Access Bank (SL) Ltd respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data.
As a valued customer or other data subject, we remain committed to safeguarding your information with the utmost diligence. You have the right to make decisions regarding the sharing of your personal information. We encourage you to make informed choices that allow us to offer you high-quality products and services tailored to meet your financial needs.
This Privacy Policy seeks to provide you with information about how Access Bank (SL) Ltd processes your personal information (including the collection, usage, storage, retention, and security of your Personal Data).
What constitutes consent?
You consent to our use of your personal information when you (voluntarily) provide us with them to access any of our products online or in any of our banking outlets. You also consent when you sign forms or documents enabling us to provide certain services to you.
Security of personal information
Safeguarding your personal information is our main concern. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable laws to secure your information from unauthorized access and use, accidental or unlawful alteration and destruction, and other unlawful or unauthorized forms of processing. We engage in the continuous training of our employees in the proper management of personal information. When we use other companies to provide services, we require them to protect the confidentiality of the personal information they receive.
At Access Bank (SL) Ltd, we take data protection very seriously and we provide our customers with all necessary data security to protect such personal information from unauthorized access. We require any third parties who carry out any work on our behalf to comply with appropriate compliance standards to protect your information. We are pleased to announce that we comply with global best practices and other relevant legislation.
The information we collect
We currently collect and process personal information necessary to open a bank account and render any other banking services as we engage in our normal course of business. These includes the following:
What we use your Personal Data For?
Access Bank (SL) Ltd will always process your personal data for a specific purpose and process only the personal data relevant to achieving that purpose. Depending on our relationship with you and the products and services that we provide to you, we may process your personal data for the following compatible purposes:
1. Account opening.
2. Providing products and services including identity verification, transaction processing, cards issuance and keeping adequate records.
3. For communication purposes through various mediums such as in person, via phone, SMS, email, and managing any customer complaints.
4. Managing our customer and related parties’ relationships including compiling internal reports, managing clients’ files, and conducting risk assessments.
5. Carrying out operational and administrative functions including the processing of payments, and access management.
6. To study how our customers use our products and services, testing new products and managing our brand.
7. When you visit our branches, we use CCTV cameras for security reasons and record keeping purposes.
8. For direct marketing of products and services that we think may be of interest to you, our client or prospective client.
9. To meet the Bank`s regulatory obligations. This includes compliance checks, transactions monitoring and reporting, making disclosures to, and complying with requests from public authorities, regulators, tax authorities, governmental bodies, or law enforcement agencies, investigating and preventing fraud.
10. To administer and protect our business and our website, ensure business continuity, manage complaints, undertake remediation activities, and resolve queries (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data).
11. Allowing access to our website and other banking platforms.
12. Conduct background checks and maintenance of employee database.
Basis for Processing Information
We shall process your information on the following basis:
1. To enter and perform our contractual obligations.
2. To comply with our legal obligations.
3. For the performance of a statutory duty.
4. For the legitimate interest of Access Bank (SL) Ltd and our Data Subjects.
5. To satisfy a public interest.
6. Prior consent has been obtained from data subjects for the use and processing of personal data.
Information We Share
We may share information with other people for any of the reasons provided above. The category of persons who may be entitled to this information may include:
a. Any employee of Access Bank (SL) Ltd who may need the information to administer a contract or service we are providing to you.
b. Auditors, third-party service providers (local and foreign), agents or independent contractors who assist the Bank to provide customers with a product or service.
c. Third parties with accruing legal obligations e.g., trustees and executors, guarantors, anyone holding a power of attorney to operate an account on your behalf and joint account holders.
d. Correspondent Banks, Counterparties and Collaborators to process a transaction or service.
e. A merchant or a member of a card association where the disclosure is in connection with usage of a card (including Debit card, Credit card and Prepaid Cards).
f. Any person authorized to operate your account and to act on your behalf in giving instructions.
g. Any person to whom disclosure is permitted or required by local or foreign law.
h. Any court of competent jurisdiction, regulator, law enforcement agency, tax authority, or an authority investigating an offence or their agents.
i. Any debt collection agency, credit bureau or credit reference agency.
j. Money laundering and Terrorism financing related checks, for fraud prevention and detection.
Individual Rights
You are entitled to the following rights as a data subject:
1. Right to be informed
2. Right of access to personal data
3. Right to restrict processing
4. Right to object
5. Right to give and withdraw consent.
6. Right to amend (rectification)
7. Right to erasure/deletion
8. Right to data portability
9. Freedom from automated decision-making
10. Right to lodge complaints
Children
Access Bank (SL) Ltd understands and acknowledges the importance of safeguarding children’s privacy, hence, our sites are not intentionally designed for or directed at children under the age of 18. It is our policy never to knowingly collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 18, except as part of an engagement to provide child-categorized account opening services which requires parental guardianship.
Data security and integrity
We have implemented reasonable and effective security policies and procedures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, data loss and misuse, alteration, or destruction. To the best of our ability, access to your personal information is limited to those who have a need to know and are required to always maintain the confidentiality of such information. Despite our best efforts and intentions, we acknowledge that security cannot be absolutely guaranteed against all threat actors. Hence, we also make reasonable efforts to retain personal information only for so long:
Cookies Policy
Cookies are pieces of information that our website and applications transfer to your computer to enable our systems to recognize your browser and tailor the information on our website to your interests.
Access Bank (SL) Ltd and our service providers may use cookies to collect information about you so we can provide the experiences you request, recognize your visit, track your interactions, and improve experience with all customers.
Cookies may also be used on our platforms to retain information on the last activities of the user.
This information continues to be accessible by the user the next time he/she visits the website. The web browser quickly uses it to remember the last activity of the user on the website and allows him/her to continue from there without reloading the entire website at every visit. This helps greatly to boost the user's experience on the website in terms of the website's speed over the browser.
Although most browsers automatically accept cookies, you can amend your browser settings to disable cookies. This may however prevent you from fully experiencing the website as it was intended.
The cookies are not stored in a permanent storage, like a database, and so are deleted once the browsers are closed, or can be singled out for deletion by clearing out the browser's data.
How long we keep your information?
Access Bank (SL) Ltd shall keep your information for as long as it is necessary and relevant to the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law. When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we may either delete or anonymize such information, or if this is not possible (for example, because your personal information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your information and isolate it from further processing.
How we keep your information secure
We have put in place appropriate technical, organizational, and physical security measures to prevent your Personal Data from being lost, altered, used, or accessed in an unauthorized way. In addition, the Bank limits access to your Personal Data to only employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know and we require them to protect the confidentiality of the personal information they receive.
Available remedies
In the event of a breach of your data protection rights, we will ensure that any damage is addressed promptly. However, you have the right to report the incident to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) or seek other legal remedies.
Time Frame for Remedy
At Access Bank (SL) Ltd, we are committed to promptly addressing any violations of data subjects' rights. Upon receiving a complaint or becoming aware of a breach, we will acknowledge the issue within 72 hours. We aim to fully resolve all issues within one (1) month. In cases where more time is required due to complexity, we will inform the data subject of the extension and the reasons for it within the initial one-month period.
Automated decision making
We do not engage in automated decision-making as all our processes have human intervention.
How to contact us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, our privacy practices, the data we hold regarding you, or would like to exercise any of your rights to your Personal Data, please do not hesitate to contact us via:
Email: Sierraleonedpo@accessbankplc.com
Address: 30 Siaka Stevens Street, Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Changes to this Privacy Policy
We may modify or update our Privacy Policy from time to time and ask that you regularly check this website to make sure you are familiar with the most recent versions.
By enrolling for our services or entering into any contractual arrangements with us, you confirm that you have read, understood, and accepted to be bound by the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy.
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