Mediolanum Investments UK Ltd (trading as StartUp Associates) is committed to protecting the confidentiality and privacy of information entrusted to it. As such, StartUp Associates is committed to the appropriate protection and use of personal information that has been collected online.

Generally, our intent is to only collect personal information that is provided voluntarily by online visitors so that we can offer information and/or services to those individuals or offer information about employment opportunities. 

Please review this Privacy Policy to learn more about how we collect, use, share and protect the personal information that we have obtained.

We obtain personal information about you if you choose to provide it – for example, to contact mailboxes or to register for certain services. In some cases, you will have previously provided your personal information to StartUp Associates (if, for example, you are a former client or employee). 

Other information we collect will depend on the privacy settings you have set with your social media provider, so please review the privacy statement or policy of the applicable service.

When you register or submit personal information to StartUp Associates we will use this information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Your personal information is not used for other purposes, unless we obtain your permission, or unless otherwise required or permitted by law or professional standards. For example, if you register to the StartUp Associates website and provide information about your preferences we will use this information to personalize your user experience. 

If you send us your curriculum vitae (CV) to apply online for a position with StartUp Associates, we will use the information that you provide to match you with available career opportunities.

In some cases where you have registered for certain services, we will store your email address temporarily until we receive confirmation of the information you provided via an email (ie. where we send an email to the email address provided as part of your registration to confirm a subscription request).

In some instances, StartUp Associates and its service providers use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to automatically collect certain types of information when you visit us online, as well as through emails that we may exchange. The collection of this information allows us to customize your online experience, improve the performance, usability and effectiveness of our online presence, and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities.

Cookies will typically be placed on your computer or internet-enabled device whenever you visit us online. This allows the site to remember your computer or device and serves a number of purposes.

On our website, a notification banner will appear allowing you to manage your consent to collect cookies (cookie banner). 

You can manage your consent for targeting cookies using the cookie banner, or by updating your browser’s settings (often found in your browser’s Tools or Preferences menu) to not accept cookies.

Although most browsers automatically accept cookies, you can choose whether to accept cookies via the cookie consent banner or your browser’s settings (often found in your browser’s Tools or Preferences menu). If you wish to revoke your selection, you may do so by clearing your browser’s cookies, or by updating your preferences in the cookie banner.

Cookies by themselves do not tell us your email address or otherwise identify you personally. In our analytical reports, we will obtain other identifiers including IP addresses, but this is for the purpose of identifying the number of unique visitors to our web sites and geographic origin of visitor trends, and not to identify individual visitors.

An IP address is a number assigned to your computer whenever you access the internet. It allows computers and servers to recognize and communicate with one another. IP addresses from which visitors appear to originate will be recorded for IT security and system diagnostic purposes. This information will also typically be used in aggregate form to conduct web site trend and performance analysis.

StartUp Associates only collects the personal information necessary to fulfil your request. Where additional, optional information is sought, you will be notified of this at the point of collection.

The law in allows us to process personal information, so long as we are permitted by law to do so. As a result, when we process your personal information, we will rely on one of the following processing conditions: 

• Performance of a contract: this is when the processing of your personal information is necessary in order to perform our obligations under a contract;
• Legal obligation: this is when we are required to process your personal information in order to comply with a legal obligation, such as keeping records for tax purposes or providing information to a public body or law enforcement agency;
• Legitimate interests: we will process information about you where it is in our legitimate interest in running a lawful business to do so to further that business, so long as it doesn’t outweigh your interests; or
• Your consent: in some cases, we will ask you for specific permission to process some of your personal information, and we will only process your personal information in this way if you agree to us doing so.  You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting StartUp Associates at info@startup-associates.com

Examples of the ‘legitimate interests’ referred to above are:

• To offer information and/or services to individuals who visit our website or offer information about employment opportunities.
• To prevent fraud or criminal activity and to safeguard our IT systems.
• To customize individuals’ online experience and improve the performance usability and effectiveness of StartUp Associates’ online presence.
• To conduct, and to analyse, our marketing activities.
• To meet our corporate and social responsibility obligations.

We may use Google Analytics to monitor and analyse the use of our Service.

Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our Service. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualise and personalise the ads of its own advertising network.

You may opt-out of certain Google Analytics features through your mobile device settings, such as your device advertising settings or by following the instructions provided by Google in their Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en

StartUp Associates may collect and use the geographical location of your computer or mobile device. This location data is collected for the purpose of providing you with information regarding services which we believe may be of interest to you based on your geographic location, and to improve our location-based products and services.

StartUp Associates will typically include functionality to enable sharing via third party social media applications, such as the Facebook Like button and Twitter widget. These social media applications will collect and use information regarding your use of StartUp Associates website. Any personal information that you provide via such social media applications will often be collected and used by other members of that social media application and such interactions are governed by the privacy policies of the companies that provide the application. We do not have control over, or responsibility for, those companies or their use of your information.

Our Service does not address anyone under the age of 18 (“Children”).

We do not knowingly collect personally identifiable information from anyone under the age of 18. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your children have provided us with Personal Data, please contact us. If we become aware that we have collected Personal Data from children without verification of parental consent, we take steps to remove that information from our servers.

We do not share personal information with third parties, except as necessary for our legitimate professional and business needs, to carry out your requests, and/or as required or permitted by law or professional standards. 

StartUp Associates will not transfer the personal information you provide to any third parties for their own direct marketing use.

If StartUp Associates processes personal information about you, you have the following rights:

• Access and correction: you have the right to access to that data. This is sometimes called a ‘Subject Access Request’. If we agree that we are obliged to provide personal information to you, we will provide it to you free of charge. Before providing personal information to you, we may ask for proof of identity and sufficient information about your interactions with us that we can locate your personal information. If the information we hold about you is incorrect, you are entitled to ask us to correct any inaccuracies in the personal information.
• Object to processing: you have the right to object to us processing your personal information if we are not entitled to use it anymore.
• Other Rights: in addition, you may have rights to have your information deleted if we are keeping it too long, have its processing restricted in certain circumstances and/or to obtain copies of information we hold about you in electronic form.
• You can make a request or exercise these rights by contacting us at info@startup-associates.com and we will make all reasonable and practical efforts to comply with your request, so long as it is consistent with applicable law and professional standards.

StartUp Associates has reasonable security policies and procedures in place to protect personal information from unauthorized loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. Despite StartUp Associates' best efforts, however, security cannot be absolutely guaranteed against all threats. To the best of our ability, access to your personal information is limited to those who have a need to know. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

We also make reasonable efforts to retain personal information only for so long as the information is necessary to comply with an individual’s request, for as long as necessary to comply with legal, regulatory, internal business or policy requirements or, until that person asks that the information be deleted.  

The period for which data is retained will depend on the specific nature and circumstances under which the information was collected, however, personal information will generally not be retained for more than 2 years.

Please be aware that StartUp Associates web site will typically contain links to other sites, including sites maintained by other organisations that are not governed by this Privacy Policy. Please review the privacy policy of each web site visited before disclosing any personal information.

StartUp Associates may modify this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect our current privacy practices. When we make changes to this statement, we will revise the “updated” date at the top of this page. Any changes to the processing of personal data as described in this Privacy Policy affecting you will be communicated to you through an appropriate channel, dependant upon how we normally communicate with you.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at info@startup-associates.com