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Effective date: 12 July 2026 | Version 2.0

Privacy Policy

We care about your privacy and want you to feel confident about how we handle your personal information. This policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your data when you visit our website, sign up for an account, or use our services. We'll also outline your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

When we say 'we', 'us', 'our', or 'Buttr', we mean whichever Buttr company is providing you with a service. Buttr is made up of two companies: Buttr Financial Services UK Limited provides our mortgage services, and Buttr Legal Services Limited provides our conveyancing and legal services. The company providing you with a service is the 'controller' of your personal data for that service, which means it is responsible for looking after it. We'll tell you which Buttr company you're dealing with when you sign up for a service, and you can always check in the terms that apply to that service. If you use both (for example, you get your mortgage and your conveyancing through Buttr), each company is responsible for the data it uses to provide its own service. When we say 'you' or 'your', we mean you, our customer.

1. Who We Are & How to Contact Us

We're Buttr. Buttr Financial Services UK Limited is registered in England and Wales (No. 16159632) and is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office under number ZC097211. Buttr Legal Services Limited is registered in England and Wales (No. 16656592) and will be registered with the Information Commissioner's Office before it begins handling your personal data. Buttr Legal Services Limited is not yet licensed by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and will not provide regulated legal services until its licence has been granted.

Contact us:

Email: data@buttr.com (for anything about your data) or support@buttr.com (for everything else)

Post: 4th Floor, 33 Cannon Street, London, England, EC4M 5SB

If you have a complaint about how we handle your data, contact us directly. We'll investigate and respond as quickly as possible. You can also report concerns to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at any time. If your complaint is about our legal services, you can also contact the Legal Ombudsman or the Council for Licensed Conveyancers.

We update this privacy policy from time to time. If we make changes, we'll notify you, usually by email, and clearly highlight the updates. If you'd like a copy of a previous version, email us at support@buttr.com.

2. What Data We Collect

We collect personal data, which is information that can identify you. It might include:

  • Identity data: Name, date of birth, gender, marital status, employment history, etc.
  • Contact details: Address, phone number, email address, and address history.
  • Financial data: Bank details, salary, savings, expenses, credit history, etc.
  • Source of funds: Evidence of where your deposit and other money come from, like bank statements or gift letters.
  • Property data: Information about the property you're buying or selling, like title documents, search results, planning and leasehold information.
  • Special category data: Health conditions, ethnicity, biometric data (only when necessary).
  • Criminal offence data: Information about any relevant convictions.
  • Transaction data: Payments and services you've used.
  • Technical data: Your IP address, browser type, and how you interact with our site.
  • Profile data: Your username, feedback, and survey responses.
  • Usage data: How you use our website and services.
  • Marketing preferences: Your preferences for how we contact you and share information.

We might also collect data about others (like a joint applicant, a seller, or someone else involved in your transaction). Please ensure you have their consent before sharing their information with us.

3. How We Collect Your Data

We collect data in three main ways:

  1. 1. You provide it:

    • When you create an account, apply for a mortgage, instruct us on your conveyancing, or contact us.
    • When you subscribe to our newsletter or enter a competition.

  2. 2. We collect it automatically:

    • Using cookies and similar technologies to track how you use our site.

  3. 3. We get it from other sources:

    • Analytics providers (e.g., Google Analytics).
    • Credit reference agencies (e.g., TransUnion).
    • Public records (e.g., Companies House, HM Land Registry).
    • Fraud prevention services (e.g., Armalytix, SumSub).
    • People involved in your property transaction, like estate agents, the other party's conveyancer, mortgage lenders, surveyors, freeholders and managing agents.
    • Local authorities and property search providers.

4. How We Use Your Data

We use your data to provide, improve, and protect our services. Here's how:

  • To register you as a customer.
  • To assess your mortgage application and decide whether, and how much, we can lend to you.
  • To carry out the legal work on your purchase or sale.
  • To check your credit and prevent fraud.
  • To communicate with you about your account and services.
  • To analyse and improve our website and customer experience.

We'll only use your data when the law allows us to, relying on one of the following legal bases:

  • Consent: You've given us permission.
  • Contract: We need your data to provide our services or carry out a contract with you.
  • Legal obligation: We're required by law to process your data.
  • Legitimate interest: To protect Buttr, improve our services, or prevent fraud.

Here's a deep dive into what we use your data for, and the legal bases we use.

The purpose we use your data for

Say hello

We use your identity and contact data to register you as a new customer and manage your Buttr account.

The legal basis for each purpose

Contract

Help you get ready for a mortgage

We use your identity, contact, financial, transaction, marketing and communications data to give you guidance on things like your deposit and how lenders might see you.

Contract

Sort your mortgage

We use your identity, contact, financial, transaction, marketing and communications, special category, and criminal offence data to help you with your mortgage. Things like assessing your application, deciding whether and how much we can lend to you, and managing your mortgage offer.

We'll also use this information to monitor your mortgage and let you know when you could move to a better deal with us.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation (for special category data, we also rely on "substantial public interest", "regulatory requirements", and "support for individuals with a particular disability or medical condition")
  • Legitimate interest (in this case, to recover any money you owe us and to develop and grow our business)

Check your credit

If you apply for a Buttr mortgage, we use your identity, financial and contact data to check your credit history and score.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation

Tell you stuff

We use your identity, contact, profile, transaction and marketing and communications data to manage our relationship with you. This includes things like asking you to leave a review or take a survey. It also includes telling you when your mortgage deal is about to end, and for legal and regulatory reasons.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation
  • Legitimate interest (keep our records updated, see how customers use Buttr and review our standards of service, to contact you again as your mortgage deal ends)

Service your mortgage

If you have a Buttr mortgage, we use your identity, contact, profile, and transaction data to service your mortgage. That means things like telling you about the state of your mortgage, and collecting your repayments.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation

Do your conveyancing

We use your identity, contact, financial, transaction and property data to carry out the legal work on your home: reviewing contracts, raising enquiries, ordering searches, exchanging contracts and completing your purchase or sale.

Contract

Check it's really you (and your money)

We use your identity, contact and financial data, including your ID documents and evidence of where your deposit and funds come from, to meet our anti-money laundering duties. This can include criminal offence data where the law requires it.

Legal obligation (the Money Laundering Regulations 2017; for criminal offence data we rely on the conditions in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018)

Register your home and sort your tax

We use your identity, contact, financial, transaction and property data to register your ownership with HM Land Registry and to submit your Stamp Duty Land Tax return to HMRC.

  • Legal obligation
  • Contract

Look after your money

We use your identity, contact, financial and transaction data to hold and move money through our client account, for example your deposit and completion funds, in line with the CLC Accounts Code.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation

One Buttr, two companies

If you use more than one Buttr service, our two companies can share any of the data described in this policy with each other. That includes your identity and verification records (like your ID documents and the results of our identity, biometric and fraud checks), your financial and open banking data, your credit and affordability information, information about your property purchase or sale (like searches, survey and valuation reports, and title information), and our communications and records about you.

We do this so you don't have to repeat yourself, so we can run identity and fraud checks once rather than twice, to keep your move on track, to service your mortgage and your legal matter, and to improve our services. For example, if you get your mortgage with Buttr Financial Services and choose Buttr Legal Services for your conveyancing, we'll pass across your details, your verified ID, and the information about your purchase that your conveyancer needs, and your conveyancer will share information about the property (like survey findings or title issues) that affects your mortgage.

Whether you use Buttr Legal Services for your conveyancing is always your choice. We'll only introduce you to the other Buttr company transparently, and we'll only send you marketing about the other company's services in line with your marketing preferences. Anything you tell your conveyancer that is legally privileged stays confidential and won't be shared without your consent.

  • Contract (where you've asked to use both services)
  • Legitimate interest (efficient onboarding, fraud prevention, and improving our services)
  • Consent (where required for marketing)

Work with others

We use your identity, contact and financial data to talk to other companies or anyone else that helps you with the whole mortgage and home-buying journey. That could include solicitors, conveyancers, surveyors, valuers, estate agents, the other party's conveyancer, freeholders and managing agents.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation

Support your complaints

We use your identity, contact and marketing and communications data to manage complaints, take action to put things right, and answer your questions.

We can also use financial, transaction, special category data and criminal offence data when it relates to the complaint you've made.

  • Legal obligation
  • Legitimate interest (investigate complaints, improve our standards and try to prevent future complaints)

Give you prizes

We collect your identity, contact, and profile data when you take part in prize draws and competitions. We do this so we can contact you, and maybe even send you even a prize.

  • Consent
  • Contract

Ask your opinion

We collect your identity, contact, profile, technical and usage data when you complete a survey or take part in user testing.

  • Consent
  • Legitimate interest (to understand how customers use Buttr and develop our services and business)

Follow up on your reviews

We might use your identity and contact data to get in touch to talk about a review you've left us, say on Trustpilot. For example, we might send you a message to say thank you, or to ask what we could have done better and how we can improve.

Legitimate interest (to improve our standards of service and customer experience)

Keep the site running

We use your identity, contact and technical data to manage and protect our business and our website. That includes things like troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data.

Legitimate interest (to run our business, including our admin and IT services, keep it secure, and prevent fraud)

Make everything better

We use your technical and usage data to analyse and test our systems, and improve our website, products and services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences. Quite a lot of things.

Legitimate interest (keep our website updated, and develop our business and marketing strategy)

Send you marketing & recommend stuff

We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, technical and marketing and communications data to suggest services you might like. We'll use your data to decide what you might find useful or like us to send you. You can unsubscribe from marketing by hitting 'Unsubscribe' in the bottom of any marketing email, or by emailing unsubscribe@buttr.com.

We'll never share your details with other companies for marketing reasons without your consent.

  • Legitimate interest (grow Buttr and develop what we offer - for example, we might use your data to send you personalised marketing campaigns)
  • Consent

Record our communications

We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, transaction, marketing and communications data to monitor or record any communications between you and us. That includes live chat and phone calls.

We do this to check your instructions to us, analyse and improve our services, and to help us train staff. We also do it for quality assurance purposes (which means to help us prevent mistakes or problems from happening).

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation
  • Legitimate interest (develop and improve our systems, train our people, and give our customers a high standard of service)

Stop fraud in its tracks

We use your identity, contact, profile, usage, financial, transaction, marketing and communications data to prevent fraud. We carry out checks on your identity and documents, and look at your financial transactions to detect fraud and money laundering.

  • Contract
  • Legal obligation
  • Legitimate interest (fraud and ID checks protect our and others' businesses as well as you)

5. How We Work With Credit Reference Agencies

Credit reference agencies (CRAs) give lenders information about borrowers to help them make responsible lending decisions. When you apply for a Buttr mortgage, and throughout your time as a customer, we'll exchange information about you with CRAs. Our credit reference agency is TransUnion.

What we share with CRAs:

  • Your basic identification information (name, address, date of birth).
  • Details of your mortgage application.
  • Details of your Buttr mortgage and your repayment history (including on-time payments), balances, and any missed payments.
  • Fraud prevention information.

What we receive from CRAs:

  • Your credit history and credit score.
  • Information about your financial associates (like a joint applicant).
  • Information to help us verify your identity and detect fraud.

We use this information to:

  • Verify your identity and confirm the accuracy of your information.
  • Assess whether you can afford your mortgage and make responsible lending decisions.
  • Manage your mortgage and the risks related to it.
  • Trace and recover debts.
  • Help detect and prevent fraud and money laundering.

Soft and hard searches

  • When you get a decision in principle or check your spending limit, we carry out a soft credit search (sometimes called a "soft credit lookup"). This does not affect your credit file or credit score, and is only visible to you and Buttr. To perform it, we send the CRA your name, address, date of birth and contact details.
  • When you submit a full mortgage application, we carry out a hard credit search in addition. Because a mortgage is a regulated credit product, this hard search will be recorded on your credit file, will be visible to other lenders, and may affect your credit score.

If you take out a Buttr mortgage, we'll share information about your agreement with the CRA on a monthly basis until it is closed. This includes your outstanding balance, the payments you make, and any missed payments or default. These records stay on the CRA's files for 6 years after your mortgage is settled or terminated, and may be used by us and other lenders to make credit decisions about you in the future.

A few things to know:

  • If you apply for a joint mortgage, we and the CRAs will link your credit records with the other person's. These links stay on your files until one of you asks the CRA to break the link, which usually requires proof that your financial connection has ended.
  • If your application is unsuccessful, we'll keep your application data for fraud prevention purposes.
  • CRAs may share the information we give them with other organisations that need to check your credit history, and typically keep it for 6 years.

You can find full details of how TransUnion collects and uses your information in the Credit Reference Agency Information Notice (CRAIN) at transunion.co.uk/crain.

Our legal bases are: contract (where you apply for or take out a Buttr mortgage), legal obligation, and legitimate interest (to manage risks, prevent fraud, and make sure your mortgage is affordable and suitable for you).

6. Who We Share Your Data With

We only share your data when necessary and ensure it's handled securely. We might share it with:

  • Each other: our two Buttr companies can share any of your data with each other, including your ID and verification records, open banking and financial data, and information about your property purchase (like searches and survey reports), as described in 'One Buttr, two companies' above.
  • Our funding partners and, where you were introduced to us by a broker or partner, that broker or partner.
  • Solicitors, conveyancers, and surveyors, including the conveyancer acting for the other side of your transaction.
  • Estate agents, freeholders and managing agents involved in your transaction.
  • HM Land Registry, HMRC, local authorities and property search providers.
  • The bank that holds our client account, and our professional indemnity insurers.
  • Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies.
  • Service providers (e.g., IT, legal, and accounting firms).
  • Regulators or law enforcement agencies, if required, including the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and the Legal Ombudsman.

Here's more detail on some of these recipients:

Debt collection companies

Who they are: Companies we may engage to collect unpaid amounts you owe us.

Why, and our legal basis: If payments on your mortgage are overdue and we can't resolve it with you directly, we may pass your details to a debt collection company to recover what's owed. They process your data under their own privacy notices or on our behalf, and may report unsettled debts to credit reference agencies, which could affect your creditworthiness and future credit applications. Our legal basis is legitimate interest (recovering money owed to us). You have the right to object to this processing based on your particular circumstances (see section 9).

Funding partners and debt acquirers

Who they are: The institutions that fund Buttr mortgages, and any organisation that acquires our mortgages, for example through a sale or securitisation of our mortgage portfolio.

Why, and our legal basis: Like most mortgage lenders, we fund and may transfer our mortgages through arrangements with funding partners, including selling or securitising the portfolio. If your mortgage is included, we'll share your contact and identification details, your loan and repayment history, and information about the property securing your mortgage. This doesn't change the terms of your mortgage or your rights under it, and we'll tell you if the company you deal with changes. Acquirers process your data under their own privacy notices. Our legal bases are legitimate interest (funding and operating our lending business) and contract.

Banks and other financial institutions

Who they are: The banks and payment institutions involved when money moves to or from you.

Why, and our legal basis: When you make repayments, or when we move completion funds through our client account, we share the details needed to process the payment (like your name, account number and payment reference) with the sending and receiving institutions. If a payment is made to us or you by mistake, we may share information with the other institution to help recover it. Our legal basis is contract.

Credit reference and fraud prevention agencies

Who they are: TransUnion (see section 5) and fraud prevention services like Armalytix and SumSub.

Why, and our legal basis: To verify your identity, assess your application, and detect and prevent fraud and money laundering. If fraud is detected, a record may be kept by fraud prevention agencies which could lead other organisations to refuse you services, financing or employment. Our legal bases are legal obligation, contract and legitimate interest.

We'll never share your data for marketing purposes without your consent.

7. Transferring Your Data Abroad

If we transfer your data outside the UK, we'll ensure it's protected by:

  • Transferring it to countries the UK government has decided provide adequate protection.
  • Using approved contracts (like the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum) to make sure it's treated securely.

8. Storing Your Data & How Long We Keep It

We'll only keep your data for as long as necessary:

  • Mortgage applications: Unsuccessful applications are stored for 6 years.
  • Successful mortgages: Data is stored for the mortgage term + 6 years.
  • Accounts without applications: Data is stored for 6 years.
  • Conveyancing files: Stored for at least 6 years from completion of your matter; for property purchases and leasehold matters we may keep files for up to 15 years. Documents needed to register your ownership are kept until HM Land Registry has confirmed your registration.
  • Anti-money laundering records: Kept for 5 years after our business relationship with you ends, as the law requires.
  • Client account records: Kept for at least 6 years under the CLC Accounts Code.

We may anonymise your data for research or statistics, in which case it won't identify you.

If you'd like us to delete your data, email data@buttr.com. However, sometimes legal requirements mean we must keep your data for longer.

9. Your Rights

Under UK data protection laws, you have the right to:

  • Access your data: Request a copy of your personal data.
  • Correct your data: Ask us to update or complete your information.
  • Delete your data: Request its removal unless laws require us to keep it.
  • Restrict processing: Limit how we use your data in certain circumstances.
  • Object to processing: Stop us from using your data for specific purposes, like marketing.
  • Transfer your data: Get a copy to share with another provider.
  • Withdraw consent: Stop us using your data if you previously gave permission.

You can exercise these rights by emailing us at data@buttr.com.

A note on our legal services

What you tell Buttr Legal Services as your conveyancer is confidential and may be covered by legal professional privilege. If you ask for a copy of your data, we can't include other people's personal data (like the seller's), anything linked to an ongoing fraud investigation, or material covered by someone else's privilege. And if you ask us to delete your data, we sometimes have to say no for a while: anti-money laundering law and our regulators require us to keep certain records even after your mortgage or your matter ends. We'll always tell you if that's the case.

Automated Decision-Making

We use technology to make some decisions about you automatically, without a person being involved at the time. If you apply for a Buttr mortgage, our systems assess your application, including your eligibility, affordability, credit information and fraud and money laundering risk, and can decide automatically whether we can lend to you, how much, and on what terms. We also use automated checks to verify your identity and to spot fraud across both our mortgage and legal services. We do this because it lets us give you a fast, consistent decision. If an automated decision significantly affects you (like declining your application), you have the right to ask for a person to review it, to share your side, and to challenge the outcome. Just email data@buttr.com.

Questions or Concerns?

If you'd like to know more about how we handle your data, contact us at data@buttr.com. We're here to help!