Privacy Notice for HSBC Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited
Effective from 1 January 2025
Privacy Notice
As an HSBC Asset Management client or investor, we know that you care about how your personal information is dealt with.
This Privacy Notice for HSBC Asset Management Bermuda clients or investors (The “Privacy Notice”) below explains how we will use your personal information, who we might share it with, and what steps we’ll take to make sure it stays private and secure.
Before we begin
As an HSBC Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited client or investor, we may collect and use personal information about you or individuals connected with you e.g. your directors, employees and/or agents.
This notice explains how we will use that information, who we might share it with, and what steps we’ll take to make sure it stays private and secure. This notice continues to apply even if your agreement with us ends.
This notice applies to any personal information we receive from you, create or obtain from other sources and explains how it will be used by us. If we’ve provided you with separate or further information about how we collect and use your personal information for a particular product or service, those terms will continue to apply to that service. If you interact with HSBC in a different context, e.g. as a banking customer or in a country outside Bermuda, separate terms will apply to that interaction.
It is important that you take the time to read and understand this notice so that you understand how we will use personal information relating to you, your directors, employees and/or agents and the applicable rights in relation to that personal information.
Wherever we’ve said ‘you’ or ‘your’, this means any individual who deals with us and if you are acting on behalf of a company, trust or pension fund for and on behalf of that company, trust or pension fund. (e.g. directors, employees, consultants, agents) or other people connected to your account. This notice only applies to information about individuals and not to information which is solely related to companies, trusts or pension funds.
Wherever we’ve said ‘we’ or ‘our’, this includes HSBC Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited, HSBC Bank Bermuda Limited and other companies in the HSBC Group
The address for HSBC Global Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited is 37 Front Street, Hamilton, Bermuda HM 11. To contact us regarding any privacy issues or concerns, please use the contact details at the end of this notice.
What information we collect
The information we collect or have about you will come from different sources. It will include information relating to any of our investment products or services (including any you may have applied for or held previously) or information we generate to improve our service and to manage, administer and take decisions about your account. Some of it will come directly from you. Some of it may come from other HSBC companies. Some of it we may find from publicly available sources which we have lawfully accessed. Some of it will come from third parties or other organisations (e.g. information that helps us to combat fraud or that relates to social interactions include communications via social media, between individuals, organisations, prospects and other stakeholders acquired from companies that collected combined information).
Some information will be the result of combining different sets of information. We sometimes also record telephone conversations and monitor e-mail communications to resolve complaints, improve our service and in order to comply with our legal and regulatory requirements.
This information will include:
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information that you provide to us. This includes:
- information about you that you give us when entering into an investment management agreement with us, applying for shares or units in any fund, or by communicating with us, whether face-to-face, by phone, e-mail, or otherwise. The information you give us may include your (and/or if applicable, your financial adviser or employee’s) name, address, e-mail address and phone number, financial and tax status, tax residency or nationality if required by law;
- other information about you and individuals connected to you that you’ve provided to us by filling in forms or by communicating with us, whether face-to-face, by phone, email, online, or otherwise; and
- information concerning your identity (eg passport or identification information).
- Information we collect or generate about you. This includes:
- client relationship information, payment and trade transactions information and other financial information;
- geographic information;
- Cookies and similar technologies we use to recognise you and individuals connected to your business, remember preferences and tailor the content we provide (our cookie notice contains more details about how we use cookies and can be found at www.assetmanagement.hsbc.bm. Investigations data (for example, due diligence checks, sanctions and anti-money laundering checks, external intelligence reports, content and metadata related to relevant exchanges of information between and among you and individuals, organisations, including emails, voicemail, live chat).
- Records of correspondence and other communications between you and your representatives and us, including email, live chat, instant messages and social media communications.
- Information that we need to support our regulatory obligations (for example, information about transaction details, detection of any suspicious and unusual activity and information about parties connected to you or these activities.
- information included in relevant customer documentation (e.g. record of advice) and other comparable information; and
- marketing and sales information, such as details of the services you receive and your preferences.
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Information we obtain from other sources. This includes:
- communications information (e.g. email information, third party information, chat information, instant messages, corporate and media broadcasts, disputes / litigation, correspondence between solicitors, lawyers and stakeholders); and
- combined information from external sources, including publicly available sources (e.g. information pertaining to social interactions between individuals, organisations, prospects and other stakeholders acquired from companies that collect combined information and information from fraud avoidance systems).
How we’ll use your information
We will collect information about you for various reasons as set out in this Privacy Notice, including to:
- manage and administer your accounts and holdings;
- provide you with information, products and services you may request from us;
- deliver our products and services;
- verify your identity as part of our client onboarding process;
- detect and prevent fraud and money laundering;
- identify politically exposed persons;
- carry out your instructions;
- improve our products and services;
- undertake risk management;
- provide security and business continuity;
- keep track of our conversations with you (by phone, in person, by email or any kind of communication);
- manage our relationship with you;
- tell you about our products, or carrying out market research (unless you tell us otherwise),
- provide you with updated copies of our terms of business, this Privacy Notice and/or such other documentation;
- correspond with lawyers, and third party intermediaries;
- collect debts owed to us or to repay money owed by us;
- use of information as described is in the public interest (for example, for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime);
- establish, exercise or defend our legal rights;
- undertaking data analytics, assessing your investment requirements, and/or eligibility for certain investment products; and
- manage our internal operational requirements for risk management, system or product development and planning, insurance, audit and administrative purposes.
Processing for any of the above purposes is necessary for the reasons, as outlined below.
We will only use your information in a fair manner and where we have a lawful basis for using it. These lawful bases include where:
- we need to process the information to perform our obligations under our contract with you;
- we need to process the information to comply with a legal and regulatory obligations;
- we need to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights and / or for the purpose of (or in connection with) legal proceedings (including for the prevention of fraud);
- we have your consent;
- except in relation to sensitive personal information, we consider that you would not reasonably be expected to request that the use of your information (and information relating to individuals connected with your business) should either not begin or should cease and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights, including the use of cookies;
- we need to contact an individual’s next of kin, or in connection with disclosure to a surviving spouse or relative of a deceased individual;
- we need to respond to an emergency that threatens life, health or security of an individual or the public;
- we need to disclose to a public authority which is authorised or required by statutory provision to collect personal information from us;
- information is publicly available to use that information for a purpose that is consistent with the purpose of its public availability.
Even if you ask us not to use your information, we will continue to use your personal information in circumstances where (a) the law says we have to; (b) we need to for the purposes of performing a contract; or (c) it is the public interest to do so; or (d) where (except in relation to sensitive personal information) we consider that you would not reasonably be expected to request that the use of your information should either not begin or should cease and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights.
Tracking or recording what you say or do
We will record and keep track of conversations you have with us – including phone calls, face-to-face meetings, letters, emails, live chats, video chats and any other kinds of messaging in order to use these recordings to check your instructions to us, assess, analyse and improve our service, manage risk or to prevent and detect fraud and other crimes.
We use closed circuit television (CCTV) in and around our offices for security purposes and so we may collect photos or videos of you, or record your voice through CCTV.
Our websites, apps, and other digital products may also track and record your interactions with them to help keep you safe, to help us provide or improve services and features, to help keep our services secure, to help make your visit more personal, or to support our marketing.
Some tracking is optional. For more details, please refer to our relevant website, app or other digital privacy notices and cookies notices.
Compliance with laws and regulatory compliance obligations
We’ll use your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business to meet our compliance obligations, to comply with laws and regulations that HSBC Global Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited is subject to and to share with regulators and other authorities having jurisdiction over HSBC Global Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited. This may include using information to help detect or prevent crime (including terrorism financing, money laundering and other financial crimes). We’ll only do this on the basis that it’s needed to comply with a legal obligation or to carry out an agreement with have with you or an agreement to which you are a party, or to prevent or detect unlawful acts.
Marketing and market research
We may use your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business to provide information about HSBC products and services, and also products and services from our partners and other relevant third parties.
We may send marketing messages by post, email, telephone, text or secure messages. If you or individuals connected to your business want to change how marketing messages are sent, or want to stop receiving these, please contact us in the usual way.
It may take us a short period of time to update our systems and records to reflect requests to stop receiving marketing messages, during which time you and individuals connected to your business may continue to receive marketing messages. Even if you tell us not to send marketing messages, we’ll continue to use contact details to provide important information, such as changes to your terms and conditions or if we need to tell you, or individuals connected to your business, something to comply with our regulatory obligations.
We may use your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business for market research and to identify trends. Market research agencies acting on our behalf may get in touch with you or individuals connected to your business by post, telephone, email or other methods of communication to invite you or them to take part in research. Any responses that are provided whilst participating in market research will be reported back to us anonymously unless you or the individuals connected to your business give us permission for the relevant details to be shared. If you don’t want to be contacted for market research purposes, please let us know by using the details set out in the ‘More details about your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business’ section below.
Social Media
We may use social media and may collect data from publicly available social media sources (such as Meta, LinkedIn, and X) to improve our understanding of your needs and interests and tailor our marketing messages to be relevant and interesting to you. This data may include information you have chosen to make public, such as:
- Posts, comments, and reactions on social media platforms.
- Publicly available profile information (depending on your privacy settings).
- Information about your interests and activities gleaned from your social media engagement (in accordance with platform terms).
Who we may share your information with
We may share your personal information with our affiliates or with entities external to HSBC Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited where:
- we need to in order to enforce or apply the terms of use and other agreements that you have with us;
- we need to for the purposes of providing you with investment products and services you have requested (e.g. pursuant to an investment management agreement);
- we have a public or legal duty to do so e.g. to assist with detecting fraud and tax evasion, financial crime prevention, regulatory reporting, litigation or defending legal rights;
- Where (except in relation to sensitive personal information) we consider that you would not reasonably be expected to request that the use of your information should either not begin or should cease and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights;
- we have asked you for your permission to share it, and you’ve agreed;
- we need to ensure the safety and security of our data;
- we need to for undertaking data analytics for risk management purposes; or
- save for sensitive personal information, where we have a reasonable expectation that you will not object.
We may transfer and disclose your information to the following categories of recipients where it is lawful to do so, and subject to the implementation of appropriate protections:
- other HSBC group companies and any sub-contractors, agents or service providers who work for, or provide services to, us or other HSBC group companies (including their employees, sub-contractors, directors and officers), such service providers will include any professional service providers, such as accountants, auditors, lawyers;
- anyone who deals with us in relation to your investment and agreement with us (e.g. financial adviser), the people you make payments to, your beneficiaries, intermediary, correspondent and agent banks, clearing houses, clearing or settlement systems, market counterparties, upstream withholding agents, swap or trade repositories, stock exchanges, and any companies you hold securities in through us (e.g. stocks, bonds or options);
- other financial institutions, fraud prevention agencies, tax authorities, credit reference agencies and debt recovery agents;
- any person, company or other entity that has an interest in or takes on the risk in relation to or in connection with the products or services that we provide to you;
- any prospective or new HSBC companies (e.g. if we restructure, or acquire or merge with other companies) – or any businesses that buy part or all of any HSBC company;
- to auditors, regulators or dispute resolution bodies and to comply with their requests;
- other companies who do marketing or market research for us (but not without your permission or where you have objected);
- if there’s a dispute over a transaction, anyone else who’s involved; or
- law enforcement, government, courts, or our regulators;
Online advertising
When we advertise our products and services on the internet, we may share your information with our advertising partners.
For example, when we use social media for marketing purposes, your information may be shared with the social media platforms so that they can check if you hold an account with them. If you do, we may ask the social media partner or social media network:
- To use your information to send our adverts to you (for example, because we think that you may be interested in a new service that we offer).
- To exclude you from receiving our adverts (for example, because the advert is for a service that you already use).
- To advertise to people who have a similar profile to you (for example, if we discover that one of our services is particularly useful to people with similar interests to the ones on your social media profile, we may ask our advertising partner or the social media network to send our adverts for that service to people who share your interests).
You can contact us if you don’t wish us to share your personal data for online advertising. For more information, see ‘Rights of Individuals’ below.
Social media platforms also allow you to indicate your preferences to them about the advertising you receive on their platforms. Please contact your social media platforms for more information.
Sharing Aggregated or Anonymised Information
We may share aggregated or anonymised information outside of HSBC with partners such as advertisers. However, you won’t be able to be individually identified from this information.
How long we’ll keep your information
We will keep information in line with our data retention policy. How long we hold your personal information for will vary. The retention period will be determined by various criteria including:
- the purpose for which we are using it – we will need to keep the data for as long as is necessary for that purpose; and
- legal obligations – laws or regulation may set a minimum period for which we have to store your personal data.
We may need to retain information for a longer period where we need the information to comply with regulatory or legal requirements (for example, fighting fraud and financial crime, responding to requests from regulators, etc.).
If we don’t need to retain information for this period of time, we may destroy, delete or anonymise it more promptly.
Where you receive products and services from third parties to whom HSBC Global Asset Management (Bermuda) Limited has introduced you, those third parties may keep your information, and information relating to individuals connected to your business, in line with additional terms and conditions that apply to their product and services.
Transferring your information overseas
Your information may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside Bermuda, including to locations which may not have the same level of protection for personal information. When we do this, we’ll make sure it has an appropriate level of protection and that the transfer is lawful. Where we transfer and process your personal information outside Bermuda, it is done in order to perform our contract with you, to fulfil a legal obligation, to protect the public interest and/or where (except in relation to sensitive personal information) we consider that you would not reasonably be expected to request that the use of your information should either not begin or should cease and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights.
Where we transfer your information outside Bermuda, we will ensure that it is protected by us in a manner that is consistent with how your information will be protected by us in Bermuda. We will always do this in a way that is permissible under data privacy law.
You can obtain more details of the protection given to your information when it is transferred outside Bermuda by contacting us in accordance with the “More details about your information” section below.
Rights of Individuals
Individuals have a number of rights in relation to the information that we hold about them. These rights include:
- the right to obtain information regarding the processing of their information and access to the information which we hold about them;
- the right to withdraw their consent to our processing of their information at any time. Please note, however, that we may still be entitled to process their information if we have another lawful purpose for doing so, such as a legal obligation or where we are providing products or services to you;
- the right to request that we rectify correct their information if it is inaccurate or incomplete;
- the right to request that we erase their information. Please note that there may be circumstances where we are asked to erase information but we are legally entitled to retain it;
- the right to object to and the right to request that we restrict our processing of their information. Again, there may be circumstances where an individual may object to, or ask us to restrict, our processing of their information but we are legally entitled to continue processing their information and / or to refuse that request; and
- the right to lodge a complaint about privacy issues to the Bermuda Privacy Commissioner by visiting www.privacy.bm.
Please note, that none of the above rights are absolute; by that we mean that there may be exceptions which apply to the above rights and how they apply. You can exercise your rights by contacting us using the details set out in the “More details about your information” section below.
You can find out more information about your rights by contacting the Bermuda Privacy Commissioner’s Office, or by visiting their website at www.privacy.bm
What we expect from you
You are responsible for making sure the information you give us is accurate and up to date. And you must tell us if anything changes, as soon as possible. If we ask you for any information and you do not provide it to us, we may need to stop providing products and services to you.
If you give us any personal information that does not relate to you (e.g. information about your financial adviser and/or your employees), you must obtain the necessary consent to disclose such personal information, tell them what information you have given to us, and make sure they agree we can use it as set out in this Privacy Notice. You must also tell them how they can see what information we have about them and correct any mistakes.
Some of the links on our websites lead to other HSBC or non-HSBC websites, with their own privacy and information protection policies, which may be different to this notice.
How we keep your information secure
We implement a range of internal technical and organisational measures and policies to keep your information safe and secure which may include encryption, anonymisation and physical or other forms of security measures. We require our staff and any third parties who carry out any work on our behalf to comply with appropriate compliance standards including obligations to protect any information and applying appropriate measures for the use and transfer of information.
More details about your information
If you have any questions about any of the information in this Privacy Notice:
You can contact our Privacy Officer (PO) by writing to:
Attention: The Privacy Officer
Middle Office
37 Front Street, Hamilton HM11
You can exercise your rights, by writing to:
Attention of Rights of Individuals Fulfilment (ROIF)
Middle Office
37 Front Street, Hamilton HM11
This Privacy Notice may be updated from time to time and the most recent version can be found at www.assetmanagement.hsbc.bm.
This notice was last updated 1 January 2025.
Appendix – How we use information about you and individuals connected to you
We’ll only use information on you and individuals connected to your business where we have consent or we have another lawful reason for using it.
We will use your information for the following purposes:
- Deliver our products and services or process your transaction in order to meet your investment objectives: We will use your information to provide you with our products and services and to process your transactions. We will do this in line with our legal obligations and in order to perform our contract with you.
- Comply with the law, or any relevant rules or regulations. This may include to help detect or prevent crime (including terrorism, money laundering and other financial crimes), filing of relevant reports to regulators, disclosing information to authorities, regulators or government agencies to fulfil our legal obligations. This also includes complying with an order made by a court, individual or body having jurisdiction over us. This is carried out to comply with legal obligations, and because it is in the public interest.
- To prevent and detect crime including for example, fraud, terrorist financing and money laundering: This will include monitoring, mitigation and risk management, carrying out customer due diligence, name screening, transaction screening and customer risk identification. We do this to comply with our legal obligations and because it is in the public interest. We may share your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business with relevant agencies, law enforcement and other third parties where the law allows us to for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime. Additionally, we and other financial institutions may take steps to help prevent financial crime and manage risk. We’ll do this because we have a legal obligation to prevent or detect crime or it’s in the public interest. We may be required to use your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business to do this, even if you or they have asked us to stop using your/their information. That could include (among other things):
- Screening, intercepting and investigating any payments, instructions or communications you send or receive (including drawdown requests and application forms).
- Investigating who you’re paying or who’s paying you for example, checks on payments into and out of your account and other parties related to those payments.
- Passing information to relevant agencies if we think you, individuals connected to your business and others acting on your behalf have given us false or inaccurate information, or we suspect criminal activity.
- Combining the information, we have about you and information relating to individuals connected to your business with information from other HSBC companies to help us better understand any potential risk.
- Checking whether the people or organisations you’re paying or receiving payments from are who they say they are and aren’t subject to any sanctions. - To undertake risk management: To measure, detect and prevent the likelihood of financial, reputational, legal, compliance or customer risk. This includes credit risk, traded risk and operational risk. We’ll do this to enable us to comply with our legal obligations and because it is in the public interest in ensuring that we carry out a proper risk assessment before providing credit or other finance.
- To provide product and service improvement: To identify possible service and product improvements by analysing your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business. The lawful basis for processing your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business for this purpose is (except in relation to sensitive personal information) our expectation that you will not object to or request that we cease our use of your information, and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights. We do this to improve our products and services to best meet the need of our customers.
- To undertake data analytics and to provide tailored services: To identify relevant opportunities to promote products and services to existing or prospective customers by analysing your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business. This may include reviewing historical customer transactional behaviour, comparison of customer activity. We do this to help us provide you with products and services we think will be of most relevance to you. The lawful basis for using your information and information relating to individuals connected to your business in this way is (except in relation to sensitive personal information) our expectation that you will not object to or request that we cease our use of your information and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights.
- To undertake marketing: To provide you with information about HSBC products and services, and also products and services from our partners and other relevant third parties. The lawful basis for this is (except in relation to sensitive personal information) our expectation that you will not object to or request that we cease our use of your information and the use of your personal information does not prejudice your rights. We may need your consent (or the consent of individuals connected to your business) to communicate by certain channels and we’ll always make sure we get this where we need to. You and the individuals associated with you choose to stop receiving them at any time. To make that change, contact us in the usual way.
- To protect our legal rights: To protect our legal rights, for example, in the case of defending or the protection of legal rights and interests (for example, collecting money owed, enforcing or protecting our security or defending rights of intellectual property); court action; managing complaints or disputes; in the event of a restructuring of companies or other mergers or acquisitions. This may be in connection with action taken against you or other persons (for example, joint borrowers or persons who give a guarantee or other security for your obligations to us. We’d do this on the basis that we are protecting our legal rights).