Privacy Policy

Scottish Investment Operations Limited ("We") take the privacy of our users seriously. This Privacy Policy sets out the basis on which we will process any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us. Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998 ("the Act"), the data controller is Scottish Investment Operations Limited of 24 Melville Street, Edinburgh EH3 7NS.

Information collected

We may collect and process the following data about you:

Information that you provide by filling in online forms on our site www.sio.org.uk ("our site"). This includes information provided at the time of registering to use our site, subscribing to our services, posting material such as your profile or requesting further services. We may also ask you for information when you report a problem with our site.
If you contact us, we may keep a record of that correspondence.
We may also ask you to complete surveys that we use for research purposes, although you do not have to respond to them.
Details of your visits to our site including, but not limited to, traffic data, location data, weblogs and other communication data, whether this is required for our own billing purposes or otherwise and the resources that you access.

IP addresses and cookies

We may collect information about your computer, including where available your IP address, operating system and browser type, for system administration and to report aggregate information to our advertisers. This is statistical data about our users' browsing actions and patterns, and does not identify any individual.

For the same reason, we may obtain information about your general internet usage by using a cookie file which is stored on the hard drive of your computer. A cookie is a text-only string of information that a website transfers to the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk so that the website can remember who you are. A cookie will typically contain the name of the domain from which the cookie has come, the "lifetime" of the cookie, and a value, usually a randomly generated unique number.

Cookies help us to improve our site and to deliver a better and more personalised service. They enable us:

To estimate our audience size and usage pattern.
To store information about your preferences, and so allow us to customise our site according to your individual interests.
To speed up your searches.
To recognise you when you return to our site.

You may refuse to accept cookies by activating the setting on your browser which allows you to refuse the setting of cookies. However, if you select this setting you may be unable to access certain parts of our site. Unless you have adjusted your browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies when you log on to our site.

Use of personal information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
To notify you about changes to our service.
Where you have submitted an online application form for a sponsored place on the Introduction to Investment Operations course, to assess your application.
To send you customised news alerts based on the information you submit.

We also use information in aggregate form (so that no individual user is identified) to build up marketing profiles, aid strategic development, manage course applications, audit usage of the site and in order to obtain demographic information.

Communications

To keep you informed about our latest news and event information, we may contact you through one of our e-mail newsletters or via SMS. Our mailing list sign-up form contains an "opt-in" function which ensures any communication is sent only to those people who have requested it. If at any time you wish to unsubscribe from our mailing list, you can do so by clicking on the unsubscribe link contained in one of our email newsletters or responding to the SMS, indicating you wish to unsubscribe.

Disclosure of personal information

We may disclose your personal information to any of our group companies, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 736 of the UK Companies Act 1985.

We may disclose your personal information to third parties:

Which are member companies of SIO subscribing to our products and services, to enable them to consider applicants for future vacancies. A list of our member companies can be found here and may be updated by us from time to time.
In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.
If we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use.
With whom we have professional links, such as professional bodies and various training providers, for them to provide you with information about courses, events or other products which may be of interest to you. We will only disclose your information to such third parties if you have consented to this. If you do not want us to pass your details on to third parties for such purposes, please tick the relevant box situated on the registration form.

Where we store your personal data

We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.

All information you provide to us is stored on our secure servers. Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of our site, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk.

Third party websites

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the manner in which third parties deal with personal data submitted to their websites.

Updating account information

You have the right to apply for a copy of the information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies in that information corrected. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page.

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to The Privacy Officer, Scottish Investment Operations Limited, 24 Melville Street, Edinburgh EH3 7NS.