Privacy Policy

We know that you care about your personal information and how it is used. It’s important to us that you trust that Northerly Business Consulting uses your personal information carefully. This Privacy Policy aims to tell you more about:‍

  1. The personal information we collect;
  2. What we do with this personal information;
  3. Your rights; and
  4. How the law protects you. By using our website, (www.northerly.co.za) you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

What Is Personal Information?

Personal information is information which identifies you as an individual. In the course of providing our services, Northerly collects the following personal information, either when it is provided to us by you, where we derive it from your use of our services or when it is provided to us through a third party. This includes personal data collected through telephone calls, and online through our website and playbook.

Identity Data

First name, surname, identity number, passport number, company name, trading name, etc.
We use this to authenticate you as a customer and add you to our systems and records.

Contact Details

Telephone number, email address, physical address, etc.
We use this to communicate with you.

Business Information

Details relating to business transactions and results.
We use this to provide our services to you.

Summaries of Conversations

Business meetings, emails and other messages that log conversations.
We use this data to keep record of interactions and to provide the best and most complete service to you.

Marketing Preferences

Specific preferences relating to marketing and outreach.
We use this to determine whether and how we communicate with you.

We will only use your Personal Information for the purposes for which we collected it, as listed above, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose that you provided the Personal Information to us.

We would like to send you information about our products and services, which may be of interest to you. We will only send you marketing messages if you are a customer of ours, or when you opt in to receiving these messages.

If you have consented to receive such marketing from us, you can opt out at any time by clicking on the “UNSUBSCRIBE” button at the bottom of our communications.

In respect of each of the purposes for which we use your Personal Information, POPIA requires that we have a legal basis for that use. Most commonly, we will rely on one of the following legal bases:‍

  • Consent: Where we have your specific consent to carry out the processing for the Purpose in question.
  • Contractual necessity: Where we need to perform a contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
  • Legitimate interests: Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
  • Compliance: Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We only collect Personal Information, on the terms set out in this policy, of children under the age of 18 with the explicit consent from their parent or guardian. If you are a parent or guardian of a child under the age of 18 who has provided consent for our collection of their Personal Information, you can at any time request us to tell you what wehave about the minor child and also ask us to delete it at any time. We willask you to prove your relationship to the child and, if you do so, you may(subject to applicable law) request access to and deletion of that child’spersonal data.

If you give us information on behalf of someone else, you confirm that the other person has appointed you to act on their behalf and has agreed that you can: (i) give consent on their behalf to the processing of their personal data; (ii) receive on their behalf any data protection notices; and (iii) give consent to the transfer of their personal data.

What Do We Do With This Personal Information?

The table below describes who we share your Personal Information with, what we share and why we share it.

Service Providers

We use a range of partners in order to provide our Services to you. These partners include those that:

  • enable us to manage our workflows;
  • process our accounting transactions;
  • manage our communications;
  • administer the assessments we conduct;
  • collect and store data;
  • enable report writing and facilitate payments.

Professional Advisors

Our lawyers, bankers, auditors, BEE advisors, and insurers, provide consultancy, banking, legal, insurance and accounting services.

Regulators and Other Authorities

Authorities may require reporting of processing activities in certain circumstances

Analytics Providers

Our analytics providers will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of our Site, compiling reports on Site activity and providing other services relating to Site activity and internet usage. Our analytics providers may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on our analytics providers’ behalf.

In general, the information you provide to Northerly will be processed for the purposes relating to their point of collection or their original intention. 

If you subscribe to our newsletter, we accept this as consent for Northerly to use your personal information for marketing communication purposes.  

We will not sell your name, email address, or any other personal information to any third party. 

We will not disclose information about our clients to third parties except where it is part of providing a service to you– e.g. if it is vital to work carried out by a trusted service provider (like a bookkeeping service). 

We may disclose any information, including personal information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request. 

To protect the information we process, we have implemented privacy policies and security controls. We take every effort to protect your personal data from misuse, interference, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. Our measures include implementing appropriate access controls, investing in the latest technology and software to protect the IT environments we use, and ensuring we encrypt personal data wherever possible. 

We keep your personal data for as long as we need it for the purpose it is being processed for. 

While we do our best to make sure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate, and will assume that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the information you provide us with is accurate. We will provide you with access to your personal information so that you may view, update, or correct your information (please see below under heading “Access rights”). To protect your privacy, we will also take steps to verify your identity before granting you access to your personal information.

Your Rights In Relation To Your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, by law, you have the right to:

  • Request access to, and receive a copy of, your Personal Information and check if we are lawfully processing it.
  • Report incomplete or inaccurate information, and request the correction of the Personal Information that we hold about you.
  • Object to the processing of your Personal Information.
  • Request that any or all of yourPersonal Information is deleted or removed if there is no longer a lawful reason for us to process it.
  • Request the transfer of yourPersonal Information that you initially provided consent for us to use or where we have used this information to perform a contract with you.
  • Withdraw your consent for us to process your Personal Information.

You will not have to pay a fee to request whether or not we hold personal information about you. However, if you require a record or a description of the Personal Information that we hold, including information about any third parties that we have shared or who have access to your Personal Information, we may charge a reasonable fee before we are able to comply with your request.

We will communicate the exact fee before complying with your request. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and your right to access yourPersonal Information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that Personal Information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

How The Law Protects Your Privacy

This Privacy Policy is intended to meet our regulatory duties in terms of the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA) and laws of SouthAfrica. You consent to the jurisdiction of the South African courts for any dispute which may arise out of this privacy policy.

If you have any questions or would like to make a complaint regarding this Privacy Policy, or our practices in relation to your Personal Information, please send an email to us at hello@northerly.co.za. We will reply to your complaint as soon as we can.

If you feel that your complaint has not been adequately resolved, POPIA gives you the right to contact the Information Regulator. You can contact the Information Regulator at inforeg@justice.gov.za. We review this Privacy Policy regularly.Occasionally, we may need to make changes or additions to this policy that may affect how we handle your data.