You have the right to ask us to delete the personal information we hold about you — often called the right to erasure or the "right to be forgotten" under the UK GDPR. We honour it. But erasure is not absolute: some records we are legally required to keep for a set period, and this article explains, honestly, what can and cannot be erased and when.
How to make the request
Use the General Support Enquiry form on our Forms & Requests page and tell us you are making an erasure request, or contact our privacy team directly. We will verify your identity first — this protects you from someone else asking us to delete or expose your records — and then act on the request within the statutory time limit.
What we can delete
Where we are holding data only because you consented, or for a purpose that no longer applies, we will erase it on request. Common examples include marketing-contact data and information tied to an enquiry that did not lead to a loan. If you simply want marketing to stop, you do not need a full erasure request — you can withdraw consent per channel in your preferences.
What we usually cannot delete straight away
- A live loan. While an agreement is active we have to keep the records needed to administer it and to meet our legal and regulatory obligations.
- Loan and repayment history. After the agreement ends, lending and repayment records — including data shared with business credit reference agencies — are retained for a defined period so other lenders see an accurate picture. See how long we keep your records for the timescales.
- Anti-money-laundering and identity records. The law requires us to keep these for a set period after our relationship ends.
When a record falls under one of these exceptions, we will tell you which exception applies and when the data will become eligible for deletion, rather than simply refusing.
Your other data rights
Erasure is one of several rights. You can also ask for a copy of your data through a subject access request, ask us to correct anything inaccurate, and object to certain uses. Our Privacy Policy sets out the full list and how we handle each one.
A note on credit reference data
We cannot unilaterally erase records held by a business credit reference agency about your company; those are governed by the agency's own retention rules. What we can do is correct anything we have reported inaccurately and ask the agency to update it — see what we share with business credit reference agencies.