Transfer of personal information overseas

If we transfer your personal information to a person, office, branch, or organisation located outside of Malta or the EEA, we will make sure that they agree to apply the same levels of protection and is in line with applicable legal requirements, and to use your information strictly in accordance with our instructions. We would only share your personal information outside of Malta or the EEA:

• If you have explicitly consented to the transfer;
• If the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract between you and the Bank or in order to enter into a contract at your request;
• In order to comply with a legal duty;
• To protect the vital interest of you, or another, where you are physically or legally incapable of providing consent;

If we do transfer your personal information to a person, office, branch or organisation outside of Malta or the EEA, we will ensure that it is protected in line with the applicable legal requirements by using one of the following safeguards:

• Transfer it to a country which has privacy laws that give the equivalent required protections;
• Ensure there is a legally binding contract between the Bank and the recipient of the personal information requiring the same level of protection of your information.

Automated decisions and personal information

The Bank does not use your personal information to conduct automatic ‘profiling’ decisions. However, we do use third party organisations who use automated ‘decision’ making in relation to identification checks only, as part of the account opening process. You have the right to object to an automated ‘decision’, and ask that a person reviews it.

Some of the personal information we hold – or are allowed to obtain from others – about you may be used to assist us in our decision-making process. For example:

Account opening

The Bank will use the information you have provided to ensure that the product or service is relevant and meets the conditions needed to open the account.

Identifying fraudulent activity

The Bank has in place systems and controls to prevent fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing, and we may use your personal information to decide if your account is being used for these purposes. If we think the account is being used to facilitate such offences, we may block the account and refuse access to it.

Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs)

We may use Credit Reference Agencies (CRAs) for prospective and existing customers of the Bank. We conduct identity checks when you apply for a product or services for you or your business. Where we are unable to verify your identity by this means, we will ask you to provide physical forms of identification and may contact you in this respect.

We may share your personal information with CRAs and they may provide us with information about you, including:

• Personal details including name, address and date of birth
• Credit status
• Details of credit you may hold with a joint account holder
• Financial information and history
• Information sourced from the public domain

Such information may be used for the following purposes:

• Check details on applications and meet our regulatory requirements to fully identify our customers;
• For the prevention of fraud, financial crime and counter terrorism offences;
• Recovery of debts owed to the Bank;
• Check details of job applicants and employees;

Information held about you by a CRA may already be linked to records relating to your partner or members of your household where a financial ‘association’ has been created. Any enquiry we make at a CRA may be assessed with reference to any ‘associated’ records. Another person’s record will be ‘associated’ with yours when:

• You make a joint application;
• You advise us of a financial association with another person;
• The CRA have existing, linked or ‘associated’ records. This ‘association’ will be taken into account in all future applications by either or both of you and shall continue until one of you applies to the CRA and is successful in filing a ‘disassociation’.

If you choose not to give personal information

As already stated in this statement, we may collect personal information on several bases including with your consent, for our legitimate reasons, due to legal or regulatory obligations, or under the terms of a contract we have with you. If you choose not to provide us personal information, it may delay or prevent us from meeting our obligations. It may also mean that we cannot perform services needed to run your accounts. It may also result in the cancellation of a product or service you hold with us.

Should any information collection be considered optional, we would specify this clearly from the outset.

Records and retention of personal information

The Bank will store all personal information as securely as possible, in a confidential manner.

We will only retain your personal information for as long as you are a customer of The Access Bank Malta Limited or otherwise for a limited period of time as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we have initially collected it, unless otherwise required for legal, regulatory or fraud prevention purposes.

After account closure, or if your application has been declined or not progressed for any reason, we may retain information about you for up to 10 years where necessary for one of the following reasons:

• To respond to any information requests or complaints.
• To maintain records according to regulations or legal requirements that apply to us.

We may keep your information for longer than 10 years if we are prevented from deleting it for the above mentioned legal, regulatory and fraud prevention reasons.

If we have not contacted you during this retention period, we will delete your personal information at the end of this period.

Your rights regarding your personal information

The right of access to your information that we hold:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) you have a right to see a copy of the information we hold on you.  You can ask for a copy of this information by making a Personal Information Request (PIR) to us.  This request can be made by email to dpo@theaccessbankmaltaltd.mt or in writing to:

Data Protection Officer
The Access Bank Malta Limited,
c/o Level 4 The Piazzetta Business Plaza,
Triq Għar il-Lembi, Sliema SLM 1605  Malta

Should you make such a request, the Bank will supply you with this information within one month of the request (extended for a further two months for complex/numerous requests in which case we will advise you of the extension within the one-month period).  We may charge you an administration fee (based on the administrative costs of providing the information) for this service, or refuse to respond, where a request is ‘manifestly unfounded or excessive’. If we refuse to respond, we will explain to you the reason why the request has been refused and inform you of your right to complain, within one month of the receipt of the request.

In cases where large amounts of personal information are processed by us about you, it is permissible under GDPR for us to ask you to specify the information to which the request relates.

The right to rectify inaccurate information:

If any information we hold for you is incorrect, you may request us to rectify this at any time by contacting us by email, telephone or in writing to the Data Protection Officer at the above address. Taking into account the purposes of the processing, you have the right to have incomplete personal information completed, including by means of providing a supplementary statement.

If we have disclosed such personal information to a third party, we will inform them of the rectification where possible and inform you of the third parties to whom the inaccurate or incomplete information has been disclosed, where appropriate.

The right to restrict or object to the processing of information:

You may ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information at any time, or you may object to our continued use of your information by contacting us by email, telephone or in writing to the Data Protection Officer at the above address. You may do this in the following circumstances:

• Where you contest the accuracy of the personal information, we must restrict the processing until we have verified the accuracy of the personal information.
• Where you have objected to the processing (where it was necessary for the performance of a public interest task or a purpose in our legitimate interests), and we are considering whether our legitimate interests override your own interests.
• Where processing is unlawful and you oppose erasure and request restriction of processing instead.
• Where we no longer need the personal information but you require the information to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim.

This does not affect any processing that has been carried out prior to your request being received. If you have requested or objected to processing of your personal information, this does not prevent us continuing to store the information.

Where we have disclosed personal information, we hold about you to a third party we will inform the third party of any restriction on the processing of that personal information.

We will inform you when we decide to lift a restriction on processing of personal information, we hold about you.

The right to information portability:

You may ask us to move, copy or transfer your personal information directly to another organisation if this is technically feasible to do so in a safe and secure way.  You can request this by contacting us by email, telephone or in writing to the Data Protection Officer at the above address.

The right to have your information erased:

Also known as the ‘right to be forgotten’ this allows you to request that we delete any or all personal information that we hold about you where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing, for one of the following reasons:

• Where the personal information is no longer necessary in relation to the purpose it was originally collected/processed;
• Where you withdraw consent;
• Where you object to processing and there is no overriding legitimate interest for continuing to process the information;
• Where the personal information was unlawfully processed (e.g. otherwise in breach of GDPR);
• Where the personal information has to be erased to comply with a legal obligation; or
• Where the personal information is processed in relation to the offer of information society services to a child

You can make this request at any time by contacting us by email, telephone or in writing to the Data Protection Officer at the above address.

We can refuse to erase personal information we hold about you where it is processed for the following reasons:

• To exercise the right of freedom of expression and information.
• To comply with a legal obligation or for the performance of a public interest task or exercise of official authority.
• For public health purposes in the public interest.
• Archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific research, historical research or statistical purposes.
• The exercise or defence of legal claims.

If we erase personal information we hold about you, we will inform any third parties about the erasure UNLESS it is impossible or involves disproportionate effort to do so.

The right to withdraw your consent:

You may withdraw your consent at any time. This will not affect any usage of your information carried out up until that point but would have immediate effect from when we receive your request.  Please contact us by phone, email or in writing to address above if you wish to do so.

If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. If this is so, we will tell you.

Marketing

The Bank has made a policy decision that we will not send unsolicited marketing material to you. Should this position change, we will write to you.

If you wish to make a complaint

If for any reason you are unhappy with our use of your personal information and you wish to lodge a complaint, please contact us by email, telephone or in writing to the Data Protection Officer at the above address.

You have the right to lodge a complaint at any time to a competent supervisory authority on data protection matters, such as in particular the supervisory authority in the place of your habitual residence or your place of work. In the case of Malta, this is the Office of the Information and Data Protection Commissioner (the “IDPC”) (https://idpc.org.mt/en/Pages/Home.aspx). We would, however, appreciate the opportunity to deal with your concerns before you approach the supervisory authority, so please contact us in the first instance.

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