Privacy policy

Principality Building Society is committed to protecting your privacy and ensuring that any personal information provided by you is secure.

If you have any queries with regard to our privacy policy, please contact our Customer Contact Centre – we'll be happy to help.

How we collect information from you

We may collect and hold some information about you whether you are an existing Principality customer or a first time visitor to this website. When you use tools such as calculators no information you enter will be stored.

We collect personal information through online forms, enquiries and if you register to submit or track applications on the web site. You can view information about products without submitting any personal information. We may track the number of users who visit our website but this will not involve identifying you as an individual.

Why we collect information from you

The information we collect from you may be used for the purposes of:

• Providing information and services requested by you
• Enabling us to make a response to your application
• Personalising our service
• Administering accounts
• Crime prevention and prosecution of offenders
• Carrying out statistical and business analysis and market research.
• Developing new products and services
• Improving levels of service
  • Checking details on applications for credit and credit related or other facilities
  • Managing credit and credit related accounts or facilities
  • Recovering debt
  • Checking details on proposals and claims for all types of insurance
  • Checking details of job applicants and employees
• Please contact us at PO BOX 89, Queen Street, Cardiff CF10 1UA if you want to receive details of the relevant fraud prevention agencies.
• We and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies.
• Providing you with information about our products and services, the products and services of other companies within our group and the products and services offered jointly with, or on behalf of our carefully selected financial services partners. We may also share information with those organisations where you have agreed that we may do so.

At Principality we comply with anti money laundering regulation and in doing so all of our customers who enter into a business relationship with us satisfy these regulations.  In applying for an on-line, e-savings account we will verify your identity electronically, matching your information against information held by Credit Reference and Fraud Prevention agencies.  Details of credit histories are no made available to us and, although the data provider logs the search, it cannot be used for future credit assessment purposes and does not affect your credit rating.

Where we cannot obtain an electronic match we may ask you to provide physical forms of identification, details of which can be found on Proving your identity.

If you use the e-mail or "Tell us what you think" links on our "Contact us" page, we will only use any information you send us to answer your enquiry or provide you with product information that you have requested.

Where we intend to use your information to carry out credit reference searching or for marketing purposes you will be notified on our site at the time you are providing us with your information. You will be asked for consent to use of your information for marketing purposes and you have the right at any time after you have given any consent to change you mind.

We do use other organisations from time to time to assist us in providing services to you. We will make your information available to them but always in the strictest confidence.

How the information we collect from you is stored

Information collected about you will be stored on a secure database. We will hold information about you for as long as is necessary and in accordance with regulatory requirements. Where a mortgage application is submitted, the information will be retained for at least the lifetime of the mortgage and usually for 6 years after redemption.

Cookies – what they are and why we use them

Our website uses both permanent and session cookies. We may use these and single-pixel images to assess the number of people viewing a particular web page.  A cookie is a string of text that gets entered into the memory of your browser enabling our server to collect information from you and to refer to it when you visit or use the site again. Cookies cannot damage your computer. Cookies enable users to view personalised information, carry out transactions and to gain access to their accounts. We may use cookies to identify you upon visiting our website and for the purposes of collecting demographic information and we will need to use cookies if you register to use our site to apply for a mortgage or to track the progress of your mortgage application.

Once all your browser windows are closed, session cookies are automatically deleted. Permanent cookies may also be deleted  but this should not affect your ability to use our website.

You may choose to set your browser not to accept cookies. Please be aware that in doing this you may not be able to use many of the tools and facilities on our web site.

Disabling cookies

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and above

• Select the "Tools" menu
• Choose "Internet Options"
• Click on the "Security" tab
• Press the "Custom Level" button
• Scroll down to "Cookies" and select your preference

Netscape Navigator 4 and above

• Select the "Edit" menu
• Choose "Preferences"
• Click n the "Advanced" option
• Select your "Cookies" preference

If you have a different browser, please refer to the help section on it.

Using our site and security of your information

When you use our site to send us information, we ensure that the information you send us is scrambled and can only be translated by us by using a secure socket layer.

Open e-mails are not secure and we do not recommend that you send confidential or personal information to us in this way. If you use standard e-mail to communicate with us, your information will not be protected and we will not be able to guarantee that it will remain confidential whilst in transit and cannot accept any responsibility for any consequential disclosure. You need to bear this in mind if you ask us to communicate with you in this way.

Other Websites

We have links to other websites, which are not covered by our privacy policy. Other websites' privacy policies may differ from ours and if you access other sites, information may be collected about you in accordance with the privacy policy of the other sites. We cannot accept responsibility for the content of any other websites.