Privacy policy

This policy covers capitalmortgageadvice.co.uk. It is written to be read, not to be survived — if anything here is unclear, email us and we will explain it.

Who is responsible for your data

The data controller for this site is Capital Mortgage Advice Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 17371265, registered office 153 Springwood, Cardiff CF23 6UF. We are registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under reference ZC212784.

If you have any question about this policy, or want to exercise any of the rights below, email [email protected].

What we collect

Only what you type in. This website does not run a credit search, we do not buy data about you, and we do not fingerprint or track you across other websites.

If you join the mailing list

Your email address.
The page you subscribed from, the date, and the version of the consent wording you agreed to — so we can prove what you actually agreed to.
If you subscribed from one of our calculators, the answers you gave that tool (for example a property price or a visa type) so the emails we send are relevant. These are figures and short labels, never a name or an address.

If you send an enquiry or ask for a call back

Your name, phone number and email address.
A short description of your situation (for example “first-time buyer” or “adverse credit”), and, if you gave one, the time of day you would prefer to be called.
The page you enquired from.
If you book a call in our online calendar: the time you chose.
If you book from a UK mobile number, we text that number a confirmation when you book and a reminder about 30 minutes before the call. These texts are only about your booking, never marketing.
If you send Phillip a message: how you’d like a reply, your phone number or email address, what it’s about, your message, the best time to call if you gave one, and any of the support options you ticked.

If you ask for credit-timeline reminders

The adverse-credit reminder service stores your email address and the month and year of the credit events you tell us about — a default, a CCJ, a bankruptcy discharge — so we can email you when those events age past the points where lenders treat them differently. We store the dates only, never any detail about the event, the amount, or the creditor. This is a separate opt-in with its own tick box: without an explicit consent we do not write anything at all.

If you become a client

This policy covers the website. If you go ahead with mortgage advice we will need more information about you to give it, and with your agreement a lender may run a soft credit search for a Decision in Principle. Your information is then shared with our principal, Stonebridge Mortgage Solutions Ltd, and with the lenders and insurers you apply to. We will explain how it is used before advice begins.

If you ask us to refer you to a specialist adviser (for equity release or a second charge mortgage), we’ll pass your name and contact details to them, only with your permission.

How we check documents you send us

We use secure software to help us check the payslips, bank statements and other documents you send us. Part of it uses an artificial intelligence (AI) service from Google Cloud to read your documents. This runs in the UK and EU, and Google does not use your information to train its AI. The software points out things for your adviser to look at; it does not make decisions about you, and your adviser reviews everything. We delete your documents from it within a month, and what was read from them within 90 days.

We may also email you reminders about documents we still need. These come from your adviser's own mailbox, through Microsoft 365. The companies that provide this for us are Google Cloud (hosting and AI reading), Cloudflare (secure sign-in) and Microsoft (email).

Analytics and Google Ads measurement

If, and only if, you accept on the cookie banner, we collect anonymous usage data — which pages get read, roughly where in the world visitors are, what kind of device they use. Accepting also turns on Google Ads measurement: if you arrived by clicking one of our Google adverts, Google records that click and whether an enquiry followed, so we can see which adverts work. It is never used for remarketing or to personalise the adverts you see. See the cookie policy for exactly what that sets.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

Consent — for the mailing list, the credit-timeline reminders, analytics and Google Ads measurement. You gave it deliberately and you can take it back at any time, as easily as you gave it.
Steps prior to entering a contract — for enquiries. If you ask us to call you back about a mortgage, we use your details to do exactly that, and if you book a call, to confirm it and remind you of it by email and text.
Legitimate interests — for keeping the site secure and working (for example rate-limiting our forms so they cannot be abused). We have weighed this against your privacy and it involves no profiling.

We do not sell your data, we share nothing with advertisers beyond the Google Ads measurement described above (and only if you accept it), and we do not use it to make automated decisions about you.

Who else touches it

These are processors acting on our instructions, not independent users of your data:

Google Cloud — hosts the site and the database. Data is stored in Europe.
Microsoft 365 — sends and receives our email, and holds the calendar that booked calls are kept in.
Cloudflare — sits in front of the site to keep it fast and to block malicious traffic.
Twilio — sends the booking confirmation and reminder texts. Twilio may handle your mobile number and the text of the message outside the UK, under the data-transfer safeguards in its contract with us.
Google Analytics — only if you accepted the cookie banner.

If you accept Google Ads measurement on the cookie banner, Google also receives the reference of the advert you clicked and whether an enquiry followed, and handles it under its own privacy policy. It never receives your name, email address or phone number from us.

We will also disclose data where the law requires it. That is the complete list of processors (sharing once you become a client is described above); there is no other advertising network in it.

The affordability tool

Our affordability page embeds a calculator from Mortgage Affordability, a trading name of Capital Mortgage Advice Ltd. Anything you type into that calculator is covered by the Mortgage Affordability privacy policy, not this one. It does not pass your figures back to this site.

How long we keep it

Mailing list: until you unsubscribe. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe link, and using it stops everything.
Enquiries: kept while we are helping you and afterwards only as long as we need to, then deleted.
Credit-timeline reminders: until the last reminder has been sent or you unsubscribe, whichever comes first.
Documents you send us to check: deleted from our checking system within a month, and what was read from them within 90 days. Records we must keep by law are held separately.

You can ask us to delete your data sooner and we will — see below.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you can ask us to:

give you a copy of the data we hold about you;
correct it if it is wrong;
delete it;
stop or restrict how we use it, or object to us using it;
send it to you, or to someone else, in a portable format;
withdraw a consent you previously gave.

Email [email protected] and we will respond within one month. There is no charge.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled it, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

Cookies and analytics

Analytics and Google Ads measurement run only after you accept them on the cookie banner. Before that, none of their cookies exist and Google's tag runs in a consent-denied, cookieless mode. Rejecting is exactly as easy as accepting, and you can change your mind whenever you like:

Full detail in the cookie policy. See also our terms of use.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle your data we will update this page and move the date at the top. We do not touch that date for cosmetic edits, so if it has moved, something real has changed.