HSBC's Privacy Principles

Our business has been built on trust between our customers and ourselves. To preserve the confidentiality of all information you provide to us, we maintain the following privacy principles:

• We only collect personal information that we believe to be relevant and required to understand your financial needs and to conduct our business.
• We use your personal information to provide you with better customer services and products.
• We may pass your personal information to other HSBC Group companies or agents, as permitted by law.
• We will not disclose your personal information to any external organisation unless we have your consent or are required by law.
• We may be required from time to time to disclose your personal information to Governmental or judicial bodies or agencies or our regulators, but we will only do so under proper authority.
• We aim to keep your personal information on our records accurate and up-to-date.
• We maintain strict security systems designed to prevent unauthorised access to your personal information by anyone, including our staff.
• All HSBC Group companies, all our staff and all third parties with permitted access to your information are specifically required to observe our confidentiality obligations.

By maintaining our commitment to these principles, we at HSBC will ensure that we respect the inherent trust that you place in us.

This section provides specific details of how we treat any personal information you might wish to provide us when you visit this site.

• Security is our top priority. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited ('the Bank') will strive at all times to ensure that your personal data will be protected against unauthorised or accidental access, processing or erasure. We maintain this commitment to data security by implementing appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to safeguard and secure your personal data.
• The secure area of our website supports the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol and 128-encryption technology - an industry standard for encryption over the Internet to protect data. When you provide sensitive information such as credit card details, it will be automatically converted into codes before being securely dispatched over the Internet.
• Our web servers are protected behind "firewalls" and our systems are monitored to prevent any unauthorized access. We will not send personal information to you by ordinary e-mail. As the security of ordinary e-mail cannot be guaranteed, you should only send e-mail to us using the secure e-mail facility on our website.
• All practical steps will be taken to ensure that personal data will not be kept longer than necessary and that the Bank will comply with all statutory and regulatory requirements concerning the retention of personally identifiable information.

• Both you and HSBC play an important role in protecting against online fraud. You should be careful that your bank account details including your user ID and/or password are not compromised by ensuring that you do not knowingly or accidentally share, provide or facilitate unauthorised use of it. Do not share your user ID and/or password or allow access or use of it by others. We endeavour to put in place high standards of security to protect your interests
• You should safeguard your unique user ID and password by keeping it secret and confidential. Never write them down or share these details with anyone. HSBC will never ask you for your Internet Banking password, in order to ensure that you are the only person who knows this information. When choosing your unique user ID and password for the first time, do not create it using easily identifiable information such as your birthday, telephone number or a recognisable part of your name. If you think your user ID and/or password has been disclosed to a third party, is lost or stolen and unauthorised transactions may have been conducted, you are responsible to inform us immediately.

Use of "cookies"

Your visit to this site may be recorded for analysis on the number of visitors to the site and general usage patterns. Some of this information will be gathered through the use of "cookies". Cookies are small bits of information that are automatically stored on a person's web browser in their computer that can be retrieved by this site. Should you wish to disable these cookies you may do so by changing the setting on your browser. However, you will be unable to enter certain part(s) of our website.

Marketing Promotions

Occasionally we may collect personal information from visitors to this site and those individuals that participate in a contest or promotion (online or over the telephone, or at one of our branches). Such information is only collected from individuals who voluntarily provide us with their personal information. We may use this information to advise them of products, services and other marketing materials, which we think, may be of interest to them. We may also invite visitors to this site to participate in market research and surveys and other similar activities.

You can choose to receive marketing and other promotional materials by e-mail. If you do receive e-mail or promotional direct mailings, you will always have an opportunity to opt-out.

If at any time you would like us to cease sending you direct mailings, please contact our representatives by calling (230) 403 8333.

If we do ask you to provide personal information, we will always specify the purpose for which such personal information is collected and ensure that it is only used for the purpose specified at the time of collection.

The Statement is intended to notify you why personal data is collected, how it will be used and to whom data access requests are to be addressed.

Why we collect your data

We collect your personal information to carry out and administer our services to you and in an effort to improve your customer experience. Without such data the Bank may be unable to open or continue accounts or establish or continue banking facilities or provide banking services.

Use of Data

We will use data for the following purposes or any of them (which may vary depending on the nature of your relationship with us):

1. considering and processing applications for products and services and the daily operation of products and services (including credit facilities provided to you or the relevant customer linked to you)
2. conducting credit checks whenever appropriate (including upon an application for consumer credit (including mortgage loans) and when we review credit which normally takes place one or more times each year);
3. creating and maintaining our credit and risk related models;
4. assisting other credit providers in Mauritius approved for participation in the Multiple Credit Reference Agencies Model (hereinafter referred to as “credit providers”) to conduct credit checks and collect debts;
5. ensuring your ongoing credit worthiness and good standing;
6. designing financial products and services (including insurance, credit card, securities, commodities, investment, banking and related products and services) for your use;
7. market financial services or related products;
8. determining the amount of indebtedness owed to or by you;
9. exercising our rights under contracts with you, including collecting amounts outstanding from you;
10. meeting our obligations, requirements or arrangements or those of any member of the HSBC Group, whether compulsory or voluntary, to comply with or in connection with:
    1. any law, regulation, judgment, court order, voluntary code, sanctions regime, within or outside the Mauritius existing currently and in the future (“Laws”);
    2. any guidelines, guidance or requests given or issued by any legal, regulatory, governmental, tax, law enforcement or other authorities, or self-regulatory or industry bodies or associations of financial services providers within or outside Mauritius existing currently and in the future and any international guidance, internal policies or procedures;
    3. any present or future contractual or other commitment with local or foreign legal, regulatory, judicial, administrative, public or law enforcement body, or governmental, tax, revenue, monetary, securities or futures exchange, court, central bank or other authorities, or self-regulatory or industry bodies or associations of financial service providers or any of their agents with jurisdiction over all or any part of the HSBC Group (together the “Authorities” and each an “Authority”) that is assumed by, imposed on or applicable to us or any member of the HSBC Group; or
    4. any agreement or treaty between Authorities;
11. complying with any obligations, requirements, policies, procedures, measures or arrangements for sharing data and information within the HSBC Group and/or any other use of data and information in accordance with any programmes for compliance with sanctions or prevention or detection of money laundering, terrorist financing or other unlawful activities;
12. conducting any action to meet our obligations or those of any member of the HSBC Group to comply with Laws or international guidance or regulatory requests relating to or in connection with the detection, investigation and prevention of money laundering, terrorist financing, bribery, corruption, tax evasion, fraud, evasion of economic or trade sanctions and/or any acts or attempts to circumvent or violate any Laws relating to these matters;
13. meeting our obligations or those of any member of the HSBC Group to comply with any demand or request from the Authorities;
14. enabling actual or proposed assignee(s) of all or any part of our business and/or assets, or participant(s) or sub-participant(s) of our rights in respect of you to evaluate the transaction intended to be the subject of the assignment, participation or sub-participation and enabling the actual assignee(s) to use your data in the operation of the business or rights assigned; and
15. any other purposes relating to the purposes listed above.

Data security and retention

We will retain data securely and implement appropriate data retention policies. Your Personal Data will be stored in our system for at least seven (7) years from the date of transaction except where specific laws and/or regulations require a different retention period, in which case, the longer retention period will be observed. We will dispose of data securely once it is no longer required and will ensure that appropriate processes are put in place so only HSBC colleagues with a business requirement to access such data are authorized and able to do so.

Disclosure of Data

Data held by us or a member of the HSBC Group will be kept confidential but we or a member of the HSBC Group may provide data to the following parties or any of them (whether within or outside Mauritius) for the purposes set out in paragraph above:

1. any agents, contractors, sub-contractors or associates of the HSBC Group (including their employees, officers, agents, contractors, service providers and professional advisers);
2. any third party service providers who provide services to us or any member of the HSBC Group in connection with the operation or maintenance of our business (including their employees and officers);
3. any Authorities;
4. any persons under a duty of confidentiality to us or a member of the HSBC Group which have undertaken to keep such data confidential;
5. the drawee bank providing a copy of a paid cheque (which may contain data about the payee) to the drawer;
6. any persons acting on your behalf whose data are provided, payment recipients, beneficiaries, account nominees, intermediary, correspondent and agent banks, clearing houses, clearing or settlement systems, market counterparties, upstream withholding agents, swap or trade repositories, stock exchanges, companies in which you have an interest in securities (where such securities are held by us or any member of the HSBC Group) or any persons making any payment into a customer’s account
7. credit reference agencies (including the operator of any centralized database used by credit reference agencies), and, in the event of default, to debt collection agencies;
8. any persons to whom we are or any member of the HSBC Group is under an obligation or required or expected to make disclosure for the purposes set out in, or in connection with, paragraph 10,11,12 of Use of Data above;
9. any actual or proposed assignee(s) of ours or participant(s) or sub-participant(s) or transferee(s) of our rights in respect of you;
10. any persons giving or proposing to give a guarantee or security to guarantee or secure your obligations to us; and
    1. any member of the HSBC Group;
    2. third party financial institutions, insurers, credit card companies, securities and investment services providers;
    3. third party reward, loyalty, co-branding and privileges programme providers;
    4. co-branding partners of ours or any member of the HSBC Group (the names of such co-branding partners will be provided during the application process for the relevant products and services, as the case may be);
    5. charitable or non-profit making organisations and
    6. external service providers that we or any member of the HSBC Group engage(s) for the purposes set out in paragraph (d)(vii) above.

Such data may be transferred in and to a place outside Mauritius.

Requests for access to data or correction of data or for information regarding policies and practices and kinds of data held should be addressed to:

Data Privacy Office
HSBC Bank (Mauritius) Limited
IconEbene 1, Level 5 (West Wing),
Rue de L’Institut,
Ebene, 72202,
Mauritius

Email: mauritius.dpo@hsbc.co.mu

IMPORTANT: By accessing this website and any of its pages you are agreeing to the terms set out above. Thank you for choosing HSBC.

Call us on:

+(230) 403 8333