Data Protection Notice

This policy gives an overview of how your Personal Data are collected and processed.

In business relationships with our existing and/or prospective clients, Banque Syz SA collects and processes Personal Data and financial data concerning you so that it can propose and provide you with financial and banking products and services suited to your needs and your profile, or meet your requests. We also process Personal Data related to your use of our website, particularly via the various forms available on it.

Banque Syz SA attaches great importance to protecting your Personal Data. By continuing to use this website or by a establishing a business relationship with Banque Syz SA, you expressly accept our policy regarding data processing and confidentiality.

Types of Personal Data

In performing its activities, Banque Syz SA has occasion to collect and process Personal Data concerning its clients, prospects, and Related Persons (all referred to as the "Data Subject" or "you").

The term "Related Persons" designates any natural person in respect of whom the client or a third party has sent Personal Data to Banque Syz SA in the context of business relations with Banque Syz SA. 

Thus, the term Related Person may designate:
(i)    any co-holders of the joint account;
(ii)    any cardholders; 
(iii)    the business partners of their clients (including other shareholders, controlling persons or beneficial owners of an account);
(iv)    any family members of the account holder;
(v)    representatives (including legal representatives and authorized signatories);
(vi)    a director, employee, manager or authorized representative of a company;
(vii)    the ordering party and/or the beneficiary of a payment; or 
(viii)    a trustee, beneficiary, settlor or protector of a trust. 

It is incumbent on you, as the Client of Banque Syz SA, to send the information featured in the present Policy to every Related Person.

The notion of "Personal Data" means all the information that can be used to identify a Data Subject directly (e.g., first and last names) or indirectly (e.g., a passport number). 

The Personal Data collected by Banque Syz SA consists in the following, in particular:

  • personal information (such as first and last names, date of birth, passport no., telephone no., home address, postal address/electronic address),
  • family information (such as marital status, number of children);
  • financial information (including information about your credit history and/or account history, bank account details, account statements, details of transactions performed, real estate, gains, current and past investments, amounts invested, name and value of the financial instruments held, investment preferences and profile, and excerpt from the register of debt enforcement actions);
  • tax information (including TIN, taxpayer no., residence for tax purposes);
  • professional information (such as CV, experience and activity, title, power of representation, professional contact details);
  • information related to our interactions with you (whether via the website, contact forms, telephone calls, visits, or connections to Syz applications);
  • management and security (such as reputation and background checks, records of presence on the premises of Banque Syz SA, references).

We may be called upon to record and monitor your telephone conversations with Banque Syz SA, in order to maintain a high level of quality but also of security and pursuant to the statutory and regulatory obligations in effect.

Note that if you connect to the Syz Mobile or Syz Direct applications, our systems may record your user name, device type, OS version, device language, application version, latest connexion, connection details, the application service(s) called, IP address and location.

Finally, please be aware when you visit our establishment that our premises are filmed for security purposes.

Sources of Personal Data

The Personal Data collected is obtained directly from you and on the basis of documents obtained through you, but also indirectly from public records (European Union and/or UN sanctions lists for example), agencies facilitating Personal Data verification, and from any legitimate third-party sources (such as subscription services (Bloomberg), business introducers, third-party asset managers, and headhunters). As the data controller, Banque Syz SA processes and records such data.

Legal grounds and purposes of the processing

The Personal Data is processed by Banque Syz SA for the purpose of ensuring proper performance of the services it has to provide in meeting its contractual obligations, in compliance with its statutory obligations or applicable regulatory provisions, as well as the Bank’s legitimate interests.

We therefore collect and process your Personal Data in order to meet our contractual obligations to you (with the proviso that some of the processing operations may be based on other justified grounds), including:

  • to enter into or perform a contract to which you are a party and to meet our obligations under such a contract;
  • to provide you with financial and banking products and services and to ensure their proper performance;
  • to ensure the management of the business relationship that we maintain with you;
  • to open an account and/or initiate a business relationship with you (including all the operations related to your identification);
  • to send you administrative information (updates of our general terms and conditions, for example); and 
  • to manage, administer and distribute collective investment schemes, including services related to such activities (such as the processing of share subscription, conversion and redemption requests).

We also collect and process your Personal Data in order to meet our statutory or regulatory obligations (with the proviso that some of the processing operations may be based on other justified grounds), including:

  • to comply with statutory or regulatory obligations (particularly the Swiss Banking Act, the Swiss Anti-Money Laundering Act, the FINMA ordinances and circulars, the tax legislation, and the legislation on the financial instruments market) or in the public interest;
  • to carry out any form of cooperation or rendering of account with the competent public authorities and government agencies, such the law-enforcement, tax or supervisory authorities, in particular;
  • to record and monitor your telephone conversations and electronic communications with Banque Syz SA, in order to fight against fraud and other crimes;
  • to take risk-management measures (such as credit risks, operational risks, reputational risks, liquidity risks, and market risks), to assess such risks and make risk-management decisions; and
  • to apply international sanctions, which particularly involves processing your Personal Data for verification purposes (screening).

Finally, we collect and process your Personal Data in order to protect the legitimate interests of Banque Syz SA (with the proviso that some of the processing operations may be based on other justified grounds), including:

  • to establish, exercise or defend our rights in case of disputes;
  • to comply with internal policies, actively manage the risks within the Bank, check the identity of our interlocutors, and ensure the security and operation of our IT environment;
  • to use the Personal Data for marketing and advertising purposes following your registration or application;
  • to improve our internal processes and organization (including in respect of risk management);
  • to manage the IT environment of Banque Syz SA, particularly in order to ensure the security of its IT systems;
  • to allow us to prove a transaction;
  • to evaluate some of your characteristics by using automated processing of Personal Data (“profiling”);
  • to develop our business relationship with you; and
  • to analyze and supervise the utilization, user behavior and browsing during the use of electronic services.

If we process Personal Data for purposes other than those listed above, we will inform you in advance and, if necessary, request your consent.

The Bank wishes to inform you, however, that if it lacks certain Personal Data concerning you (or if you exercise your right to object to processing Personal Data / see the chapter "Your rights" below), the Bank may not be able to make you benefit, as a Client, from the service or product that requires the processing of such Personal Data.

Collection and storage period of your Personal Data

We store your Personal Data for as long as necessary to meet our contractual and statutory obligations. The Personal Data, when no longer necessary, will be deleted or anonymized by us, subject to:

  • the statutory and regulatory obligations of storage and documentation that are applicable to us;
  • the time required to allow us to meet our operational obligations;
  • the time required, where applicable, to allow us to establish, exercise, or defend ourselves against a present or future claim; and
  • the time required to allow us to cope with an investigation by a public authority in Switzerland or abroad.

Your rights

According to the applicable regulations, you enjoy the following rights related to your Personal Data:

  • the right to obtain information about how we process your Personal Data; the right to access your Personal Data;
  • the right to rectify your Personal Data if incomplete or inaccurate;
  • the right to withdraw your consent at any time (although the withdrawal of your consent does not affect the lawfulness of the processing based on your your consent prior to its withdrawal);
  • the right to object to processing of your Personal Data;
  • the right to require restrictions on the processing of your Personal Data;
  • the right to require a copy of your Personal Data, within the limits and under the conditions provided by the applicable laws and regulations; and
  • the right to require erasure of your Personal Data when no longer required for the purposes for which such data was collected or processed or when you have withdrawn your consent (subject to the storage period; see above).

In case we use your Personal Data for purposes of direct marketing, particularly to send out newsletters, you have the right to object to processing of your Personal Data at any time. In that case, we will no longer process your Personal Data to that purpose.

The above-mentioned rights may be suspended or limited whenever outweighed by third-party interests, rights or freedoms or whenever the processing of the Personal Data serves to assert, exercise or protect the claims of Banque Syz SA. Moreover, Banque Syz SA is authorized to suspend or limit the above-mentioned rights if the processing of the Personal Data takes place in the context of its activities as prescribed by law or regulation.

Banque Syz SA may no longer be able to provide you with certain financial or banking products or services or even to continue a business relationship after you exercise some of the above-mentioned rights, particularly the rights to restrict or object to the processing of the Personal Data, or if you withdraw your consent.

Communication of your Personal Data to third parties

Banque Syz SA is subject to confidentiality obligations when processing your Personal Data.

Banque Syz SA reserves the right to send Personal Data to third parties in the course of providing its services. The recipients of such Personal Data may be:

  • banks participating in the transaction, correspondent banks, trading platforms, brokers, stock exchanges, system operators, exchange-related services of transfer registration, clearing, processing and reporting, issuers, fund and private equity fund managers and sub-custodians;
  • administrative (such as prudential supervisory authorities) or judicial authorities;
  • subcontractors in the context of outsourcing, in accordance with our General Terms and Conditions. In this last case, Banque Syz SA requires the subcontractors to undertake to comply with the same data protection and confidentiality obligations as the obligations complied with by the Bank itself;
  • our statutory auditors, legal advisors and/or some of our service providers;
  • certain Syz Group entities within the European Union or in Switzerland; and
  • other third parties, in Switzerland and abroad, involved in the transactions or services. Moreover, Banque Syz SA may be forced to provide information to the authorities and/or third parties in Switzerland and abroad to the extent required to do so by the applicable statutory provisions.

Transfer of Personal Data outside Switzerland

Banque Syz SA may therefore disclose, communicate, transfer and/or store your Personal Data abroad:

  • whenever such communication is necessary to allow us to establish, exercise, or defend ourselves against a present or future claim, in Switzerland or abroad, or to allow us to cope with an investigation by a public authority in Switzerland or abroad;
  • whenever such communication is necessary to protect an overriding public interest;
  • in the context of entering into or performing contracts directly or indirectly related to the business relationship (i.e. a contract entered into with a client or Related Person, or else with a third party but in the interest of a client and/or Related Person); or
  • in certain exceptional cases, when such a transfer is duly stipulated by the applicable laws (e.g. communication of certain stock exchange transactions).

In this context, your Personal Data may be transferred to a Country that:

  • offers an adequate level of data protection (from the Swiss perspective); or
  • does not offer an adequate level of data protection. In such a case, we will make sure, if required by the applicable legislation, (i) to obtain your consent, or (ii) to set up appropriate safeguards. If you would like additional information on this subject, you may contact the Data Protection Officer (see contact information below).

In addition, the list of Countries to which your Personal Data may be transferred is available on the following link: Transfer of Personal Data outside Switzerland

Confidentiality and Banking Secrecy

Banque Syz SA is subject to confidentiality obligations that arise, in particular, from banking secrecy. The Personal Data that we process is also subject to such obligations.

Banque Syz SA therefore wishes to call its clients’ attention to the corresponding article of the General Terms and Conditions describing situations in which the clients are required to release Banque Syz SA from its statutory confidentiality obligations (including banking secrecy).

Confidentiality and use of the Internet

Banque Syz SA takes all technical and organizational measures necessary to ensure the security and confidentiality of your Personal Data whenever such data is under the direct control of Banque Syz SA.

We restrict access to your Personal Data to such employees, agents or third parties as need to know it in order to provide you with products or services, in connection with your investments made by us either directly or as an intermediary. We ensure physical, electronic and procedural protection to safeguard your personal information, particularly firewalls, encryption, passwords and authentication technology.

All personal information provided via the website of Banque Syz SA shall be treated confidentially, in accordance with the current laws and regulations.

Nevertheless, despite all the precautionary measures set up, users of the Banque Syz SA website expressly acknowledge that the Internet network is not a secure means of communication of information and that they use the Internet at their own risk.

Banque Syz SA declines all liability for any loss or damage that may be caused through interception by third parties of the information made available to you on said website. Banque Syz SA declines all liability, in particular, for any loss or damage that may be caused by a malfunction or interruption of their website, or by an error, omission, interruption, deletion, failure, delay in operation or transmission, a computer virus, a malfunction or an impairment of the communication channel, even if the circumstances giving rise to the incident are under the control of Banque Syz SA or that of any provider of services or software support.

Collection of Personal Data through the Banque Syz SA website

Newsletter: subscribing to our newsletter lets you both keep up with the latest news and receive offers related to the range of products marketed by the Syz Group. To be able to send you the newsletters, we collect your email address and store it as long as you remain subscribed.

Contact Form/Call me back Form: this data is collected so that we can reach you and make you offers related to the range of products marketed by the Syz Group. This data is stored until such time as you inform us that you no longer wish to be contacted by our teams.

To that end, we collect information allowing us to identify and contact you, such as your first and last names, email address, home address, telephone no., your investor profile and the company you work for. When we contact you, certain additional information may be requested, such as your address or job title.

Employment Form: this data is collected in order to be able to reach you and check whether profile meets our criteria. If you do not receive a favorable response from us, we will still store your Personal Data for a  limited time so that we can get back in touch with you if we have new job offers.

To that end, we collect information allowing us to identify and contact you, such as your first and last names, email address, home address, telephone no. and current employer.

Data Protection Officer

Any questions about data protection may be sent to the Data Protection Officer of Banque Syz SA at the following address: dataprotection@syzgroup.com.

If you are not satisfied by the reply we have given you, you are entitled to contact the Swiss authority in data protection matters, namely the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/en/home.html).

Disclaimer

The present Privacy Policy may be updated at any time. You will be informed of any such updates via the communication channel that Banque Syz SA considers appropriate.