Privacy statement

Allan Gray’s commitment to data privacy and security

Allan Gray is an investment manager focused on building long-term wealth and creating financial security for our clients. A key strategy to successfully fulfil this objective is to work every day to build and maintain our clients’ trust and confidence. We have, therefore, adopted a data protection policy in line with our corporate values and industry best practice. We recognise the significant threat of, among other things, cybercrime, and identity theft prevalent in the financial services industry. To that end, we prioritise our security safeguards to protect your personal information and to ensure that we process your personal information in an appropriate manner and for legitimate purposes.

The purpose of this Privacy Statement is to outline our practices regarding the processing and protection of your personal information. Kindly note that the name of the specific Allan Gray entity which processes your personal information will depend on the type of product offering, and we will duly inform you of the relevant Allan Gray entity which will be the contracting party. By using the Allan Gray website (including the secure site), you are accepting the terms of this Privacy Statement.

A. Acceptance

Acceptance required

You must accept all the terms of this Privacy Statement when transacting with Allan Gray. If there is anything in this Privacy Statement that you do not agree with, then you may not transact with us. By accepting this Privacy Statement, you are deemed to have read, understood, accepted, and agreed to be bound by all of its terms.

Legal capacity

You may access our website if you are younger than 18 years old. You may not transact if you are younger than 18 years old or do not have legal capacity to conclude legally binding contracts, unless you have the consent of a competent person.

Your obligations

You may only send us your own personal information or the information of another person where you have their permission to do so.

B. How do we retrieve your personal information?

Directly from you

We ordinarily collect your personal information from you as part of the client onboarding process, which is either via our Allan Gray Online site or through correspondence in person, via email or telephone. The type of information which we require depends on the nature of the instruction, the specific product offering and our internal, legal and regulatory requirements as it may change from time to time.

Cookies

There are instances where personal information is not retrieved directly from you but through the course of providing our products and services, and specifically when you navigate our website and other online channels. This is done using “cookies”. Please see our Cookies Policy for more information.

Third-party sources

We may collect additional information about you from third parties, such as:

• Independent financial advisers, discretionary investment managers and other agents who you have appointed to deal with your investments on your behalf and who are duly authorised to disclose your personal information.
• Verification agencies to fulfil our statutory obligations regarding the monitoring and prevention of money laundering and other financial crimes, and for the purposes of general background checking.

 C. The reasons for processing your personal information

Allan Gray will only collect, process and store your personal information, with your consent, for legitimate purposes or in situations where it is in our legitimate interest and which will not cause you undue prejudice. In summary, this includes the following:

• Procurement of your consent. This is where you have consented to the processing of the personal information as part of onboarding or any subsequent instructions relating to your investment(s). We are required by law to collect certain personal information. Should you voluntarily withhold or withdraw consent, this may restrict the quality of the service we are able to provide and, depending on the personal information which you are not consenting to being processed, our ability to render any services whatsoever.  
• Fulfilment of our contract with you. This is where the processing of your personal information is necessary for us to provide the investment management and other services as agreed between us, which includes communicating to you about any changes to your investments, dealing with complaints or disputes, and the recovery of any money owing to us.
• Compliance with legal obligations. This is where we need to process your personal information to comply with any binding legal obligations imposed on us by the relevant governmental or regulatory authority.
• It is in our legitimate interests. This includes:
  • Verification for the purposes of preventing and mitigating financial crimes, fraud or money laundering;
  • Adhering to local and international best practice guidelines to safeguard your investments; or
  • Performing the relevant IT due diligence testing to detect malicious data and cyber threats.

D. The sharing of your personal information

Employees; independent contractors and third-party service providers

We may need to disclose personal information to our employees; independent contractors; and third-party service providers who require the personal information to perform their roles or services. Where necessary and required, data protection agreements are concluded.

Change of ownership

If we undergo a change in ownership, or a merger with, acquisition by, or sale of assets to another entity, we may assign our rights to the personal information we process to a successor, purchaser or separate entity. We will disclose the transfer on our website. If you are concerned about your personal information migrating to a new owner, you may request us to delete your personal information.

Third parties

Allan Gray will protect your personal information and will not sell, rent or trade your personal information to any person. There will, however, be instances where Allan Gray will have an obligation to share your personal information, which includes the following:

• Should it be requested by any regulatory authority, such as the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, Prudential Authority or Financial Intelligence Centre, exercising its statutory duties;
• Should such disclosure be in the public interest or for a legitimate purpose;
• By an order of court;
• In order to protect the legitimate interests of Allan Gray in exercising its rights or the protection of its reputation and property;
• To fulfil our legal and regulatory obligations in terms of any applicable law;

If it is requested by third parties in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 (‘PAIA’) which regulates and sets out the procedure for such a request and under which circumstances such access may be refused. For information on or to access the PAIA manual, as well as the prescribed request form and fees payable should you wish to exercise your right of access to information, please click here.

You further acknowledge that we may disclose your personal information within the Allan Gray group of companies, and you expressly consent to this.

E. Transfer of your personal information

If you have offshore investments with us, we may transfer your data, where necessary, within the following jurisdictions:

• European Economic Area, which is subject to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation;
• Guernsey, which is subject to compliance with the Data Protection (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2017 ("DPL");
• Bermuda, which is subject to the Personal Information Protection Act, 2016 ("PIPA"); and
• Botswana, which is subject to compliance with the Data Protection Act, 2018 ("DPA"), (collectively referred to as the "foreign data protection legislation").

Where personal information is transferred and processed outside of the above jurisdictions, the safeguards that we will use to protect your personal information include contractual protections imposed on the recipients of your personal information to maintain South African and foreign data protection legislation standards.

F. Storage and destruction of your personal information

We will retain your personal information for the duration that you are a client of Allan Gray. After you cease to be client, we may keep your data up to a maximum period of five years:

• To comply with retention requirements imposed by any law; and
• For prudent record-keeping for the services rendered to you.

We may be required to retain your personal information for longer than five years, should it be the subject of any litigation or for other legal reasons. We may also keep your information for research or statistical purposes with the necessary security controls in place.

G. Accurate and up-to-date information

We try to keep the personal information we collect as accurate, complete and up to date as possible. From time to time, we may request you to update your personal information on the website. You are able to review or update any personal information that we have on record for you by accessing your secure online account, by emailing or phoning us, or in person at our offices.

Please note that to better protect you and safeguard your personal information, we take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your account or making any corrections to your personal information.

H. Client rights

You have the right to have your personal information processed according to the conditions for lawful processing of personal information as set out in legislation, specifically chapter 3 of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 ("POPIA") and the foreign data protection legislation, which includes the rights of:

• Notification – the right to be notified that personal information about you is being collected or that it has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person.
• Access – the right to establish where we hold your personal information and to request access to such personal information.
• Rectification and erasure – the right to request, where necessary, the correction, destruction or deletion of your personal information.
• Objection – the right to object, on reasonable grounds in relation to your particular situation, to the processing of your personal information. This includes the right to object to the processing of your personal information for direct marketing.
• Profiling – the right not to be subject, under certain circumstances, to a decision which is made solely on the basis of the automated processing of your personal information intended to provide a profile of you.
• Complaints – the right to submit a complaint to a relevant regulator(s) regarding an alleged interference with the protection of your personal information. The contact details of the respective regulators are as follows:
  • The contact details of the Regulator can be found here.
  • The Office of the Data Protection Authority of Guernsey in terms of DPL can be found here.
  • The Privacy Commissioner of Bermuda in terms of PIPA can be found here.
  • The Information and Data Protection Commission of Botswana in terms of DPA is yet to be formed.
• Civil proceedings – the right to institute civil proceedings regarding alleged interference with the protection of your personal information.

Please keep in mind that these rights are not unlimited. We are required by South African (or other) law to limit your right to exercise some of these rights. Examples of such instances include (among others) where required by:

• Tax laws;
• Financial service provider laws;
• Anti-money laundering and fraud-prevention laws;
• Pension fund laws; and
• Insurance laws.

You are not obliged to provide us with your information where it is requested, but we may be unable to provide certain products and services or proceed with our business relationship with you if you do not do so. If this is the case, we will inform you.

I. Limitation

We are not responsible for, give no warranties, nor make any representations regarding the privacy policies or practices of linked or any third-party websites.

J. Enquiries

If you have any questions or concerns based on this Privacy Statement or regarding the way in which we handle personal information, please contact us at protect@allangray.co.za.