This policy explains when and why we collect personal information, how we use it, the conditions under which we may disclose it to others, and how we keep it secure.

We may change this policy from time to time. You can always find the latest version on this page.

If you have any questions about privacy you can email us at dominika@rie.solutions.

Who we are

RIE Solutions exists to help financial planning firms run better businesses. We are a company registered in England and Wales (no. 11397990). Our registered office address is C/o Praxis, 1 Poultry, London, EC2R 8EJ.

How do we collect information?

We obtain limited information about you when you use our website and forum, contact us, or if you sign up to our subscription services or newsletters.

We typically collect more detailed information in the course of providing a service to you. For example, in the course of a consulting arrangement, you may supply us with details about your business so that we can provide advice.

What type of information is collected?

When you contact us or sign up for our newsletter, you provide us with your name, email address, and company name. At your option, you may provide us with additional details to help us serve you better. These might include phone numbers or contact address details. If you make a payment on our site, we will collect your billing address. Your payment details (such as credit card number and expiry date) will be collected directly by our merchant provider, and are not visible to us.

If you have a user account on our site—for example, if you use our online forum—we hold details of the activity associated with your account. This might include records of when you logged in and out of your account, password reset attempts, or posts you share on our forums. We place a cookie on your computer when you log in to your account; this allows you to navigate our site while remaining logged in.

If you contact us by other means, such as email or a telephone call, we may keep a record of your correspondence. We may keep notes from meetings or calls and store copies of documents and reports, typically in the context of a consulting service agreement.

As you browse the website, your IP address is briefly accessible to us.

How we use information

We may use your information to:

  • carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into by you and us;
  • seek your views or comments on the services we provide;
  • notify you of changes to our services;
  • send you communications which you have requested (such as our newsletters)
  • protect the integrity of our systems—for example, we might monitor suspicious login patterns in order to keep your account secure
  • send you notifications relating to key actions you take on our site. For example, we might email you a payment confirmation if you pay for a subscription product

We typically hold your personal information only for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, or as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with us. There are two important exceptions:

  • If we provide you with advice—usually in the context of a consulting agreement—we keep records for 5 years. We do this so that we can answer any questions you may have, serve you better in any future agreements, and to document our own decision-making process.
  • If we are required by law to hold certain information for a longer period, we are be bound by this as any other business.

Who has access to your information?

We do not sell or rent your information. We do not share your information with third parties for marketing purposes. For example, we don’t share your email address with other companies so that they can advertise to you.

We do pass limited information to our third party service providers, so that they can complete tasks for us and provide services to you on our behalf. For example, Campaign Monitor is a software provider that makes it easier for companies to send newsletters. They handle the delivery of our newsletters; we must share subscriber names and email addresses with them, but only so the newsletters can be sent. Whenever we use third party service providers, we disclose only the personal information that is necessary to deliver the service. We have contracts in place that requires these third parties to keep your information secure and not to use it for their own marketing purposes. For example, Campaign Monitor cannot share your email address with other companies, and they cannot use it to promote their services to you.

Within our business, we treat your data with great care. Employees and contractors have access only to the information necessary to meet their specific responsibilities. We have contracts in place that require employees and contractors to keep your information secure and treat it with confidence. We regularly review access to any data we hold for you.

Of course, if we were required by law to disclose or share your personal data—for example, a court order—we would be bound by this as any other business.

Your choices

We do not send newsletters without obtaining prior consent. If you no longer wish to receive them, you can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the newsletter.

We may send you emails from time to time as part of a subscription service. These emails may contain references to course content, activity updates from our members-only forum, and additional resources and information provided as part of your subscription. You may unsubscribe from these emails at any time, but note this will not cancel your subscription or payments. To cancel a subscription, please contact us directly.

We may occasionally contact you to let you know about products or services we offer. For example, we might notify you if we release a new product or service, or change our pricing. We do this only where we feel the communication would be helpful to you. Typically, this is because you are already a client of ours. We also provide the option to opt-out of these announcements, and you can find an “unsubscribe” link in any of the product announcement emails we send.

Finally, we may send you emails that are necessary in the course of providing a service to you. Examples include, but are not limited to:

  • A password reset email, if you have forgotten your password.
  • A notification that we have received a payment from you.
  • A notification of changes to the service.

Since this last category of email provides essential functionality, there is no option to unsubscribe.

Your right to access

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have a right to access a copy of all the data we hold about you. For example, if you had signed up to our newsletter, we would hold your name, email address, and a record of the emails we had sent you. If you have entered into a contract with us—for example, a subscription service—we might also have any other information you have chosen to share directly.

If you have a user account on our site—for example, if you use our online forum—we hold details of the activity associated with your account. Ask us if you need a copy.

Your right to erasure

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you can request that we delete your data. This extends to our third-party providers, so if you do choose to exercise this right, we also request the deletion of your data from their servers where applicable.

Note that where we are legally obliged to hold records for a certain period of time, these data cannot be erased immediately. For example, if you have a contract for services with us, tax authorities may require us to hold records of that contract for some time. In such cases, we may retain copies of only that information, such that we can meet those legal obligations. This position does not affect your rights under the GDPR. Please contact us for more information.

Use of cookies

We use cookies on our site. Cookies are small pieces of information stored on your hard drive. They allow our website to recognise you when you visit. We use two kinds of cookies.

The first collects statistical data about your browsing actions and patterns. These do not identify you as an individual. For example, we use cookies to answer questions such as “How many of our visitors this month were new visitors, who’d never been to our site before?”. We can’t use them to answer questions such as “Which pages did Bob visit this month?”.

We use a second type of cookie only if you create an account on our site. This cookie identifies your user account, allowing you to remain logged in as you navigate from page to page. We use this to provide you with a better browsing experience, and the cookie is not used to provide any form of advertising.

It is possible to switch off cookies by setting your browser preferences.

IP addresses

An IP address can identify an individual computer or other device. As you browse our website, your IP address is visible to our server. This is necessary in order to serve pages to you. We keep a record of activity on our web server for six months. We do this to identify suspicious browsing behaviour, troubleshoot errors, and improve the performance of our site. After six months, your IP address is no longer stored, and we cannot access it.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites run by other organisations. This privacy policy applies only to our website. We cannot be responsible for the privacy policies of other sites even if you access them using links from our website.

Transferring your information outside of Europe

As part of the services offered to you through this website, the information which you provide to us may be transferred to countries outside the European Union (“EU”). This may happen if any of our own servers are from time to time located in a country outside of the EU, or if we use a third-party service provider whose servers are located outside the EU. By submitting your personal data, you’re agreeing to this transfer, storing or processing.

If we transfer your information outside of the EU in this way, we take steps to ensure that your privacy rights are protected. For example, before using servers outside the EU, we ensure that we will still be able to comply with any requests for access or erasure.

Review of this Policy

We review this policy from time to time. It was last updated in November 2020.