Top of the content

Privacy Notice

Table of contents

Introduction

As a result of the completion of the merger agreement between HSBC Bank Oman S.A.O.G (HSBC Oman) and Sohar International Bank (Sohar) in Oman (the Merger) personal data which relates to you and your banking relationship and products with HSBC Oman has been transferred to Sohar. Kindly note that following the Merger, HSBC Oman will cease completely its banking activities.

Kindly note that  from completion of the Merger, the HSBC Group companies may continue to process your personal data, (independently from Sohar), in order to comply with its legal and regulatory obligations to which it is subject under applicable laws (such as the legal and regulatory framework on money laundering and terrorist financing) as well as for purposes related to any pending litigation. Such processing of personal data shall be carried out pursuant to the provisions of this Privacy Notice and in line with previous consents to Privacy Statements provided to HSBC Oman by you.

Wherever we’ve said ‘you’ or ‘your’, this means you, any authorised person on your account and other related people (including authorised signatories, proxies, partners, members and trustees).

When we say ‘we’, we mean the HSBC Group companies.

What information we collect

We’ll only collect your information in line with relevant regulations and law. We may collect it from a range of sources and it may relate to any of our products or services you have held in the past with HSBC Oman.

Some of it will come directly from you. We might also get some of it from publicly available sources.

The type of information that we retain will differ depending on the type of products held with HSBC Oman.

The information we collect may include:

  • Identification Information, e.g.:
  • personal details, e.g. name, previous names, gender, date and place of birth;
  • contact details, e.g. address, email address, landline and mobile numbers;
  • information concerning your identity e.g. photo ID, ID or passport information, National Insurance number, National ID card and nationality;
  • other information about you that you give us by communicating with us.
  • Financial Information and information concerning your former relationship with HSBC Oman, e.g.: your financial information and information about your relationship with us, including the products and services you held with HSBC Oman, the channels you used and your ways of interacted with us, your payment history, transactions records, market trades, payments into your account including salary details and information concerning complaints and disputes;
  • information we use to identify and authenticate you, e.g. your signature and your biometric information, such as your voice for voice ID, additional information that we receive from external sources that we need for compliance purposes;
  • investigations data, e.g. due diligence checks, sanctions and anti-money laundering checks, external intelligence reports, content and metadata related to relevant exchanges of information between and among individuals, organisations, including emails, voicemail, live chat;
  • records of correspondence and other communications between us, including email, live chat, instant messages and social media communications;
  • information that we need to support our regulatory obligations, e.g. information about transaction details, detection of any suspicious and unusual activity and information about parties connected to you or these activities.

How we'll use your information

Following the Merger, we’ll only use your information to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations to which we are subject under applicable laws (such as the legal and regulatory framework on money laundering and terrorist financing) as well as for purposes related to any pending litigation.

Who we might share your information with

We may share your information with others where lawful to do so including where we or they:

  • have a public or legal duty to do so, e.g. to assist with detecting and preventing fraud, tax evasion and financial crime;
  • need to in connection with regulatory reporting, litigation or asserting or defending legal rights and interests;
  • perform data processing operations on our behalf under their capacity as processors, such as the provision of data storage, filing, management and destruction of files and data services.
  • We may share your information for these purposes with others  including:
  • Sohar
  • other HSBC group companies and any sub-contractors, agents or service providers who work for us or provide services to us (including Sohar) or other HSBC Group companies (including their employees, sub-contractors, service providers, directors and officers);
  • law enforcement, government, courts, dispute resolution bodies, our regulators, auditors and any party appointed or requested by our regulators to carry out investigations or audits of our activities;
  • other parties involved in any disputes, including disputed transactions;
  • fraud prevention agencies who’ll also use it to detect and prevent fraud and other financial crime and to verify your identity.

How long we’ll keep your information

We keep your information in line with our data retention policy. This enables us to comply with legal and regulatory requirements or use it where we need to for our legitimate purposes such as managing your account and dealing with any disputes or concerns that may arise.

We may need to retain your information for a longer period where we need the information to comply with regulatory or legal requirements or where we may need it for our legitimate purposes, e.g. to help us respond to queries or complaints, 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.

Transferring your personal data overseas

Your information may be transferred to and stored in locations outside of the Sultanate of Oman. When we do this, we’ll ensure it has an appropriate level of protection and that the transfer is lawful. In some countries or regions the law might compel us to share certain information, e.g. with tax authorities. Even in these cases, we’ll only share your information with people who have the right to see it.

More details about your personal data

If you’d like further information on anything we’ve said in this Privacy Notice, or to contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO), contact us at: contactus.me@hsbc.com or by writing at the following address:

HSBC Bank Middle East Limited UAE Branch, P.O. Box 66, Dubai, UAE.