Your privacy is really important to us at Selina Finance (Selina), which is why protecting your personal data is our top priority. This Privacy Policy explains what personal data Selina collects, what we use it for, who we share it with, how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from), your privacy rights, and how the law protects you.
It's important to know who's handling your data. Here we set out who we are, why we have this policy in place, and how you can get in touch with us if you have any questions or would like to talk to us about your data.
Personal data is any information which can (or could be used to) identify you. It doesn't include data which is not possible to relate to a specific person (anonymous data).
The Selina website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children, unless explicitly requested in a very limited number of cases.
At Selina, we take your personal data seriously. This policy:
We collect the information necessary to be able to assess whether you are eligible to use our product, to determine the terms corresponding to your risk profile and to deliver our product/services to you. We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which you have provided, we have collected from you, or we have received from third parties. These are grouped as follows:
Apart from the information customers provide to us directly, we may also record information about potential vulnerabilities where we think this is appropriate to meet the obligations placed on us by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) with regard to vulnerable customers. You can find out more about our obligations to potentially vulnerable customers here. We record vulnerability using broad categories (health, life events, resilience and capability) in line with FCA guidance. For Warm Homes Loan Scheme loans, we include the category in the information we report to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, except where it is “health”, which we do not share.
We use your personal data to:
We will use your personal data for the purposes stated above, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and it is compatible with the original purpose. Please note that we may process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, where this is required or permitted by law.
While you are a customer of ours, we'll only retain your personal data including call recordings for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. This enables us to adhere to our regulatory requirements, ensure we provide suitable advice (where applicable), and to answer any questions you may have later down the line. If you don't transact with us, depending on the stage of your application, we may delete your information sooner in accordance with our data retention policy.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
Please note that if your personal information is shared with third parties, they may have different retention policies. For Warm Homes Loan Scheme loans, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and MCS keep the information we share with them in line with their own privacy notices.
Fraud prevention agencies can hold your personal data for different periods of time; if you are considered to pose a fraud or money laundering risk, note that your data can be held by them for up to six years.
After termination of your contract, we may continue to use aggregated anonymised data for data analysis, profiling and research purposes, for example to gain insights about our customers. Aggregated anonymised data may be derived from your personal data but is not considered personal data in law as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.
Your personal data may be shared with credit scoring agencies, solicitors, surveyors, fraud prevention agencies and government agencies, including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and MCS (the Microgeneration Certification Scheme) where you have a Warm Homes Loan Scheme loan (see "Warm Homes Loan Scheme" below) and Homes England (and organisations administering the Help to Buy scheme on its behalf) where you are using a Selina loan to repay a Help to Buy equity loan . We will also share your personal data with the land registry in order to establish the charge over your property. Where you have applied to us for a personal loan, we may also check the land registry for title and ownership information about your property before any second charge loan applications are made, in order to assess whether you may be eligible for these products.
It may also be necessary to share updates relating to your application with the mortgage broker, 3rd party introducer or the aggregator that introduced your application to us where applicable.
If you are using a Selina loan to repay a Help to Buy equity loan, we will share your name, property address, loan details and planned completion date with Homes England, and with organisations administering the Help to Buy scheme on its behalf, so that your equity loan can be repaid on completion. Homes England processes your information in line with its own privacy notice.
If we are unable to offer you a loan, we may ask whether you would like us to refer you to one of our broker partners (outlined in our Initial Disclosure Document), who may be able to help you find other borrowing options. We will only do this with your explicit consent. If you agree, we will share your name, telephone number and email address with one of our partners so they can contact you. Selina receives a fee for each referral. Once your details have been shared, the broker partner will use them in line with its own privacy policy, which you can find on its website.
If an application has been made jointly with another applicant, we will share your information with your co-applicant. The primary applicant must confirm they have authority to make the application jointly with the co-applicant. If you do not consent to this data being shared, you should email us immediately at dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk to stop the processing and removal of your data.
In the processing of your application, we will share your data with third party service providers, such as our decision engine, in order to enable us to make a lending decision for you. Where possible, your data is deleted routinely by these third parties when it is no longer necessary for it to be held.
The purpose of using these third parties is to ensure that your personal data is properly transferred and integrated into our new system without disruption or loss. We have taken steps to ensure that any such transfers are made in accordance with applicable data protection laws, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the UK's Data Protection Act 2018.
The third-party IT contractors we may use during this process will be subject to confidentiality agreements and will only access your personal data as necessary for the purpose of completing their tasks. We have also satisfied ourselves as to the technical measures that will be implemented to ensure that any transferred data is encrypted, secure, and protected from unauthorised access or disclosure.
Fraud prevention agencies may allow the transfer of your personal data outside of the UK. This may be to a country where the UK Government has decided that your data will be protected to UK standards, but if the transfer is to another type of country, then the fraud prevention agencies will ensure your data continues to be protected by ensuring appropriate safeguards are in place.
Please note that our use of these third-party IT contractors does not involve a transfer of control over your personal data outside of the UK. All processing activities will be carried out in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, including UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
If you have any questions about this process or would like more information on how we handle your personal data during system migration, please do not hesitate to contact us at compliance@selinafinance.co.uk.
If you make an application to use our services, we will obtain copies of your and any co-applicants credit report and score from designated credit scoring agencies on your behalf. We will also share your information with such credit scoring agencies in order to provide our services to you.
Where you have applied to us for a personal loan, we may also carry out a soft search of your credit file to assess your eligibility for our second charge lending products, before contacting you about the options available. A soft search does not affect your credit score and is not visible to other lenders.
Credit scoring agencies collect and maintain information about consumers’ and businesses’ credit behaviour. This includes fraud prevention, credit information (including details of your previous applications and the conduct of your bank accounts) and publicly accessible information (such as information from the Electoral Register, County Court Judgements, decrees, and bankruptcies). Credit scoring agencies may form a link between any previous or subsequent names that you use in the records they hold about you.
The identities of the credit scoring agencies used, and further data management details are available through the links below;
Additionally, you can contact any of the credit scoring agencies as follows, if you wish to obtain a copy of your credit report.
Experian, Consumer Help Service, PO Box 8000, Nottingham NG80 7WF or call 0844 4818000 or log on to www.experian.co.uk.
Equifax PLC, Credit File Advice Centre, PO Box 1140, Bradford, BD1 5US or call 0844 335 0550 or log on to www.equifax.co.uk
We may provide information to other organisations about you, your financial associates (individuals you have made a joint application with or are otherwise linked to your credit history) and your business (if you have one). This information is used by them and us to:
We also have processes and systems that protect our customers and ourselves against fraud and other crime. We will share your personal information with fraud prevention agencies and government agencies, including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero for loans supported by the Warm Homes Loan Scheme, in order to help us to identify instances of fraud, error or non-compliance with scheme rules and trace those responsible. If false or inaccurate information is provided and fraud is identified, details of this fraud will be passed to these agencies. Law enforcement agencies may access and use this information to detect, investigate, and prevent crime. For Warm Homes Loan Scheme loans, see the "Warm Homes Loan Scheme" section for more detail.
Other organisations may also access and use this information to prevent fraud and money laundering, for example, when:
We and other organisations may access and use from other countries the information recorded by fraud prevention agencies.
If Selina, or a fraud prevention agency, determines that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk, we may refuse to provide the services or products you have requested, or we may stop providing existing services to you, or refuse to employ you.
A record of any fraud or money laundering risk will be retained by the fraud prevention agencies and may result in others refusing to provide services, products, or employment to you. If you have any questions about this, please contact us at dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk.
Some of our second charge mortgages (loans secured on your home) for low-carbon home improvements are supported by the Warm Homes Loan Scheme (the "Scheme"). The Scheme is run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero ("DESNZ"), which pays us a grant so that we can offer you a lower interest rate. This section explains the extra ways we use and share your personal data if you apply for, or take out, a loan supported by the Scheme.
Information we share with DESNZ
To claim the grant and meet the Scheme's rules, we send DESNZ information about your loan each month through its secure data management system. This includes:
DESNZ uses this information to check and pay grant claims, recover grants where required, monitor and audit the Scheme, prevent and detect fraud and error, evaluate how well the Scheme works, and produce statistics. DESNZ acts as an independent controller of this information. You can read how DESNZ handles personal data in its privacy notice at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-energy-security-and-net-zero/about/personal-information-charter#how-we-use-your-information.
DESNZ publishes official statistics about the Scheme, such as the number and value of loans by area and by lender. These statistics do not identify you.
MCS checks
MCS (the Microgeneration Certification Scheme) certifies installers and installations of renewable technologies. Before we approve your loan, and again after installation, we check your installer's certification and your MCS installation certificate with MCS. To do this we share details such as the installation address and the installer and certificate numbers with MCS, and MCS confirms the details back to us.
Fraud, error and non-compliance
If we suspect fraud, error or a breach of the Scheme's rules in connection with your loan (by any applicant, installer or other person), we will report it to DESNZ, including details of the case and the people involved. DESNZ may also share information with us to help investigate. If a grant was paid in error, we may need to take steps to recover it.
Property audits
DESNZ, or an organisation acting for it, may ask to visit your property at a reasonable time to check that the improvement has been installed in line with the Scheme. You agree to this as a condition of your loan. We may share your name, contact details and address with DESNZ or its agent so they can arrange a visit.
Research to evaluate the Scheme
DESNZ will evaluate the Scheme, which may include surveys or interviews with borrowers. We may share your name and contact details with DESNZ, or a research organisation working on its behalf, so that they can invite you to take part. Taking part is voluntary, and saying no will not affect your loan.
Other public funding
We will ask you to confirm whether you have received, or will claim, any other public grant or loan for the same improvement (apart from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme). If we later learn that you have, we may share this with DESNZ and take steps to recover any grant paid in error.
Selina needs the information you provide us when you register and that we collect about you from third parties to allow us to provide you with our services as agreed in our contract with you. We are unable to provide our services to you without collecting relevant information that will allow us to be able to assess your suitability for the financial products and services we provide.
Selina may also use your personal data to comply with our legal obligations, including our obligations to regulators. We will always seek your consent to process certain types of information where we are legally required to do so such as marketing but may also rely upon legitimate interest for direct marketing where we can reasonably show the product or services may be of interest to you.
Selina has a legitimate interest in preventing fraud and money laundering, and verifying identities, in order to protect our business and comply with laws that apply to us. Such processing is also a contractual requirement of the services or products you have requested.
Where you have applied to us for a personal loan, we rely on our legitimate interest in offering you products that may better suit your circumstances to assess your eligibility for a second charge loan, including by carrying out an affordability check, property title check and a soft credit search. We have considered that this processing is proportionate and that the potential benefit to you of a more suitable or lower-cost product outweighs the limited impact of a soft search and title check, which do not affect your credit score or involve a hard credit search. You have the right to object to this processing at any time, see "The right to object to processing" below.
Where you apply for or take out a loan supported by the Warm Homes Loan Scheme, we use and share your personal data as described in the "Warm Homes Loan Scheme" section because it is necessary to provide the reduced-rate loan you have asked for, which depends on the government grant, and because we have a legitimate interest in taking part in the Scheme and meeting our agreement with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, including its reporting, audit, fraud prevention and evaluation requirements. We have considered the impact on you and limit the information shared to what the Scheme requires. Your agreement to property audits forms part of your loan terms; we do not rely on your consent for this processing. You can object to our use of your data based on legitimate interests at any time, see “The right to object to processing” below, although we may not be able to provide a Scheme-supported loan if we cannot share the information the Scheme requires.
Where we refer you to one of our broker partners because we are unable to offer you a loan, we rely on your explicit consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time before your details are shared by contacting us. Once your details have been shared, please contact the broker partner directly if you no longer want them to use your information.
When you arrive at our website by clicking one of our adverts, the web address of the page you land on includes a short reference to the campaign that brought you there. This reference is identical for everyone arriving through that campaign, so it does not identify you. If you go on to start an application, we record it alongside your application so we can see which campaigns lead to completed loans and direct our marketing focus accordingly.
We rely on our legitimate interests for this, and have assessed the impact on you as minimal. We do not use this reference to build a profile of you, to recognise you between visits or across other websites, to decide anything about your application, or to target advertising at you, and we do not share it with advertising platforms. Nothing is stored on or read from your device, so this happens whether or not you have accepted cookies. You can object and have this information removed at any time, see "The right to object to processing" below.
For other kinds of information we process (such as from the land registry or individual home appraisals), this is necessary in pursuit of our legitimate interests in establishing a charge over your property or adequately assessing your risk profile and property value.
While there are some risks with this type of activity, on balance, we consider the risk to your data protection rights is outweighed by the significant benefits in being able to provide you with:
Selina implements protections for your rights by establishing adequate cyber security in order to protect your data privacy.
We understand how important it is to keep your personal data secure, and have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your data to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will process your personal data on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we're legally required to do so.
We use automated systems and advanced technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning, to help process and analyse certain personal data. These technologies enable us to:
Your rights and choices:
You can contact us at dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk if you wish to understand more about how these technologies impact you or to exercise any rights you may have under applicable data protection laws (e.g., right to object, right to access, or right to human intervention for automated decisions).
We ensure that any AI systems we use undergo rigorous testing and monitoring to maintain accuracy, fairness, and transparency.
Data security and sharing:
We maintain appropriate security measures to protect personal data processed by our AI systems.
We will not sell or share your personal data with unauthorised third parties for AI model training or any unrelated purpose without your consent unless otherwise permitted or required by law.
For more information about how we collect, store, and secure your data, please review the relevant sections of this Privacy Notice or contact us using the details below.
If you do not provide the personal data necessary, or (where we are relying on your consent) if you withdraw your consent for the processing of your personal data, we may not be able to provide you with our products or services.
Selina may use an automated decision-making system to perform credit scoring/property value assessment activities and make determinations concerning your suitability for certain financial products and services.
We use this system to verify the financial details you provide us against those held by third-party providers, as well as benchmark them against our risk scoring guidelines. We also use this automated process for verification to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. This means we may automatically decide that you pose a fraud or money laundering risk if our processing reveals your behaviour to be consistent with money laundering or known fraudulent conduct; or is inconsistent with your previous submissions; or you appear to have deliberately hidden your true identity. If you do not pass the relevant checks using the automated system, we cannot provide our goods or services to you.
Moreover, using an automated decision-making system enables us to provide you with the fairest rate possible, as well as minimise the risk to grant you a loan for which you are possibly not eligible.
You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which has legal consequences for you or similarly significant effects. While Selina is confident that the technology works, we understand that not everyone is comfortable with decisions being left entirely up to machines. You have the right to request for human intervention in the decision process, and for us to reconsider an automated decision within one month of the outcome. If you have any questions about our automated decision-making system, please contact us on dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk .
Selina may use cookies and similar technologies on our websites and in our emails. A ‘cookie’ is small pieces of information, normally consisting of just letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. The next time you visit our website, your device will remember useful information such as preferences, visited pages or logging in options.
Cookies are widely used to add functionality to websites, or to ensure they work more efficiently. Our website relies on cookies to optimise the user experience and ensure the site's services function properly.
Selina may use third party marketing cookies to help deliver advertising relevant to your interests. Details of our cookies policy can be found here.
Most web browsers allow some control to restrict or block cookies through the browser settings, however if you disable cookies you may find this affects your ability to use certain parts of our website or services.
Selina uses third party processors to provide our services; these companies will process or store your information on our behalf. Here are the types of entities we share information with, for a full list please contact us:
We abide by the UK data protection laws. And, if we ever have to send data outside the UK, we take care that it's covered by the same high standards.
Your personal data may be processed in the USA by Selina or the third parties we use. Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:
Please contact us if you want further information on the specific mechanism used by us when transferring your personal data out of the UK.
Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. We'll be happy to discuss these and how they might apply to you. If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out below, please contact us.
Selina attempts to act on all legitimate requests within 30 days. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we'll notify you and keep you updated.
You won't have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge an administrative fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive and/or further copies of the same information. Alternatively, we may be entitled to refuse to act on the request in these circumstances. Please consider your request responsibly before submitting it.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access your personal data (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.
In summary, you have:
1. The right to be informed
You have the right to be provided with clear, transparent and easily understandable information about how we use your information and your rights. This is why we’re providing you with the information in this policy.
2. The right of access
You have the right to obtain access to your personal data (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we're lawfully processing it.
3. The right to rectification
You are entitled to have the personal data that we hold about you corrected.This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate data we hold about you corrected, though we may need to verify the accuracy of the new data you provide to us.
4. The right to erasure
Also known as ‘the right to be forgotten’ and, in simple terms, enables you to request the deletion or removal of your information where there’s no compelling reason for us to keep using it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have successfully exercised your right to restrict processing (see below). Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you.
5. The right to restrict processing
You have rights to ‘block’ or suppress further use of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in the following scenarios: (a) if you want us to establish the data's accuracy; (b) where our use of the data is unlawful but you don't want us to erase it; (c) where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or (d) you have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it. When processing is restricted, we can still store your information, but may not use it further. We keep lists of people who have asked for further use of their information to be ‘blocked’ to make sure the restriction is respected in future.
6. The right to data portability
You have rights to obtain and reuse your personal data for your own purposes across different services. For example, if you decide to switch to a new provider. We'll provide to you, or a third party you have chosen, your personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format. Note that this right only applies to automated information which you initially provided consent for us to use or where we used the information to perform a contract with you.
7. The right to object to processing
You have the right to object to certain types of processing of your personal data where we're relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground as you feel it impacts on your fundamental rights and freedoms. This includes processing for direct marketing (i.e. if you no longer want to be contacted with potential opportunities). This also includes your right to object to us recording, against your application, a reference to the advertising campaign through which you reached our website. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which override your rights and freedoms. This also includes your right to object to us assessing your eligibility for, or contacting you about, our second charge lending products using data from a previous application, such as a personal loan application.
8. The right to lodge a complaint
You have the right to lodge a complaint about the way we handle or process your personal data with your national data protection regulator. The contact details for the UK Information Commissioner’s Office is provided below.
9. The right to withdraw consent
If you have given your consent to anything we do with your personal data, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time; although this won't affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. This includes your right to withdraw consent to us using your personal data for marketing purposes. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We'll advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
Selina may contact you by phone, email, post or through our mobile application. If you prefer a particular contact over another please just let us know.
If you have a Warm Homes Loan Scheme loan, you may also be contacted by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, or an organisation working on its behalf, to arrange a property compliance audit or to invite you to take part in research evaluating the Scheme. These are not marketing messages. Taking part in research is voluntary.
Where you have consented we may contact you by; phone, send you messages by text (SMS) or instant messaging, post, email, in app push notifications and other digital methods (including new methods that may become available in the future) about products and services which may be of interest to you – these are marketing messages. You can ask us to stop or start sending you marketing messages at any time by contacting us or using the opt in or out links in our emails or marketing section of our app.
Where we make any significant changes to this privacy notice, we will contact you to ensure that you are aware of the changes. We may also make minor updates to this privacy notice without notifying you but will ensure that the updated version is available online.
Selina Finance Ltd is the controller and responsible for your personal data and this website (we use "Selina", "we", "us" or "our" in this Privacy Policy).
We are registered with the ICO under number ZA514769. You can get in touch with us if you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, at:
Post: Selina Finance Ltd, HYLO 103-105 Bunhill Row, London EC1Y 8LZ.
Email: dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk
We are Selina Finance Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales under company number 11497606. We are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), under firm reference number 820183. You can check this on the Financial Services Register by visiting the FCA website.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK independent supervisory authority for data protection issues. We'd always appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO however, so please contact us in the first instance.
If you have any questions or complaints relating to how we use your personal data, or if you wish to exercise any of your rights regarding your personal data, please contact us by emailing dataprotection@selinafinance.co.uk. We will respond to you as soon as possible. The length of time will depend on the type and complexity of the request, but you will receive a response no later than one month from the initial request.
This version was last updated in November 2026, and historic versions can be obtained by contacting us.
It's important that the personal data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your relationship with us.
