Overview

We take our obligations under privacy and data protection law very seriously. This privacy policy is designed to help you understand the Personal Information we collect, why we collect it, how we use it and who we share it with. It also explains the rights you have in connection with your Personal Information including how to contact us or to make a complaint.

This notice applies to Ritorno PLC (Ritorno), also referred to throughout this privacy policy as “we”, “us” or “our”.

Ritorno is registered as a data controller the Information Commissioner’s Office (the UK’s independent body set up to uphold information rights). As a data controller we are responsible for ensuring that when we process Personal Information we comply with data protection law applicable in the United Kingdom and comply with confidentiality obligations that we owe to any other person.

If you have any questions about this notice please get in touch with us.

This privacy policy may change from time to time (including in response to guidance and best practice advice issued by the Information Commissioner’s Office). We will inform you of any changes by updating the privacy policy on our website. This privacy policy was last updated on the date specified at the end of this policy.

Glossary of terms used in this privacy policy

What Personal Information do we collect and use?

The type of Personal Information we collect and process depends on our relationship with you and the context in which we obtain and use it. The table below sets out the Personal Information we will or may collect depending on the circumstances.

How Personal Information is collected and your responsibilities

We will collect Personal Information from you in person when we meet you or through correspondence with you in relation to actual or potential investments or through our Website (see Visitors to our Website below).

Third parties may pass Personal Information to us to use in the course of our work with you. The processing of this Personal Information may be necessary for the progression of an invetsment.

The sources we may also collect Personal Information from include:

• publicly accessible sources (for example Companies House);
• direct from a third party, other parties involved in the work that we do for you (such as your other advisers, customer and suppliers) or from due diligence providers;
• a third party with your consent (for example your other advisers, customers and suppliers we may engage in relation to an investment);
• our information technology systems (for example management, project management and document management  systems, door entry and reception logs, our Website other relevant websites and applications);
• automated monitoring of our Website and other technical systems, such as our computer networks and connections, CCTV (controlled by our landlords) and access control systems, communications systems, e-mail, voice-mail and instant messaging systems.

In connection with our investments, we may hold and use Personal Information about you, your officers and/or your employees and/or other third parties. When you provide Personal Information to us relating to a third party, you confirm that you have any necessary permission or authority to do so. You are also responsible for ensuring that the provision of that Personal Information complies with data protection and other applicable law. If you provide other third party data to us (for example details of your family members), you must have the authority to disclose personal data if it relates to someone else and all data disclosed should be complete, accurate and up to date.

Visitors to our Website

We use multiple analytics systems such as Google Analytics to collect statistical information about the number of visitors to our Website. This information includes, pages visited and content searched. We use this information to maintain and improve our Website and the services we provide and to analyse and understand what is of interest to our Website visitors, so we can improve and tailor the content and this data will not directly or indirectly reveal your identity.

We use technology to track the patterns of behaviour of visitors to our Website. This can include using a cookie  which would be stored on your browser or the hard drive of your computing device. Please read our Cookies Policy for more information about how we use cookies and similar technologies.

Our Website is not intended to be used by children and, other than in connection with work experience applicants, we do not knowingly collect data relating to children through the Website.

How and why we use your personal information

Under data protection law we can only use your Personal Information if we have a proper reason for doing so. Such proper reasons include:

• to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
• for our legitimate interests (see below) or those of a third party;
• for the making of investments or the performance of our contracts with you or to take steps at your request before entering into an investment or a contract with you;
• you have given consent.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your Personal Information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your Personal Information for our legitimate interests. We do not use your Personal Information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).

The table below explains what we use your Personal Information for and our reasons for doing so. In general terms we will collect Personal Information to:

• make investments or provide services to you;
• manage our relationship with you and to comply with our legal obligations arising from it;
• provide you with information about our business and the services we offer including relevant communications;
• help us improve our business and the services we offer.

The information above does not apply to any Special Category Personal Information which you may have provided to us or authorised us to obtain from a third party, and which we will usually only process with your explicit consent. However, in some circumstances in connection with an investment we may receive Special Category Personal Information from third parties and we can lawfully process that information without your consent where it is necessary to establish, exercise or defend a legal claim or claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

Change of purpose

We will only use your Personal Information for the purposes for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your Personal Information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

We may process your Personal Information without your knowledge or consent (in compliance with the above rules) where this is required or permitted by law.

Marketing communications

We may use your Personal Information to send you updates (by e-mail, telephone or post) about developments that might be of interest to you or information about our services, including new services.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your Personal Information for our business development purposes (see How and why we use your Personal Information). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you updates and information about our services. However, where consent is needed (for example to send you electronic communications), we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.

We will always treat your Personal Information with the utmost respect and we will never sell or share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time by:

• contacting us ; or
• using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in our e-mails.

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

Who we share your Personal Information with

We share Personal Information with:

• third parties where necessary to make investments or carry out your instructions;
• our insurers and brokers;
• the audit of our accounts;
• our banks;
• external service suppliers, representatives and agents that we use to make our business more efficient (for example marketing agencies);
• where we have your consent to do so, with our external auditors in relation to our quality certifications.

Our IT support and service providers may also access your Personal Information as a consequence of them providing support to us.

We only allow our service providers to handle your Personal Information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your Personal Information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers to ensure they can only use your Personal Information to provide services to us and to you.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

We may also need to share some Personal Information with other parties. For example, if we, in the course of our own business operations, sell or buy any business or assets we may disclose Personal Information held by us to the prospective seller or buyer of those businesses or assets.

Where possible, information will be anonymised, but in any event the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations. If we are acquired, or substantially all of our assets are acquired, by a third party (or are subject to a reorganisation), Personal Information held by us will be one of the assets which is transferred.

Where your Personal Information is held

Information may be held at our offices, third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see Who we share your Personal Information with).

We also hold your Personal Information in secure data centres in the UK with all reasonable technological and operational measures put in place to safeguard it from unauthorised access.

Some of the third parties may be based outside the UK. For more information, including on how we safeguard your Personal Information when this occurs, see below Transferring your Personal Information out of the UK and How we protect your personal information.

Transferring your Personal Information out of the UK

To deliver services to you, it may sometimes necessary for us to share your Personal Information outside the UK for example:

• with your and our service providers located outside the UK;
• if you are based outside the UK;
• where there is an international dimension to an investment;
• if one of our members of our staff needs to access it remotely while they are travelling outside the UK.

These transfers are subject to special rules under UK data protection law. In those circumstances, we undertake an assessment of the level of protection in light of the circumstances surrounding the transfer. We will make sure that any transfers are not repetitive and only limited to the minimum amount of information possible and will always take steps to ensure that your Personal Information is adequately protected. In certain circumstances we may need to seek your consent unless there is an overriding legal need to transfer the Personal Information.

Where necessary we have entered into standard  approved model data protection clauses with our external service providers and business partners in relation to the services they provide which may involve processing Personal Information for which we are the data controller from locations outside the UK.

How long your Personal Information will be kept

We will only retain your personal information 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.

When it is no longer necessary to retain your Personal Information, we will delete or anonymise it. In some circumstances we may anonymise your Personal Information (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

To determine the appropriate retention period for Personal Information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the Personal Information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of it, the purposes for which we process your Personal Information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.

In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Your rights with respect to your Personal Information.

Investees

We only keep your Personal Information about an investment for as long as is necessary to:

• carry out our services relating to the investment;
• respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
• show that we treated you fairly;
• keep records required by law to comply with our legal obligations. In certain circumstances, anti-money laundering legislation requires us to retain records, documents and information relating to an investment (including a copy of your identity documentation) for five years from the end of the investment or when our business relationship with you ends.

If you complain to us about how we have processed your Personal Information or you seek to exercise a data protection right such as a data subject access request, we will retain details of your complaint or request. We will only use the Personal Information we collect to process the complaint or request, to audit the level of service we have provided and to provide information to our insurers.

We will keep information in connection with the complaint or request in line with our retention policy. In most cases this means we will retain the information for seven years.

How we protect your Personal Information

Keeping information secure is a key part of data protection compliance. We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your Personal Information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your Personal Information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know 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 are legally required to do so or where we have otherwise agreed with you that we will.

How we maintain information security

We are committed to ensuring the security, availability and integrity of the information you entrust to us ( including your personal data). We work hard to ensure our security arrangements remain robust and meet ever changing challenges and threats so we will update this statement as we add new capabilities and make improvements to our systems.

Assurance

We maintain an assurance programme which is designed to proactively identify potential threats and opportunities to improve business security and integrity. We also run our own internal audit programme to verify that our staff are familiar with and adhere to our policies and procedures.

Operational management

We have an established management framework to identify, assess and manage information security risks. This is supported by a suite of information security procedures including, data protection, business continuity plans, acceptable use (including remote access and social media) and breach reporting and response.

Our security measures also help us to prevent and manage any interruptions to the services we deliver to you.

Physical security

We have physical entry controls at all of our offices to restrict access to premises and equipment on a need to know basis.

User authentication

We have a process in place to manage our IT user accounts for authorised individuals and to restrict access as necessary. We have appropriate password security procedures and a process in place to log and monitor user and system activity which can be used to detect any unauthorised access or anomalous activity and to help prevent data breaches.

Change control and supplier management

Change initiatives are underpinned by due diligence and testing processes to verify integrity, ensure security and avoid business interruptions. Supplier relationships start with a robust due diligence process. We use certified and trusted suppliers to help us maintain and support the smooth running of our systems.

Data encryption, protection and back up

We routinely back-up electronic information to help restore information in the event of disaster or ransomware attack.

We run virus scans on all incoming e-mail correspondence (and any attached documents) and use malware protection software to scan our computers to detect and prevent threats.

We provide secure transmission methods to protect your information including encryption for e-mails (when requested by you) and options to use secure file transfer (SFTP) for bulk transfers of data and (UK hosted) secure document storage and sharing.

Our boundary firewalls are designed to stop attacks before our network can be compromised and we use internet filtering to prevent our users accessing websites or other online services which we have assessed as presenting a threat or which we do not trust.

We have effective procedures for patch management and software updates. Our server certificates are issued by leading certificate vendors.

Your rights with respect to your Personal Information

You are entitled at any time to ask us for a copy of Personal Information we hold about you, known as a data subject access request. You are also entitled to ask that any information we hold about you is supplemented, updated or rectified. You can make any of these requests free of charge by contacting us: see Contact Information.

In certain circumstances you can also ask us to restrict our processing of your Personal Information (for example if you contest the accuracy of it). We will always review your request and will inform you if we decide we are not required to action it. If you require us to restrict or stop processing your Personal Information in any way, this may impact on our ability to provide our services to you. Depending on the nature of your requests we may have to stop acting for you, but you will still have to pay any unpaid fees and disbursements which we have incurred on your behalf to date.

You are entitled to ask that we send a copy of the Personal Information we hold about you to another organisation for your own purposes (for example if you intend to instruct another service provider instead of us). If you want us to move, copy or transfer your Personal Information in these circumstances, please contact us.

We will aim to respond to your request within one month once we have assessed how feasible your request is, taking into account the technical capability of the other organisation involved.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

We do not use your Personal Information for automated decision making.

How to complain

We hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information. If you want to complain about how we have handled your Personal Information, please follow the procedure below. We will investigate your complaint, but if you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your Personal Information unlawfully, you can complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office. Further information is available on the ICO website or telephone 0303 123 1113.

If you have a complaint, you are encouraged in the first instance to either write or speak to the person who is dealing with your investment.

Contact Information

Please contact us by post, e-mail or telephone if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.

If you would like this notice in another format (for example large print) please contact us.

13 May 2021