The Pearson Pension Plan

THE PEARSON PENSION PLAN:  DATA PRIVACY NOTICE

Pearson Pension Trustee Limited (“we”, “our” “us”), the trustee of The Pearson Pension Plan (the “Plan”), is committed to protecting your personal information and acting in accordance with your rights under data protection law.

This privacy notice contains information on:

• what personal information about you is collected by us;
• what we do with your personal information;
• the lawful basis on which your personal information is processed; and
• what rights you have.

1. Collection of your personal information 

We collect and process the following personal information about you: 

• your personal details which can include your name, gender, date of birth, home address (including postcode), telephone number, e-mail address, National Insurance number, bank account details and country of residence;
• information relating to your benefits, such as your member identifying number (which is assigned to you by us), the date you joined or left the Plan, your earnings and pensionable earnings, the category and value of the benefits that you have built up or receive and relevant matters impacting your benefits such as voluntary contributions, pension sharing orders (including information in divorce or dissolution certificates), tax protections or other adjustments;
• records of communications with you (including any complaints); and
• in some cases, special categories of personal information such as your biometric data (e.g. your picture or your fingerprint), your marital status or information concerning your health (e.g. in the case of ill-health early retirement and ill-health reviews, and where incapacity or similar reasons determine the benefits paid to you)

Where applicable, we also collect personal information about your nominated beneficiaries, dependants or next of kin (for example, when you submit an Expression of Wish form). Before providing us with any such information, we suggest that you provide a copy of the information in this notice to those individuals. We will assume that you have the authority to share any personal information you provide to us about them.

In some cases, we will collect personal information about you indirectly from the Pearson Group entity which is (or was) your employer, from HM Revenue & Customs where this relates to the contracted-out benefits payable from the Plan, and from our service providers (e.g. our administrators (which currently is Pearson Pension Trustee Services Limited, Aviva Life and Pensions UK Limited, and Capita).

In this notice, we will refer to the personal information which we collect about you and your nominated beneficiaries, dependants or next of kin as your “Personal Information”.

2. How we use your Personal Information 

We use your Personal Information for the following purposes:

• communicating with you in relation to your benefits and contributions, handling requests for transfers and allocation of death benefits, dealing with complaints, and making disclosures at your request such as in relation to transfers to other pension arrangements;
• for the general administration of the Plan, which can include: to record and pay benefits; for making a determination in connection with eligibility for or the amount of benefits payable under the Plan; for actuarial valuations; for selecting member nominated trustee directors; for providing you with news about the Plan; for reviews which we or our administrators conduct from time to time for statistical and reference purposes; and for other checks or administrative activities that may become necessary from time to time (like member tracing) should we happen to lose contact with you and to prevent fraud;
• for meeting our on-going regulatory, legal and compliance obligations, and investigating or preventing crime;
• to improve our processes and our use of technology, including testing and upgrading of systems, and to learn about other processes we can use to improve the administration of the Plan; and
• if and when we undertake activities from time to time to help us manage the liabilities of the Plan, such as obtaining life insurance, longevity hedging, insuring Plan liabilities with an insurer, Plan mergers, bulk transfers, pension increase exchanges and enhanced transfer value exercises, including (where relevant) disclosures to administrators for calculating offers made to you in relation to these activities and disclosures to advice providers to allow you to obtain financial advice

Our use of your Personal Information as described above is permitted by applicable data protection law because: 

1. it is necessary for our legitimate interests in pursuing the purposes set out in 2(a) to (e) above, such interests not being overridden by your privacy interests;
2. when we make disclosures to the Pearson Group (for the audit and corporate transaction purposes referred to below), it is necessary for Pearson Group’s legitimate interests in prudential management and meeting its regulatory requirements, such interests not being overridden by your privacy interests;
3. it is necessary to meet our legal or regulatory responsibilities, such as disclosures to authorities, regulators or government bodies referred to below;
4. it is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest and, when we use special categories of personal data, necessary for preventing fraud or other unlawful acts, for establishing, exercising or defending legal claims or, where the processing relates to personal data, manifestly in the public domain; and
5. it is processed with your consent, which we obtain from you from time to time, such as when you ask us to make disclosures or allocate benefits, or where the Plan rules require you to provide information which we cannot otherwise process without your consent.

Where the Personal Information we collect from you is needed to either: 

• meet our legal or regulatory obligations; or
• record, calculate or pay benefits to you, or your nominated beneficiaries,

then, if we cannot collect or continue to use this Personal Information, we may be unable to administer your contributions and benefits, or record, calculate or pay your benefits and/or the benefits due to your beneficiaries. 

3. Disclosures of your Personal Information 

We typically share your Personal Information with the following recipients: 

• our suppliers and other providers of services who use the information on our instructions; these include but are not limited to service providers to administer the Plan on our behalf (currently Pearson Pension Trustee Services Limited, Aviva Life and Pensions UK Limited and Capita), financial advisers (to provide you with financial advice), payroll providers (to record and pay benefits), medical advisers (to advise in relation to ill-health retirement cases), providers of printing and communication services (currently Landscape, Wordshop and Paragon), tracing and identity checking services (currently Lexis Nexis), IT and hosting providers, marketing providers, providers who invest your Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) and the death in service insurers (currently Aviva Life and Pensions UK Limited);
• our professional advisers to obtain actuarial advice (currently XPS Pensions Group), legal advice (currently Linklaters LLP), investment advice (currently Lane Clark & Peacock LLP), advice on de-risking projects (currently Lane Clark & Peacock LLP) and audit services (currently Crowe UK LLP);
• the Pearson Group, who will use the information for audit purposes, in relation to corporate transactions initiated by the Pearson Group from time to time;
• any new pension provider you select, if requested to do so by you;
• insurance and reinsurance companies, when we carry out the de-risking activities referred to in paragraph 2(e) above;
• public authorities, regulators or government bodies, including when required by law or regulation, under a code of practice or conduct, or when these authorities or bodies require us to do so. This may include the Pensions Regulator, HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions; and
• other persons from time to time when the disclosure is needed to exercise or protect our legal rights, including the rights of other stakeholders, or in response to requests from individuals or their representatives who seek to protect their legal rights or such rights of others. This may include the police or by order of the court if, for example, there is suspected or actual criminal activity involving the Plan.

Please note that when we share your Personal Information with our suppliers and service providers, we take steps to ensure they meet our data security standards, so that your Personal Information remains secure. 

4. Transfers of your Personal Information abroad 

The use and disclosure of your Personal Information for the purpose referred to in paragraph 2(b) and (e) above may involve transferring your data to countries outside of the UK or the European Economic Area (the “EEA”). Those countries, currently, may include India and the Philippines in accordance with the terms agreed with the service providers who administer the Plan on our behalf (currently Pearson Pension Trustee Services Limited, Aviva Life and Pensions UK Limited and Capita).

In those cases, except where the relevant country has been determined by the relevant public authority to ensure an adequate level of data protection, we will ensure that the transferred personal information is protected in compliance with applicable data protection rules. To ensure an appropriate level of protection, we typically use a data transfer agreement in the appropriate standard form approved for this purpose by the European Commission or (where applicable) relevant authority in the United Kingdom. Further details of these transfers and copies of these agreements are available from us on request. 

5. Retention of your Personal Information 

We will keep your Personal Information for the longer of: (i) the period required in order to meet our legal or regulatory responsibilities; and (ii) the period envisaged within our retention management systems.

We will decide the retention period having regard to the Plan’s operational and legal requirements, such as: facilitating the payment of benefits to you or your nominated beneficiaries; calculating and managing the liabilities of the Plan; and responding to legal claims or regulatory requests. In general, we will keep your Personal Information for twelve years after you (and your nominated beneficiaries or dependants) have stopped being entitled to any benefits from the Plan. 

6. Your rights

You have rights under data protection law to access and correct your Personal Information and (in some circumstances) to restrict its use or have it deleted. 

In some circumstances, you also have the right to object to the processing of your Personal Information and to require certain Personal Information to be transferred to you or a named third party. 

You can exercise any of these rights by contacting us at the details set out below. 

You also have the right to withdraw your consent to the use of your Personal Information, to the extent such use is based on your consent. You can notify us of your withdrawal of consent by contacting us at the details set out below.  

You can also lodge a complaint about our processing of your Personal Information with a supervisory authority in the country in the EEA where you habitually reside or work, or where a breach has taken place. Details for the office of the Information Commissioner in the UK are available at www.ico.org.uk - This link opens in a new browser window.

7. Further information required to carry out requests 

In some cases, it will be necessary to obtain additional information from you, for example in order to carry out your request for a transfer or allocation of benefits. We will notify you when your information is required for this purpose.

8. Status of this privacy notice 

This privacy notice was last updated on 1 November 2023.

This document is a notice to you and not a contract between us. It may be subject to amendments from time to time.  

Any future changes or additions to our processing of personal information (as described in this privacy notice) which affect you, will be brought to your attention in a way which is appropriate, having regard to the way in which we normally communicate with you. 

To contact us about the matters set out above, please contact the Secretary to the Trustee, Pearson Pension Trustee Limited, PO Box 645, Darlington, DL1 9HP or by using our website at:  www.pearson-pensions.com/contact-us or you can email us at: pensions.helpline@pearson.com or you can also call us on 0800 7811378, please select option 4.

Further details about the use of members’ personal information by the Plan actuary (XPS Pensions Group) is set out in their full Privacy Policy available online at: www.xpsgroup.com/legal-regulatory/privacy-policy/ - This link opens in a new browser window.