willingly or in accordance with the law. You give your consent to us through our product and services agreements.
We will only disclose your personal information if:
- the law requires it;
- we have a public duty to disclose the information;
- our or your legitimate interests require disclosure; or
- you agreed that we may disclose your information.
Third parties
We ask individuals, organisations and our subsidiaries and affiliates for support. When we do this, they have to agree to our privacy principles, associated policies and practices.
We will not disclose your personal information to external organisations that are not our service providers, unless you gave us your consent, unless we may do so by law, or if it is necessary for the conclusion or performance of our agreement with you.
Transfer across borders
Sometimes we will process your personal information in other countries, either to carry out your instructions or for ordinary business purposes. These countries may not have the same level of data protection legislation. We will only process your personal information to countries that we are satisfied will provide adequate data protection, and we ensure our third-party service providers comply with the minimum data protection standards of the Standard Bank Group.
Integrated processing holds the following benefits for you:
- A single, holistic view of your information that helps us to manage your client profile, authenticate your identity and protect you against fraud.
- Improved business processes and service delivery (and less duplication of information provided).
Storing personal information
We retain your personal information in line with our legal and regulatory obligations and for our business and operational purposes as highlighted above. This will generally be for at least five years from your last transaction with us.
Our security practices
The security of your personal information is important to us and we take reasonable steps to keep your personal information safe and to prevent loss, destruction of and damage or unlawful access to your personal information by unauthorised parties. We require the same level of security to be implemented by our service providers and other third parties. However, you must not share or send us any personal information through unauthorised channels, as these are not a secure way of communication and carry a risk of interception and unauthorised access. You should only share personal information through our authorised channels.
Marketing by electronic means
If you give us permission, we may use your personal information to tell you about products, services and special offers from us or other companies that may interest you. We will do this through email, text message (SMS), social media platforms or notify you on your mobile applications. If you later decide that you do not want us to do this, please contact us through our customer service channels to stop this service.
You should read the security tips and updates on our website regularly to make sure that you benefit from our security systems, and stay updated with the latest fraud scams and trends.
Our use of technology to follow your use of our website
While you are using our websites or mobile applications, we automatically process certain personal information, such as visits to our website. We use this information to find out which areas of our website people visit most and to monitor the use of our websites. This helps us to add more value to our services. This information is gathered in such a way that we do not get personal information about any individual or their online behaviour on other websites.
Cookies
We use cookie technology on some of our websites. A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer, smartphone, tablet or other device when you visit a website or use an application. It helps to distinguish you from other users and contains specific information related to your use of our website or application, such as your login details and your preference settings, and helps the website or the application to recognise your device.
Cookies help to make a website or app function better and make it easier for us to give you a better user experience on our online channels. To use or store cookie types that are not required for the functioning of the website or app and are optional, we will obtain your consent first.
For this reason, we limit our use of cookies to:
- providing products and services that you request;
- delivering advertising through marketing communications;
- providing you with a better online experience and tracking website performance; and
- helping us make our website more relevant to you.
Types of cookies used on our website:
Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are mandatory and are required for the effective operation and functioning of our website on your device. They enable you to use the website and the features on the website and cannot be switched off.
Performance cookies
These are optional cookies that collect information about how you use the website but not any personal information. Performance information is anonymous and mostly statistical and is used to improve the performance of our website.
Marketing cookies or advertising cookies
These cookies are also optional and are used to deliver and display advertisements that are relevant and engaging for you as the user. They help us measure how effective our advertising campaigns are by your interaction with the advertisement.
Session cookies
These cookies are temporary and only exist while you browse our website to remember your activities on the website. As soon as you close your browser or move to a different website, they are removed. They allow our website to link your actions during a browser session.
Persistent cookies
These are permanent cookies, optional cookies that are stored on your device until they reach a set expiry date or until you delete them. They remember your preferences or actions across our website (or in some cases across different websites). We may use them for various reasons, such as remembering your preferences and choices when using our site, or to display only relevant advertising messages to you.
First-party cookies:
These cookies are owned and created by us when you use our website and relate to information obtained directly from you.
Third-party cookies:
These cookies are owned and created by a third party that provides a service to us, such as social media sharing, website analytics or content remarketing. These cookies are intended to collect information directly from you by us and we share the personal information with the third party through the cookies that the third party stores on our website.
How to disable cookies
You can stop your browser from accepting cookies by changing the settings on your web browser. Be aware that restricting cookies may impact the functionality of our websites. We recommend that you allow cookies. On most browsers cookies are enabled by default. Explore the settings and options on your browser to disable or enable them, or visit https://www.aboutcookies.org for detailed information about managing cookies on various browsers.
Links to other websites
Our website, related websites and mobile applications may have links to or from other websites. Although we try to link only to websites that also have high privacy standards, we are not responsible for their security, privacy practices or content. We recommend that you always read the privacy and security statements on these websites.
Monitoring of electronic communications
We communicate with you through different methods and channels. If allowed by law, we may record and monitor electronic communications to make sure that they comply with our legal and regulatory responsibilities and internal policies.
Monitoring and analysis
We will monitor and analyse your account for credit, fraud, compliance and other risk-related purposes as required by law.
Social media
We operate and communicate through our designated channels, pages and accounts on some social media sites to inform, help and engage with our customers. We monitor and record comments and posts made about us on these channels so that we can improve our services.
The general public can access and read any information posted on these sites. We are not responsible for any information posted on those sites other than the information posted by our designated officials. We do not endorse the social media sites themselves, or any information posted on them by third parties or other users.
We do not give investment, tax or other professional advice on social media sites. You should always get independent advice before making any decisions.
When you engage with us through social media your personal information may be processed by the site owner; this process is outside our control and may be in a country outside South Africa that may have different data protection laws. For more information about the privacy practices of a social media platform, please refer to and read the terms and conditions of that social media platform before you use it or share any personal information on it.
Social media sites are not appropriate forums to discuss our customers' products or financial arrangements. We will not ask you to share personal, account or security information on social media sites. We may, however, ask you to message us in private through one of our official social media accounts. You can verify the authenticity of any communication you receive from us by contacting our help team at help@snapscan.co.za.
We regularly update and monitor our social media accounts and welcome feedback and ideas sent to us through these channels. We try to join conversations whenever possible, but cannot guarantee that we will read or reply to all messages sent to official SnapScan social media accounts.
Emerging themes and helpful suggestions will be given to the relevant people within SnapScan for consideration, but we cannot guarantee that any themes or suggestions will be acted on.
Your rights
We value your trust and want you to be familiar with your rights under the legislation and to know how you can exercise them in your interactions with SnapScan and the Standard Bank Group. You have the right to:
- access the personal information we hold about you and to correct and update your information;
- object to our processing your personal information, where applicable;
- request that we delete your personal information where appropriate;
- be notified that your personal information is being collected by us or has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person;
- object to the processing of personal information for the purposes of direct marketing;
- not be subject to automated decision-making processes in respect of an application for products and/or services, except under certain circumstances; and
- to request reasons or make a representation to us if your application for products and/or services is refused.
Right to change this privacy statement
We may change this privacy statement from time to time in accordance with changes in our products or services or regulatory requirements. We will make reasonable efforts to notify you through suitable communication channels. We will publish all changes on our website. The latest version of our privacy statement will replace all earlier versions unless it says differently.
Legal entities under the Standard Bank Group in South Africa
The Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, Diners Club (S.A.) (Pty) Ltd, Standard Bank Financial Services Holdings (Pty) Ltd, Standard Offshore Finance Company (Pty) Ltd, Melville Douglas Investment Management (Pty) Ltd, FHPManagers (Pty) Ltd, Standard Trust Limited, Standard Insurance Limited, Stanhold Investments (Pty) Ltd, Greenfield Newgate (Pty) Ltd, The Unisec Group Limited, Standard Bank Properties (Pty) Ltd, Blue Waves Properties 78 (Pty) Ltd, SBG Securities (Pty) Ltd.
Queries and complaints
Should you have any queries relating to the processing of your personal information by the Standard Bank Group in South Africa, please contact our Information Officer at infoofficer@standardbank.co.za.
After engaging us and should your queries still not be addressed to your satisfaction, you have the right to lodge a formal complaint with the SA Information Regulator using Form 5, available at www.inforegulator.org.za.
You can also contact the regulator directly as follows:
JD House, 27 Stiemens Street, Braamfontein, 2001 for all complaints.
POPIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za – for all complaints relating to your personal information.
PAIAComplaints@inforegulator.org.za – for all complaints relating to access to information.
