Sikamaster (SM) is committed to ensuring that your personal information is used properly and is kept securely. This Privacy Policy explains how we will collect and use your personal information. When you submit personal information on the website you will see a Data Protection Notice that will provide additional information about how your personal information will be used by SM.
“SM”, “we”, “us” and “our” means SM Financial.
Data Controller
Any personal information that you provide on this website is controlled by SM.
If you have any queries about the information we hold about you, please contact our Compliance Manager at PO BOX AN 19969, Accra-North. Ghana.
Collection of your personal information
When you visit our site, request a quote or complete a loan application you may be asked to provide information about yourself. You may also provide personal information to us when you contact us by email, telephone or letter. We may collect information about you from documents that are available to the public, such as the electoral register, or from third parties such as credit reference agencies. When you provide personal information to us or we collect personal information from other sources, we will treat that information in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Use of your personal information
We will use personal information provided by you (including information about your spouse or financial associate where you have made a joint application) or gathered by SM for the following purposes:
• to process and respond to requests, enquiries and complaints received from you;
• to assess applications made by you for a loan;
• to provide products and services requested by you;
• to communicate with you about your account and services provided to you;
• to process payments;
• to update our records;
• to analyse trends and profiles;
• for audit purposes;
• to carry out customer satisfaction research;
• to prevent or detect fraud;
• to recommend products and services that we believe will be of interest to you;
• to enable third parties to carry out any of the purposes above on our behalf.
Sharing of your personal information
SM may share your personal information with third parties in the following ways:
1. We sometimes use agents and service providers to process personal information on our behalf. Where we use agents and service providers to process your personal information, we will ensure that they have adequate security measures in place to safeguard your personal information.
2. We will release your personal information when we are required to do so for legal or regulatory purposes or as part of legal proceedings.
3. We may give information we hold about you to third parties as part of the process of selling one or more of our businesses.
4. Where we have your permission, we will pass your personal information to carefully selected third parties so that they can contact you about products or services that they think may interest you.
5. When we carry out credit checks, we pass your information to credit reference agencies. We may also pass your information to fraud prevention agencies as a way of reducing the risk of fraud. This information may also be accessed by third parties who carry out credit and fraud checks on you. For further details of the way credit reference agencies and fraud prevention agencies may use your data, please see the section below entitled "Credit Reference Agencies and Fraud Prevention Agencies".
6. If we are not able to provide you with a loan, we may transfer your information to other potential lenders for the purposes of assessing your application, and administering and enforcing any subsequent loan which may be granted.
7. We may also share your information with associated companies. We may do this so that those companies can contact you about products and services that you may be interested in or to invite you to take part in market research.
8. In some circumstances we may transfer your personal information to countries outside the European Economic Area where data protection safeguards are not as high as they are in Ghana. If this happens, we will ensure that adequate controls are put into place to protect your personal information to the same standard as if it remained in Ghana.
Credit Reference Agencies and Fraud Prevention Agencies: FAQ
Credit reference agencies (CRAs) collect and maintain information on consumers' and businesses' credit behaviour, on behalf of lenders in Ghana. Although you have applied to us, and we will check our own records, we will also contact CRAs to get information on your credit behaviour with other organisations. This will help us make the best possible assessment of your overall situation before we make any lending decisions. We may collect the following information:
• Information on your personal accounts and other personal commitments'
• Financial information on associates’ personal accounts if there are any financial links with you;
• Business accounts if you are a director or partner in a small business;
• Data held by fraud prevention agencies on you and your business if you have one.
Information that is supplied to us will be sent to the credit reference agencies, who may keep a record of that information. If you give us false or inaccurate information and we suspect fraud, we will record this and may also pass this information to financial and other organisations involved in fraud protection to protect us, them and our respective customers from theft and fraud.
To find out more information about how credit reference agencies use your data you can contact the following major credit reference agencies. In order to provide you with this information, they will charge you a small statutory fee.
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How we use cookies
A “cookie” is a small piece of information that is stored on the browser on your computer’s hard drive. Most websites use cookies to improve the way the website works and to provide information to website operators about use of the website. We use cookies to allow you to use and navigate our site, to collect information about how visitors use our site and to enable us to improve the site. Most web browsers allow you to manage and block the use of cookies by changing your browser settings. If you choose not to accept cookies on our site this may affect the quality of your visit to our site.
Your rights
Where you have agreed that we may do so, we may contact you by phone, fax, post, email or SMS to tell you about our services, products, offers, events and promotions. We may also share your information with third parties to enable them to contact you to tell you about their products and services.
You have the right to opt out of us contacting you for marketing purposes or sharing information about you with other companies for marketing purposes by contacting us by post at SM Financial Ltd, PO BOX AN 19969, Accra-North, Accra, Ghana. or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and informing us of this decision.
You may correct errors in your information or request that we remove information about you from our records by sending us a request detailing your request to the address above. In most cases we will comply promptly with your request and let you know when we have done so. However, sometimes we will not be obliged to comply with your request. If this is the case we will inform you of our decision and the reasons for that decision.
To protect your privacy and the security of your information, we may take reasonable steps to verify your identity before we act on any request which you may make in respect of your information.
Updates
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Please ensure that you check the Privacy Policy regularly for updates.