Privacy notice
Layman's Terms AI Ltd (company no. 17526497, 5th Floor, 167-169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF) is the controller of the personal data described here. Contact: privacy@laymanstermsai.co.uk. Our registration with the Information Commissioner's Office is in progress.
What we collect, and why
| Information | Whose | Why we use it | Lawful basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name, role, email, phone, firm name | The person completing the intake form, and any adviser or client they name | To deliver the review and contact you about it | Contract with your business; legitimate interests |
| Names, addresses and other details in the loan documents | Directors, guarantors and others named in them | To explain the documents, including any personal guarantee | Legitimate interests in providing the review your business asked for |
| Financial information about the business | Mainly the business; may include directors' personal finances where they give a guarantee | To test what the documents ask of the business | Legitimate interests |
| Emails and records of the review | Anyone we correspond with | To keep a record of what we did and deal with questions or complaints | Legal obligations; legitimate interests |
| Website visit data | Website visitors | To run and secure the website | Legitimate interests |
We do not use personal data for marketing unless you ask us to, and we do not sell it.
How we use AI
We use AI tools to help read documents and draft reports. Documents are processed by our AI provider under business terms that do not allow it to use your data to train its models. A person reviews every report. We do not make decisions about you by automated means.
Who processes your information for us
- Google (forms, email, document storage)
- Anthropic (the AI model that helps us read documents and draft reports)
- Cloudflare (website hosting)
Some of these providers may process data outside the UK. Where they do, we rely on UK adequacy regulations or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum.
How long we keep it
- Loan documents and financial information: deleted 90 days after the report is delivered.
- Reports, intake answers and correspondence: 6 years after the review, to deal with questions or claims.
- Anonymised loan terms: kept indefinitely, as they do not identify anyone.
Your rights
You can ask to see the personal data we hold about you, have it corrected or deleted, restrict or object to how we use it, or have it transferred. Email privacy@laymanstermsai.co.uk. If you are unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk).
If you are named in a client's documents
If you are a director or guarantor named in documents a client has sent us, we hold your information only to prepare their report, on the terms above.
Data use notice
Every review adds the commercial terms of the loan to our anonymised record of UK business lending. This is a condition of using our service: it is how each report can draw on more of the market than the last.
What we keep
- The lender's name and the type of facility
- The amount, term, pricing, fees and repayment profile
- The security, guarantees and covenants, and how much headroom they leave
- The broad sector, size band and region of the business, and the loan's purpose
- The date of the offer
What we never keep in the record
Your business's name or Companies House number, the names of any people, addresses, or anything else that could reasonably identify you or your business.
How we use it
- To compare terms in future reports against what we see in the market
- To publish aggregated insights about business lending, such as typical pricing or covenant levels, and how lenders compare
- To share or sell aggregated analysis of lending terms and lender behaviour to third parties
Anything we publish or share is aggregated so that no individual loan or business can be identified. We will only show figures where they combine at least 5 loans.
Questions
If you have a question about the record, or believe something in it could identify your business, email privacy@laymanstermsai.co.uk and we will look at it straight away.