Privacy Policy
Privacy Policy (Statement)
The Standard Bank Group is a customer-centric and digitally enabled financial services organization focused on Africa. We provide comprehensive and integrated financial solutions to our clients and operate across the African continent and internationally through our subsidiaries.
Due to the integrated nature of the Standard Bank Group’s business, clients whose primary relationship is with one group entity are regarded as clients of the Standard Bank Group as a whole for purposes of customer centrality, information quality, and risk management.
The simplified legal structure of the Standard Bank Group highlights the main subsidiaries and companies and can be found on its website at https://www.standardbank.co.mz/.
In this statement, any reference to the Standard Bank Group includes all legal entities within the structure and clients of the Standard Bank Group or refers to clients of a legal entity within Standard Bank Mozambique.
1.1 Privacy and Data Protection Regulation
As we operate in multiple countries and through various legal entities, we comply with applicable data protection and privacy laws in each of these countries. Consequently, the specific legal entity of the Standard Bank Group responsible for determining the purpose and means of processing your personal information (responsible party or controller)—in other words, the legal entity that holds the business relationship with you—will not always be the same. You will be informed, when using a banking channel (branch or digital), of which entity is the responsible party or data controller.
1.2 What is the purpose and scope of this statement?
The purpose of this statement is to inform you about how we collect, use, store, make available, disclose, update, safeguard, destroy, or otherwise process your personal information (also referred to as personal data in some countries), and to explain your rights related to the privacy of your personal information and how the law protects you.
We may combine your personal information available across the Group and use the combined information for any of the purposes stated in this statement, where we have legal grounds to do so. Your personal information may be processed in South Africa, and we will ensure that such processing complies with the Standard Bank Group’s minimum data protection standards.
Protecting the privacy, confidentiality, and security of your personal information is very important to us, as it is essential to maintaining your trust and acting appropriately to meet your needs. Therefore, we have implemented group-wide policies and procedures to ensure your personal information is protected.
1.3 What is personal information and what types do we collect?
Personal information is any information from which you can be identified. The personal information we may collect about you includes:
- name, age, gender, sex, and identification numbers;
- physical and email addresses and contact numbers;
- online identifiers and your online behavior, such as cookies and IP addresses;
- engagements with us, including use of products or services, transactions, requests, inquiries, applications, and complaints;
- financial information, including financial behavior, goals, and needs;
- internal reports and other data derived from the personal information we collect;
- other personal information, including biometric details, racial or ethnic origin, criminal history and behavior, medical history and health, and your personal beliefs and affiliations, such as religious, philosophical, union membership, or political beliefs.
1.4 How do we collect your personal information?
We will collect personal information directly from you, by phone, or through online channels such as our website, mobile apps, Internet Banking, or electronic messaging platforms.
We also collect personal information about you from other sources, where lawful and reasonable, such as third parties you deal with or that Standard Bank interacts with for business purposes. These third parties include:
- Business partners (including partners involved in rewards programs, campaigns, or other business activities, joint venture partners, media, and platform partners) or companies we may acquire or merge with.
- Service providers (including payment processors, card network providers, debt collection and tracing agencies, credit bureaus, electronic communication service providers, public and private data providers, and data verification providers, including data registries, aggregators, search engines, and social media and marketing list providers).
- Employers, consultants, agents, associates, assignees, successors, trustees, executors, and appointed third parties (including lawyers and contractors).
- Government departments, regulatory authorities, courts, law enforcement agencies, ombudsmen, and tax authorities.
If you are a third-party service provider, we may collect personal information about you as a data subject to ensure that the business relationship and matters related to the agreement between you and us can be fulfilled. You warrant that if you provide us with any personal information about other individuals, such as employees, shareholders, or your directors, you are authorized to share their personal information with us for the purposes set out in this statement.
Providing us with your personal information is generally voluntary. However, it may be mandatory in certain circumstances, such as when applying for products and/or services or to comply with anti-money laundering legislation. If you do not provide us with your personal information when requested, we may not be able to provide you with products or services or fulfill our legal obligations.
Whenever you provide us with personal information about third parties, you should inform them that you need to disclose their personal information to us. We will process the information in accordance with this statement.
1.5 Why do we process your personal information?
Our responsibilities to you are very important to us, and our goal is to provide you with personalized services to meet your needs. We may process your personal information for any of the reasons described below:
1. Contractual Requirements
We may need to process your personal information to enter into or perform under a contract or agreement with you for a product or service you have requested from us or through our business partners with whom we have entered into a partnership, collaboration, or alliance agreement, or for the purpose of:
- providing you with products and services, including opening and maintaining your account, executing transactions, handling complaints where applicable, collecting payments owed to us by you, managing our risks, and maintaining our overall relationship with you;
- communicating with you regarding the products or services you have with us; or
- providing you with additional information you request regarding the products or services you have with us.
2. Legal obligations
We may process your personal information for the following reasons:
• to complete integrity and business conduct checks required for compliance purposes, including due diligence and onboarding processes, monitoring and assurance reviews, and conducting sanctions screening against any sanctions lists.
• to comply with other risk management, regulatory and legislative requirements.
• to comply with voluntary and mandatory codes of conduct.
• to detect, prevent and report theft, money laundering, terrorist financing, corruption or other potentially illegal activity, or activity that may result in loss.
• to process and settle transactions and payments.
• to conduct research and analysis (which may include assessing product suitability, credit quality, insurance risks, market risks and economic affordability, developing credit models and tools, and obtaining related information).
3. Legitimate interest
Standard Bank Mozambique may process your personal information in the regular management of its business and to protect the interests of the Bank and its clients, depositors, shareholders, employees and other third parties, including our business partners and members of the general public. Standard Bank may process your personal information in order to:
• maintain, monitor, improve and develop our business policies, systems and controls;
• maintain and improve data quality;
• design, develop and test products, services and solutions for clients, which may include combining sources and types of personal information across multiple legal entities and countries, subject to compliance with applicable laws;
• personalize products, services and solutions, messages and advertising;
• respond to customer inquiries and communications and record these interactions for analysis and improvement purposes;
• manage business emergencies and stress events;
• process and settle transactions and payments;
• comply with record-keeping obligations;
• conduct research and analysis (among other things, to assess product suitability, credit quality, insurance risks, market risks and price affordability, to perform behavioral profiling, to develop credit models and tools, and to obtain related information);
• enable clients to use value-added solutions and participate in reward programs;
• achieve other related projects.
4. Consent
In addition to the reasons presented above, we may process your personal information when we have your specific consent for a defined purpose. We will also seek your consent when required by applicable laws.
We will store your personal information in accordance with our defined retention periods and will delete it thereafter.
1.6 Where will we process your personal information?
Due to the integrated nature of Standard Bank’s business and to provide you with efficient access to our products and services, we may process your personal information in South Africa and will ensure that it complies with the Standard Bank Group’s minimum data protection standards.
Integrated processing has the following advantages for you:
• A single and holistic view of your information that helps us manage your client profile, authenticate your identity and protect you against fraud.
• Improved business processes and service delivery (and less duplication of information provided).
1.7 How long do we retain your personal information?
We retain your personal information in accordance with our legal and regulatory obligations and for our business and operational purposes, as highlighted above. This will generally be for at least ten (10) years from your last transaction with us.
1.8 How will we communicate with you?
In addition to face-to-face communication, we use a wide range of channels to contact you regarding your existing products and services and to keep you updated. These include SMS, email, phone calls, automated calls, notifications sent to your mobile device, and in-app notifications. We need to keep you updated on an ongoing operational basis about your existing products and services and their new features, especially where we are making them more secure and making banking more convenient for you. We may contact you through these means for research purposes or to communicate with you about marketing new products or services, as explained in more detail below.
1.9 How do we use your personal information for marketing purposes?
Whether you are an existing client or a potential client with whom we have had previous interactions regarding your well-being or financial needs, it is important to us and therefore we would like to share information with you about our products, services and special offers (subject to applicable local laws).
If you are a potential client and we have had no prior interaction or relationship with you, we will seek your express consent, in accordance with local laws, to market to you electronically.
1.10 When, how and with whom will we share your personal information?
We share information with auditors and consultants supporting our services, with our trusted partners to present products and services to you, with agencies and other financial institutions regarding credit, fraud and risk matters, with data validation and trusted providers to verify your data and identity, and with relevant local and foreign governments and other authorities, as required by law.
We take extra care when transferring or sharing information and will enter into appropriate contracts with trusted parties with whom we share your information, thereby ensuring that your rights under relevant data protection legislation are maintained.
1.11 How do we protect your personal information?
The security of your personal information is important to us and we take reasonable steps to keep your personal information secure and to prevent loss, destruction, damage or unlawful access to your personal information by unauthorized parties. We require the same level of security to be implemented by our service providers and other third parties. However, you should not share or send us any personal information through unauthorized channels, as these are not secure means of communication and pose a risk of interception and unauthorized access. You should only share personal information through our authorized channels.
1.12 What are your rights?
We value your trust and want you to be familiar with your rights under the law and know how you can exercise them in your interactions with Standard Bank Mozambique. You have the right to:
• access the personal information we hold about you, and to correct and update your information;
• object to our processing of your personal information, where applicable;
• request that we delete your personal information where appropriate;
• be notified that your personal information is being collected by us or has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorized person;
• object to the processing of personal information for direct marketing purposes;
• not be subject to automated decision-making processes regarding a request for products and/or services, except in certain circumstances; and
• request reasons or make a representation to us if your request for products and/or services is declined.
1.13 Use of cookies on our website
A "cookie" is a small text file that is stored on your computer, smartphone, tablet, or other device when you visit a website or use an application. It helps distinguish you from other users and contains specific information related to your use of our website or application, such as your login data and preference settings, and helps the website or application recognize your device.
Cookies help improve the functioning of a website or application and make it easier to provide you with a better user experience on our online channels. To use or store types of cookies that are not necessary for the operation of the website or application and are optional, we will first obtain your consent.
For this reason, we limit the use of cookies to:
• providing products and services you request;
• advertising through marketing communications;
• providing you with a better online experience and tracking website performance; and
• helping us make our website more relevant to you.
We use the following types of cookies on our online channels, such as our website:
• Strictly necessary cookies
These cookies are mandatory and are required for the effective operation of our website on your device. They allow you to use the website and its features and cannot be turned off.
• Performance cookies
These are optional cookies that collect information about how the website is used but not any personal information. Performance information is anonymous and primarily statistical and is used to improve the performance of our website.
• Marketing or advertising cookies
These cookies are also optional and are used to deliver and display ads that are relevant and engaging to you as a user. They help us measure the effectiveness of our advertising campaigns through your interaction with the ad.
• Session cookies
These cookies are temporary and optional and only exist while you are browsing our website to remember your activities. Once the page is closed or you move to a different website, the cookies are deleted.
• Persistent cookies
These are permanent and optional cookies that are stored on your device until they reach a defined expiration date or until you delete them. They remember your preferences or actions on our website (or in some cases across different websites). We may use them for various reasons, for example, to remember your preferences and choices when using our website, or to display advertising campaigns relevant to you.
• First-party cookies
These are cookies that we create and store when you use our website and relate to information obtained directly from you.
• Third-party cookies
These cookies are owned and created by a third party that provides us with a service such as social media sharing, website analytics, or content marketing. These cookies are intended to collect information directly from the user, and we share personal information with third parties through the cookies they store on our website.
When we use cookies to collect personal information, it will always be done in accordance with this statement. You can prevent your browser from accepting cookies, but if you do, some parts of our website or online services may not function properly. We recommend that you allow cookies. Explore your browser settings and options to disable or enable them, or visit https://www.aboutcookies.org for detailed information on managing cookies.
1.14 Social media
When you engage with us through our social media accounts, your personal information may be processed by the social media platform owner. This process is outside our control and processing activities may be carried out in a country outside your home country that may have different data protection laws. For more information about a social media platform’s privacy practices, please review and read the terms and conditions of that platform before using it or sharing any personal information on it.
Our social media accounts are not appropriate forums for discussing our clients’ products or financial agreements. We will never ask you to share personal, account, or security information on social media platforms. However, we may ask you to send us a private message through one of our official social media accounts.
1.15 General
We may change this statement from time to time, in line with changes to our products or services or regulatory requirements. We will make all reasonable efforts to notify you through appropriate communication channels. The most recent copy of this statement is available at:
https://www.standardbank.co.mz/Politica-de-Privacidade
If you have any questions related to the processing of your personal information by Standard Bank, please contact our Data Privacy Office at:
[email protected]