SYNERGY AUTOMOTIVE LTD TRADING AS SYNERGY CAR LEASING PRIVACY NOTICE & COOKIE POLICY

At Synergy Car Leasing, we’re committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This privacy notice sets out how and why Synergy Car Leasing collects personal information about visitors to our website, how we use it, when it may be disclosed to others and how we keep it secure. 

Synergy Car Leasing is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected. Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using this website, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy notice.

Synergy Car Leasing may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from periodically to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 30^th April 2018, and last updated 19th June 2026.

WHO WE ARE AND HOW TO CONTACT US

We are Synergy Automotive Ltd trading as Synergy Car Leasing, a leading vehicle leasing credit broker. We are a broker and not a lender.  Synergy Automotive Ltd trading as Synergy Car Leasing is a registered company in England – Company Number 6015644.  Synergy Automotive Ltd trading as Synergy Car Leasing is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) FRN 660618.

You can write to us at our trading address: Synergy Car Leasing, I2A Hornbeam Park Oval, Hornbeam Park, Harrogate HG2 8RB.  

Our telephone number is: 01423 228280

Our email address is: [email protected]

HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION FROM YOU

We collect information on you when you:

• Visit our website
• Send us an enquiry on a vehicle or vehicles you are interested in leasing
• Complete an online finance application for yourself or for your business
• Sign up to receive texts or emails from us
• When you interact with us on social media, such as when you “like” a post on Facebook or send us a message on Facebook, or when you “like” a tweet on Twitter
• When you leave us a customer review (for example, Feefo, Trustpilot, Google Reviews) or complete a survey
• When you use our live chat service
• We may also collect information from you directly if you are talking to one of our members of staff on the telephone

 WHAT TYPE OF INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We may collect the following information:

• Name and job title
• Name of your company
• Your IP address
• Contact information including postal address(es), telephone number(s) and email address(es)
• Your bank details
• Your employment history
• Your address history
• Your income and expenditure
• Information about the vehicle(s) in which you have expressed an interest in leasing
• Information which will enable us to ascertain your credit status
• Information obtained by us from third parties, such as credit reference agencies
• Information about your use of this website
• Demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
• Other information relevant to customer surveys and/or offers

All telephone calls are recorded for security, monitoring and training purposes.  We do not record any bank details on our recorded calls.  If we ask for your bank details or credit card details over the telephone, the recorded call is paused until this information has been collected.  The call recording then starts again. 

We do not store credit card details.  Your card information is not held by us, it is collected by our third party payment processors, who specialise in the secure online capture and processing of credit/debit card transactions.

HOW WE USE THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

We process personal data in accordance with UK GDPR and rely on the following lawful bases:

• Contractual necessity – where processing is necessary to take steps at your request prior to entering into a contract or to perform a vehicle leasing or finance agreement.
• Legal obligation – where processing is required to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, including FCA requirements, anti-money laundering and fraud prevention checks.
• Legitimate interests – where processing is necessary for our legitimate business interests, such as operating our business, fulfilling contractual obligations, ensuring system and data security, improving our services, preventing fraud, supporting audit and compliance activities, protecting our and any other third-party data such as TransUnion,, and marketing similar products and services, provided these interests do not override your rights and freedoms
• International transfers – We may transfer personal data to recipients or service providers located outside the UK and/or European Economic Area (EEA). Where such transfers take place, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place to protect personal data in accordance with applicable data protection laws.  These safeguards may include the use of approved standard contractual clauses, international data transfer agreements, or transfers to countries that have been recognised as providing an adequate level of data protection.
• Consent – where required by law, including for certain marketing communications and the use of non-essential cookies. You may withdraw your consent at any time.

You have the right at any time to stop us from contacting you for marketing purposes. If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, you can contact us by email, telephone or post. 

We will retain your personal data only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, including to meet legal, regulatory, accounting and reporting requirements.

In particular:

• Finance application and agreement data will typically be retained for at least six years following the end of a contractual relationship, in line with FCA requirements.
• Records relating to anti-money laundering and fraud prevention checks will be retained in accordance with applicable legal obligations.
• Marketing data will be retained until you withdraw your consent or opt out of receiving communications.
• Website analytics and cookie data will be retained in accordance with our Cookie Policy.

PROVISION OF PERSONAL DATA

The provision of certain personal data is primarily contractual, and, in some circumstances, required to meet legal and regulatory obligations.  Personal data is required to:

• Enter into and perform contracts with customers, suppliers, or business partners
• Process orders, manage accounts, and deliver our services
• Verify identity and prevent fraud; and
• Comply with applicable legal, regulatory, accounting and tax obligations

If you choose not to provide the personal data we request:

• We may be unable to enter into a contract with you
• We may be unable to fulfil orders or provide services
• We may be unable to conduct necessary verification, compliance, or fraud prevention checks; and
• As a result, our services may be delayed, restricted or declined

Where personal data is requested for optional purposes, such as marketing communications, providing this data is not mandatory, and you may withdraw your consent at any time without affecting your ability to received services from us.

CREDIT REFERENCE AGENCIES

In considering your application we or our financiers will search your record at credit reference agencies. They will add to your record details of our searches and this will be seen by other organisations that make searches. Searches will also be made in respect of directors and partners of firms applying for credit. Information held about you by the credit reference agencies may already be linked to records relating to other people with whom you have a financial association. In connection with your application you may be treated as financially linked with them and assessed with reference to any such associated records.

If you are a joint applicant or if you have told us of some financial association with another person, you are declaring that you are entitled to:

• Disclose information about you, the joint applicant and anyone referred to by you
• Authorise us to search, link or record information at credit reference agencies about you and anyone else referred to by you

It is important that you give us accurate information. We or our financiers will check your details with fraud prevention agencies and if you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we will record this.

These records will be shared with other organisations and used by us and them to:

• Help make decisions about credit and credit related services; and
• Trace debtors, recover debt, and prevent money laundering and fraud.

Fraud prevention agency records will also be shared with other organisations to help make decisions on motor and credit proposals, for you and members of your household.

Most of the finance decisions made by our finance partners are automated decisions.  Some finance decisions are made using automated processing. You have the right to request human intervention, to express your point of view, and to contest a decision.

Please email, telephone or write to us if you want to have details of those credit reference and fraud prevention agencies from whom we obtain and to whom we pass information about you. 

Credit checks may be required to be done again at a later stage, due to credit expiry, which is specific to the finance provider. You will be made aware if an additional credit check is required. This does not automatically mean you will be approved for credit again.

We may also run a preliminary credit check, or soft search, before we submit your application to our panel of finance providers. This is a search on your credit history, but cannot be seen by lenders so does not affect your credit score. It is a useful tool as it helps us check your eligibility for finance and also helps to protect your credit score as we will only submit your application if it has a high chance of being accepted. Please note that not all applications checked by a soft search will be accepted by our finance providers, as there may be other factors which affect lending decisions such as status, eligibility and affordability, for example.

CREDIT REFERENCE AND AFFORDABILITY CHECKS

To help us assess applications, prevent fraud, and meet our legal and regulatory obligations, we may obtain information about you from credit references agencies (CRAs). We obtain this information via Creditsafe, which uses its data partner TransUnion to supply consumer credit and identify data.

Creditsafe Business Solutions Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FCA Firm Reference Number: 742313. TransUnion International UK Limited is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, FCA Firm Reference Number: 805757.

The information we receive may include data relating to your identity, credit commitments, payment history, and public record information.  This data is used solely for legitimate business purposes, including creditworthiness assessment, identity verification and fraud prevention, in accordance with applicable data protection laws. 

Further information about how Creditsafe and Transunion process your personal data can be found in their respective privacy notices:

Creditsafe Privacy/Transparency Notice

Transunion CRAIN (Credit Reference Agency Information Notice)

Transunion Bureau Privacy Notice

SHARING YOUR INFORMATION WITH OTHERS

We will not sell or rent your information to third parties.

We will keep information about you and about your agreement on our database. We may pass information about you and your agreement to our parent company Newable Partnership Ltd, anyone we have appointed to help administer your agreement (including authorised dealerships who deliver your vehicle, our finance providers, appointed third party telemarketing agencies who work on our behalf and do not pass your details to other companies), to your credit insurer for administration, claims handling and fraud prevention (which could include passing it to other insurers), to insurance companies or to recover amounts owing or to anyone to whom we transfer the agreement.  We only provide the information necessary to deliver the service and we ensure that the data we pass to them is held securely.

With your permission and at your request, we will pass your details to a supplier and installer of electrical vehicle charging points called Ohme. They will contact you to provide a no-obligation quotation on the installation of a home charging point, or, if included as part of a salary sacrifice scheme, to agree the installation of the home charging point.

As part of our Salary Sacrifice scheme, if your scheme includes road insurance through our provider, we will pass your details to our third-party insurance provider, Beloy, so that the car can be insured.

We also use third-party providers to send emails and texts, to send information about our products and services as well as special offers.  For email marketing we use systems called Mailchimp, and we use Esendex and TextAnywhere to send texts.  We gather statistics around email and text opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve the information we send out. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails and replying to our texts with the word “STOP”.  

INTEREST-BASED ONLINE ADVERTISING AND GOOGLE ANALYTICS

This section of our privacy notice provides details about interest-based online advertising (also called "targeted advertising", “remarketing”, or "behavioural advertising"), Google Analytics, and your choices with respect to this type of advertising.

We use Google Analytics’ 3rd-party audience data, such as age, gender and interests, to better understand the behaviour of our customers and work with companies that collect information about your online activities to provide advertising targeted to suit your interests and preferences. For example, you may see certain ads on this website or other websites because we contract with Google and other similar companies to target our ads based on information we or they have collected, including information that was collected through automated means (such as cookies and web beacons). These companies also use automated technologies to collect information when you click on our ads, which helps track and manage the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

You may opt out of the automated collection of information by third-party ad networks for the purpose of delivering advertisements tailored to your interests, by logging into your Google Account and visiting your Privacy Settings. Because those opt-out and preference control pages are specific to the individual browser used to visit it, and because that page is not operated by Synergy Car Leasing, we are unable to perform the opt-outs on your behalf.

To find out how Google uses information from our website, see Google’s Privacy & Terms site.

SECURITY

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure, we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures to safeguard and secure the information we collect online.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our website may contain links to other websites of interest. However, once you have used these links to leave our site, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

CONTROLLING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Whenever you are asked to fill in a form on the website, look for the box that you can click to opt-in to email or text marketing.  If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by telephoning, writing to or emailing us.  In addition, you can also contact us to inform us of any changes to your personal information and we will update our records.

We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so.

You have the right to view, amend or delete the personal information we hold about you.  Please send us your request by email, telephone or post.

WEBSITE RECORDINGS

From time to time we use software to record what actions take place on our website.  This may record mouse clicks, mouse movements, page scrolling. Any text which is keyed into website forms is not recorded by this software and cannot be seen when the videos are played back.  The information collected is used to improve our website usability and is used for insights and reports to help improve our website.

HOW WE USE COOKIES

COOKIE POLICY

Our website and online services, along with most other websites, use cookies and similar technologies. For the purpose of this policy, 'cookies' and 'similar technologies' will be referred to collectively as 'cookies'.

WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Cookies are small text files containing pieces of information that websites can store on your computer's hard disk. Cookies enable users to navigate around the website and (where appropriate) allow us to continually improve the website and make it more efficient to use on future visits.

WE USE TWO TYPES OF COOKIES ON THIS WEBSITE:

Session cookies are temporary cookies that remain on your machine only for as long as you are on the website and are deleted after each visit.

Persistent cookies, which remain on your machine until expiry or deletion (many of these have automatic deletion dates). Persistent cookies may store your personal preferences, for example your language preferences on multi-lingual sites. They may also be used to record activity you may have previously completed, such as completing an online survey, so that you are not asked to complete the survey every time you use the site.

HOW WE USE COOKIES ON OUR WEBSITE

We use some 'strictly necessary' cookies within our online services. These are limited to those deemed essential to provide you with the services you have requested, for example "the shopping basket and checkout", and therefore must be allowed to continue with that service.

We also use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic.  We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners who may combine it with other information you’ve provided to them or they’ve collected from your use of their services.

Some of the cookies on our website include:

• Google Analytics– tracks visitors to the website on different devices and helps measure the effectiveness of the website
• AdWords Conversion Tracking – helps us improve and track the effectiveness of our online AdWords advertising
• Facebook Pixel –Helps us track website usage, create audiences on Facebook and generate a better ad experience to Facebook users
• Moneypenny Live Chat – this is our live chat service so we can answer any questions directly

IN ADDITION WE USE COOKIES TO:

Collect anonymous information that will help us understand visitor browsing habits on our website; compile statistical reports on website activity, e.g. number of visitors and the pages they visit; and in some cases, remember information about you when you visit our site. We may need to do this to provide some of our services.

We sometimes use third parties to assist us in the analysis of visits to and performance of our website, but no personal information is sent to the third parties for this purpose.

CHANGING YOUR COOKIE SETTINGS

You can block any cookies from any website through your browser settings. For more specific information about how to do this and how to manage cookies to suit your preferences, including deleting those that have already been added to your computer, please visit www.aboutcookies.org.

If you share the use of a computer, accepting or rejecting the use of cookies will affect all users of that computer.

CONSENT TO COOKIES

We use cookies and similar technologies to enhance your experience on our website. With the exception of strictly necessary cookies, cookies will only be placed on your device where you have provided your consent via our cookie banner. You can change or withdraw your cookie preferences at any time.

YOUR RIGHTS

Under UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, you have the following rights:

1. Informed: You have the right to be informed about the collection and use of your personal data.
2. Access: You have the right to request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
3. Rectification: You have the right to request that we correct any inaccuracies in your personal data.
4. Erasure: You have the right to request that we delete your personal data.
5. Restriction: You have the right to request that we restrict the processing of your personal data.
6. Data Portability: You have the right to request that we transfer your data to another organization.
7. Objection: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data.
8. Automated Decision-Making and Profiling: You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing
9. Withdraw Consent: If we rely on your consent to process your data, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time.
10. Make a complaint: You have the right to make a complaint with a supervisory authority if you believe your rights under GDPR have been violated.

CONTACT US

Please contact our Compliance Manager for more information.

Email: [email protected]

Telephone: 01423 228280

Post: Synergy Car Leasing, I2A Hornbeam Park Oval, Hornbeam Park, Harrogate, HG2 8RB

RIGHT TO LODGE A COMPLAINT WITH ICO

If you have any concerns about how we handle your personal data, you can raise a data protection complaint directly with our Compliance Team at [email protected].

We will investigate your concern in line with our Data Protection Complaints Procedure. We will aim to acknowledge complaints within 7 working days and respond to complaints without undue delay within 30 days but not exceeding the data protection requirements of 90 days.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Email: www.ico.org.uk

Telephone: 0303 123 113 or 01625 545 745

Post: Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF