You’re offline. This is a read only version of the page.
The Bank of England (‘we’ or the ‘Bank’) is the UK’s central bank. Our mission is to promote the good of the people of the United Kingdom by maintaining monetary and financial stability. This includes the provision of the RTGS/CHAPS payment and settlement services.
This notice sets out how we handle personal data in the performance of our functions as the UK’s central bank – specifically within RCEP and External Sailpoint, which are particularly associated with our provision of the RTGS/CHAPS services –. RCEP is also used to hold information for contacts of Sterling Monetary Framework participants as well as in relation to our wider policy work and engagement for wholesale payments.
Related links
Our general approach
• We will handle personal data in the performance of our functions as the UK’s central bank
• We collect personal data about business contacts, customers or staff of the firms we regulate, our staff or members of the public.
• We will only process personal data in a way that is fair and lawful. When we need to process personal data, we will take appropriate steps to keep it secure
• We will respect the rights individuals have in relation to data we hold about them
Further information about the Bank’s general approach is set out in the Privacy and the Bank of England notice.
Information we collect
For a number of the activities that we undertake to achieve our mission, we need to process personal data. This includes data that relates to business contacts of those using, or applying to use, our RTGS/CHAPS services and/or participate in the Sterling Monetary Framework or the Alternative Liquidity Facility. This information may be collected from you directly or indirectly where supplied by individuals interacting with the service on behalf of your organisations including via email and RCEP.
The information is primarily business contact information. This includes where those contacts have, or will have, user access to systems that support RTGS/CHAPS. This may include name, job title, signature, email, address, phone numbers, and other identifiers as part of a SWIFT Distinguished Name or an IP address. In some cases, personal mobile details will be held to support contingency or remote working arrangements. In most cases, collection of your personal data is in the context of a contractual relationship with your employer – organisations who use, or are interested in using, the RTGS/CHAPS services.
How we use your personal data
We collect your personal data so that we can communicate with you about the provision of our RTGS/CHAPS services as well as in relation to the Sterling Monetary Framework and Alternative Liquidity Facility. This covers a range of functions including: day-to-day operations; testing; provision of statistics; invoking contingency arrangements; and policy and future service development. In most cases this is primarily to share information via email. In some cases, this relates to your attendance at one or more working groups or other types of events.
We also collect your personal data so, where applicable, you can access elements of the RTGS/CHAPS services. Your business email address is typically used to set you up with access to RCEP, External Sailpoint and our extranets. Your name is also captured to support managing your access to these services including, in some cases, management by your organisations’ Principal Users.
We use personal data to operate and manage our RTGS and CHAPS services, as well as the Sterling Monetary Framework and Alternative Liquidity Facility, which all form part of our role as the UK’s central bank. Our legal basis for this processing is Article 6(1)(e) under UK GDPR, as it is necessarily for the performance of our public functions and the exercise of official authority.
For RTGS participants, your RCEP Principal User can set you to inactive in RCEP, which automatically removes you from our email contact lists. Alternatively, you can contact rtgschapscomms@bankofengland.co.uk.
In some circumstances, we may need to share personal data with other organisations. Situations in which we may need to disclose personal data to a third party include:
• to other CHAPS Direct Participants to enable employees of CHAPS Direct Participants to communicate directly with each other;
• with other members of working groups that you attend;
• to other financial services regulators (for example, the Financial Conduct Authority) and other central banks as part of ongoing supervision or enforcement;
• to external auditors during audits or similar exercises; and
• to third parties who provide elements of services for us (data processors). We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they will use personal data only in accordance with instructions provided by the Bank in order to deliver the agreed services. For example, this includes third party providers of email services.
We will only share personal data with others when we are legally permitted to do so.
We keep RCEP/External Sailpoint contact information for as long as your organisation needs you to have access and/or be a nominated contact. We also keep it for a period afterwards where needed for audit, security and regulatory purposes.
Clause 14 of the RTGS Mandate Terms & Conditions sets out further information on data protection and clause 17 sets out further information on confidentiality obligations, including when we can share with other organisations.
For further information about how the Bank uses your personal data, your rights and how to contact the Bank’s Data Protection Officer, please see the Bank’s privacy notice at: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/legal/privacy.