abrdn plc (‘abrdn’, ‘our’, ‘us’ or ‘we’) is committed to protecting your personal information and your privacy.
This Privacy Notice contains important information about what personal information we collect; what we do with that information; who we may share it with and why; and your choices and rights when it comes to the personal information you have given us.
Our Cookie Policy forms part of our Privacy Notice. When you browse our abrdn plc websites, we use cookies to store information about how you use these websites in order to improve the quality of service provided to you. To understand what type of cookies we use and how these work when you use our websites, as well as how to update your preferences, read our Cookie Policy.
When you connect to the abrdn plc Share Portal or other associated share portals, Equiniti Limited, as portal provider also uses cookies. To understand what type of cookies are used by Equiniti Limited, how these work as well as how to update your preferences, please read more here.
We keep our Privacy Notice under regular review. This version was last updated on 20 February 2023. We may need to make changes to this Privacy Notice so please check our website for updates from time to time. If there are important changes such as changes to where your personal data will be processed - we will contact you to let you know.
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We are abrdn plc, a global company providing market leading savings and investment solutions to meet the needs of individuals and institutions.
This Privacy Notice applies only to shareholders who have shares in a certificated form or in a personal CREST account with holdings on the abrdn plc share register. abrdn plc is the sole controller of your personal data for these shares.
If you hold shares in the abrdn Share Account (Corporate Sponsored Nominee), you can read more about how Equiniti Financial Services Limited (EFSL), provider of this nominee service, processes your personal information here.
If you hold shares in another external nominee account, please refer to the appropriate Privacy Notice for that external nominee provider.
If you participate in the Dividend Reinvestment Plan (the DRIP), you can read more about how Equiniti Financial Services Limited (EFSL) processes your personal information here.
You can read more about how Equiniti Limited, provider of the portal services, processes your personal information here.
If you have any questions about our Privacy Notice or the personal information we collect or use, please contact:
FAO Data Protection Officer
abrdn plc
1 George Street
Edinburgh
EH2 2LL
Information about you that we collect and use includes:
We may collect your personal information directly from you or a third party acting on your behalf, from a variety of sources, including but not limited to:
We take your privacy seriously and we will only ever collect and use information which is personal to you where it is necessary, fair and lawful to do so. We will collect and use your information only if we are able to satisfy one of the lawful processing conditions set out in applicable privacy & data protection laws. This will be the case where:
Where the processing is in our legitimate interests, we will always conduct an assessment to ensure that this use of your personal information is not excessive or unnecessary or otherwise more intrusive than it needs to be.
If you do not wish us to collect and use your personal information in these ways, it may mean that we will be unable to provide you with some of our services.
We will only disclose your personal information in accordance with applicable laws and regulations and where necessary to provide the agreed service to you (as outlined in the ‘Why we collect and use your information’ section). Whenever we share your personal information we will do so in line with our obligations to keep your information safe and secure.
We may disclose your information to the following third parties:
Whenever we share your personal information, we will do so in line with our obligations to keep your information safe and secure.
The majority of your information is processed in the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA). However, some of your information may be processed by third parties we work with such as our share registrar in countries outside of the UK or the EEA, including countries such as India.
Where your information is being processed outside of the UK or the EEA, we take additional steps to ensure that your information is protected to at least an equivalent level as would be applied by UK or EEA Data Protection Laws, e.g. we will put in place legal agreements with third parties and abrdn affiliates with ongoing oversight to ensure they meet these obligations.
We take information and system security very seriously and we strive to comply with our obligations at all times. Any personal information which is collected, recorded or used in any way, whether on paper, online or any other media, will have appropriate safeguards applied in line with our privacy & data protection obligations.
Your information is protected by controls designed to minimise loss or damage through accident, negligence or deliberate actions. Our security controls are aligned to industry standards and good practice; providing a control environment that effectively manages risks to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your information whether it is being processed by us or a third party acting on our behalf.
Our employees also protect personal and other confidential information when processing, storing or transmitting information electronically and must undertake annual training on this.
Internal and external audits are carried out on a regular basis and specialist third party consultants conduct regular, independent assurance and benchmarking exercises across our business to ascertain the effectiveness of our security control environment and our security strategy.
To provide this service and meet our legal and regulatory obligations, we will keep your personal information and copies of records we create (e.g. calls with us) while you are a shareholder.
Even when you no longer have a relationship with us, we are required to keep information for different legal and regulatory reasons. This means your personal data is held for no longer than 7 years from the date your account is shown at nil (on cessation of the relationship with you) as long as no further activities affecting the nil balance occurs.
We regularly review our retention periods to make sure they comply with all laws and regulations.
You have a number of rights under data protection laws which may be exercised in certain circumstances. These are:
Right to be informed about how and why we are processing your personal information
You have a right to receive clear and easy to understand information on what personal information we have, why and who we share it with. We do this in our Privacy Notice or other privacy notices contained within application forms, voting forms and other documents.
Right of access to personal information relating to you
You have the right of access to your personal information. If you wish to receive a copy of the personal information we hold on you, you may make a data subject access request (DSAR).
Right to request rectification of inaccurate or incomplete personal information
If your personal information is inaccurate or incomplete, you can request that it is corrected.
Right to request erasure of your personal information
You can ask for your information to be deleted or removed if there is not a compelling reason for us to continue to have it.
Right to restrict processing of your personal information
You can ask that we block or suppress the processing of your personal information for certain reasons. This means that we are still permitted to keep your information – but only to ensure we don’t use it in the future for those reasons you have restricted.
Right to data portability
You can ask for a copy of your personal information for your own purposes to use across different services. In certain circumstances, you may move, copy or transfer the personal information we hold to another company in a safe and secure way. For example, if you were moving to a new nominee provider.
Right to object to processing of your personal information
You can object to us processing your personal information where: it’s based on our legitimate interests (including profiling); for direct marketing (including profiling); and if we were using it for scientific/historical research and statistics.
In some circumstances, although you may not be entitled to require us to erase your information, you may be entitled to limit the purposes for which we can use your information.
Right to not be subject to automated decision-making including profiling
You have the right to ask abrdn to:
More information can be found on your rights here
If you require any more information on your rights and how to exercise them, you can email: DPOffice@abrdn.com
We will always strive to collect, use and safeguard your personal information in line with applicable privacy & data protection laws. If you have any questions or concerns in relation to how we have handled your information as set out in this Privacy Notice, please let us know immediately and we will do our utmost to make things right.
Please contact us at:
FAO Data Protection Officer
abrdn plc
1 George Street
Edinburgh
EH2 2LL
Email: DPOffice@abrdn.com
While we hope that we can resolve any complaints for you, you do have the option to complain to the ICO (whether or not you have exhausted our complaints procedure). Their contact details are as follows:
Website: https://ico.org.uk/
Postal address:
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number