Retail Finance Intelligence Limited (“RFI Global”, “We”, “Us”) registered in United Kingdom (Company Number 06780168) are a specialist global provider of Market Research services to Banking & Financial Services Organisations (“Our Clients”).

You have been invited to complete an RFI Global survey by one of our clients or local research partners, requesting you provide insight regarding financial services providers of which you have an active relationship, or you have otherwise previously consented to communications.

Participation in this survey is voluntary. Your personal information has not been shared with us by this provider. We will only obtain your personal information when you provide it to us directly via your completion of this survey.

For natural persons (data subjects) in UAE, when we collect and use personal data (information) about you, we may be subject to the Federal Decree-Law No. 45 of 2021 on the Protection of Personal Data (United Arab Emirates) (“PPD”) and responsible as a ‘data controller’ for such personal data. Below you will find the additional specific provisions applicable to you in UAE; including rights to your data as it may be processed by RFI Global

RFI Global collects information via questionnaires hosted on 3^rd party platforms or interviews facilitated by industry partners. Information collected may include Personal Information and Non-Personal Information.

Our 3^rd party partners (whether within or outside of United Arab Emirates) are all contractually bound to keep any information they collect and disclose to us, or that we collect and disclose to them, confidential and must protect it with security standards and practices that are equivalent to our own.

We have set out below more detailed information about how we use your personal data and the legal bases for processing your personal data. These legal bases may differ on a case-by-case basis.

• we have your consent for the use of your personal data
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• we need to use your personal data in order to perform a contract with you
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• we need to process your data to comply with a legal obligation
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• we need to process your data in order to protect your vital interests or someone else
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• the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest, or
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• the use of your personal data is necessary for our (or our clients’) legitimate interests (in which case we will explain what those interests are).

When you participate in an RFI Global Survey, the data we collect from you is processed or stored for one or more of the following purposes:

Some of the data collected when you participate in a survey with us can qualify as ‘sensitive’ personal data. For reference, ‘sensitive’ personal data in general is considered to be personal data consisting of racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, data concerning health or physical condition of a person or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation.

This data is limited to information necessary to produce aggregated insights for our clients, and will never be shared with a client or 3rd party in an unaggregated format unless you are deidentified prior to sharing.

Sensitive data we may request is limited to:

• Financial Data. Information about your income, banking habits, product holdings and providers.

• Relationship and Family Data. Information about your relationship status, number of dependents, household expenditure.

• Ethnicity & Religion. Information about your ethnicity, citizenship status, religion.

This information is provided voluntarily via your completion of the survey. At any time if you do not wish to provide this information you may exit the survey.

RFI Global stores and processes data via servers and RFI Global staff located in Australia, United Kingdom & United States of America.

In transferring and storing your data in these locations we implement safeguards to ensure the transfer is made by a lawful and secure method for purposes of compliance with UAE and relevant regional data protection laws.

Specific safeguards we implement include:

• Anonymization or Pseudonymization of Personal Information

• Encryption of Data in Transit & At Rest

RFI Global does not transfer your personal data to any 3rd parties. Any personal information you provide in the course of completing a survey will be anonymized or removed prior to being referenced in aggregated market research outputs.

RFI Global studies observe long-term consumer behavior requiring a ten-year history of consumer feedback; including feedback and demographics. Data collected from you during a survey is therefore kept until the cessation of the trended study, and for a minimum period of 10 years from the date of collection.

However, data that is unnecessary for our research, in particular any contact details and all personally identifiable data (for example names, phone numbers and emails), will be deleted five years from the date we receive it on a monthly basis, upon the cessation of any trended study, or when you exercise your data rights. This data is stored for this pre-defined length of time to ensure we do not re-invite Panellists for a reasonable length of time after a request has been made to cease participation in our studies and will not be passed on to any third parties.

When you participate in a survey we may record your IP address and issue a Session Cookie. This data is held for a maximum of 30 days and is used solely for the purpose of preventing duplicate or fraudulent responses, or to allow you to reenter an incomplete survey without additional identity verification should your session terminate due to a technical fault. This data is never shared with a third party or transferred to a secondary system. Cookies issued are strictly necessary and not used to track your activity on any other sites or services and expire within 30 days of your last visit to our survey page.

RFI Global is committed to your privacy and our obligations under Data Protection Laws which apply in regions we operate or that apply to you as an individual in territory’s you are located or originate from.

If you are a UAE Resident or Citizen, by law you have the following rights:

• Right to Obtain Information. This right is commonly known as a “data subject access request”. This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you upon submitting a request.

• Right to Request Personal Data Transfer. This enables you to ask us, in certain circumstances, to provide you with the personal data you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format or to transmit the personal data that you have provided to us to another party, whenever this is technically feasible.

• Request for Correction or Erasure. This enables you to request for correction or erasure of the personal data that we hold about you. You can ask us to update any incomplete, inaccurate, or out of date information we hold about you, to be corrected or to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it.

• Right to Restrict Processing. This enables you to ask us, in certain circumstances, to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.

• Right to Stop Processing. This enables you to object to and stop the processing if the processing of your personal data is for direct marketing purposes, including profiling related to direct marketing or for the purposes of conducting statistical surveys, unless the Processing is necessary to achieve the public interest or if the processing is in violation of your rights.

• Right to Processing and Automated Processing. This right enables you not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you.

• Right to Filing a Complaint. This enables you the right to file a complaint with UAE Data Office (established by virtue of Federal Decree-Law No. 44/2021), if you consider that the processing of your personal data infringes PPD. UAE Data Office is the regulatory and enforcing authority responsible for the protection of the privacy of individuals.

If you are UAE resident or citizen and want to exercise a data subject right in connection to your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer for the UAE via email at privacy@rfi.global

If you are a citizen or resident of the United Kingdom or European Union you have rights in respect to your under the 

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These rights include the rights:

• Right to be informed

• Right of access

• Right to rectification

• Right to erasure

• Right to restrict processing

• Right to data portability

• Right to object

• Rights related to automated decision making including profiling

For more information about your data rights under GDPR or to exercise your data rights please contact our Data Protection Officer (UK) via email at privacy@rfi.global

What we may need from you

If you exercise one of the above rights, we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and that you are entitled to make such a request. This is to ensure that personal data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

This notice was last updated on 17th January 2024.

We may update this document from time to time and any changes will be posted on the 1st page of open surveys and updated on our website https://rfi.global/uae-privacy-notice

If you have any questions regarding our management of your personal data, would like to exercise any of your Data Rights, or if you want to request more information regarding this privacy notice you can write to our Data Protection Officer at privacy@rfi.global