Your privacy is critical to us. We are committed to meeting your expectations and will comply with all applicable privacy and data protection legislation in relation to your personal information and sensitive information.

 

The following blueprints outline our privacy policy:

1. We only collect what we need to help you with your request or provide you with information that you ask for, personalising it to your interests.

2. Your information is yours -  If we don’t need it, and you don’t want us to keep it, we’ll delete it.

3. We want you to understand everything we do with your information.

4. You decide what and how you hear from us.

5. We do not pass your information to third parties for marketing purposes without your knowledge.

6. We will protect individual data with security shields against misfortune or burglary, as well as unapproved access, divulgence, duplication, use, or alteration.

7. We are focused on leading our business as per these standards, with the specific end goal of guaranteeing that the privacy of individual data is secure and maintained.

 

Below gives you with more detail of our privacy and personal information handling practices.

 

BCIE Ltd is a global organisation that assists individuals to study overseas. This requires us to collect personal information from you.

 

BCIE UK Head Office

PO Box 1531, Bedford, MK40 9EN

Tel: 0870 803 4317

Contact our Privacy Officer via email to: uk@bcie.co.uk

We will endeavour to respond to you within a reasonable time.

 

In your dealings with us for studying overseas
 

BCIE Ltd has historically offered services from third parties to help support you in your studies overseas. These services include Overseas Student Health Cover (OHSC), accommodation arrangements, visa application services and career skills training.

Should we initiate this service we may collect personal information such as your name, date of birth, and financial information, and sensitive information such as your health or medical information. We may also collect payment information, however BCIE Ltd does not store information like credit card details.

 

Collection of your personal information and sensitive information (such as your health or medical information) allows us to:

• provide the health insurance provider nominated by you with all relevant information for your OHSC;

• facilitate your accommodation arrangements with third party providers;

• contact the relevant organisations, authorities or other third parties in relation to your overseas guardianship application;

• contact Australian institutions or other organisations on your behalf to discuss your overseas education and placement needs

• arrange or provide other products and services to you.

 

We provide visa application services for visas including guiding you through the application process and helping you prepare the necessary documents for your nominated visa application. These visa application services not only cover visa applications required for study, but also post-study work, tourist visas, dependent visas and skilled migration visa applications. These services change from time to time and depending on the countries we operate in – for more details on this please do contact us.

 

Collection of your personal information and sensitive information (such as information from your medical examination) allows us to:

• assist you in your application for a student visa including contacting the Department of Home Affairs (DHA, UK Immigration and other organisations on your behalf to discuss your application;

• Relevant country border authorities with all relevant information required for your visa application;

• contact various Visa Authorities and/or border security organisations on your behalf to discuss or ask questions about your visa application; and

• keep you updated with the progress of your visa application and advise you of the outcome of your application.

 

The services we offer to help you study overseas include counselling, application assistance, visa assistance, English language testing and training, student exhibitions and seminars.

If you register on our websites (www.bcie.co.uk), events links or register to participate in an event we will collect personal information such as your name, email address, contact details, country of residence, nationality, preferred study destination, financial sponsorship and when you intend to study.

Our team of experienced counsellors will assist you with your application to study, we may also request additional information such as education qualifications, employment history, occupation, areas of interest and professional memberships, copies of documents as proof of identity – e.g. copies of passport, proof of citizenship or photographs, marital status and how you will fund your studies. We may also request sensitive information about you such as racial or ethnic origin (from information on your country of origin), and/or your health or medical information (e.g. from a medical examination required for your visa application for an Australian visa).

 

Collecting your personal information allows us to:

• provide opportunities to provide feedback and testimonials on your experience

• inform and provide students, institutions and other clients of developments in the services we provide (including events and opportunities to participate in projects/programs);

• match you to course vacancies at your preferred institution and communicate offers to you

• assist you to further your career after completing your studies at an overseas education institution

• conduct research for statistical, analytical and training purposes;

• manage our internal business operations and events; and

• respond to your questions.

• assist you to pursue the opportunity to undertake studies in an education institution outside your home country;

• provide you with relevant information on your study options;

• present you as a candidate to your preferred institutions across all education sectors, which are seeking to recruit international students who want to study in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or other destination countries we might make available to students in the future

 

BCIE Ltd organises various events and conferences related to international education. The information we collect is relevant to your attendance and participation.

In registering for, or participating in, an event we collect your personal details such as name, postal and email addresses, date of birth, contact details, residency status, education qualifications, employment history, occupation, areas of interest and professional memberships.

 

Collection of your personal information allows us to:

• register you to attend the event;

• provide services to you related to the event (e.g. to list you as a speaker in the program or list you as an exhibitor or sponsor in our exhibitor directory)

• respond to enquiries from you pre and post the event;

• keep you informed about the event you registered for and/or future events

• manage our operations for the event, including the fulfilment of any legal requirements;

• collect customer views on our services with a view to developing new and/or improved services;

• obtain website and app usage data to monitor our website and app performance; and

• if applicable, process payment for registration or other event-related services/products (e.g. accommodation payments/deposits, additional social event tickets, etc).

 

BCIE Ltd has been working for years and has a strong Alumni base – We want to build a global community where past and present students benefit from each other’s experiences. This means we would like to stay in touch for as long as you would like to hear from us, but we will only retain your information as long as is necessary for the purpose it was given to us.

As a guide we will keep your personal information for up to 10 years after commencing your studies or your last activity with us so that we can continue to support you through your journey, unless required to retain it for legal or regulatory purposes

 

Other ways you may deal with BCIE Ltd include:

• registering your interest in being engaged as a consultant or employee

• Working as a Referral agent to help place a student you may know or

• as a representative of an educational institution.

We will provide specific notice at the point your information is collected. Any unsolicited personal information will be securely destroyed.

 

We will only collect personal information by lawful and fair means. Personal information may be collected directly from you or your authorised representative, or may be collected from a third party such as a licensee or representative authorised by us to provide services to you. You may supply your personal information to us in person, when using our websites, app and event links, or communicating with us via social networks and other online channels, e.g. through your Facebook or Instagram, Twitter or Linked in accounts.

We do not collect personal and sensitive information unless the information is reasonably necessary for our business functions or activities. 

When you deal with us, you will need to identify yourself in order for us to provide our services to you, as such we do not accept the use of pseudonyms.

If you access our websites or app, we may collect additional personal information about you in the form of your IP address and/or domain name. For more details, please see our Website Cookie Policy for further information.

 

We will use or disclose your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected. We will use or disclose your information for another purpose only if you have consented, or if you would reasonably expect us to do so or as required by law.

We may use your personal information for the purposes of our own direct marketing; however, we will ensure you have the ability to opt out of future such communications.

We use Facebook Custom and Lookalike Audiences to deliver advertisements to Facebook users based on email addresses, phone number and visits to our websites and app. We may use information we collect from you to display advertisements to our target audience of users.

 

We may disclose your personal information to overseas recipients such as education institutions located outside your home country, overseas visa agencies, IELTS test centres, professional bodies and commercial organisations, or regulatory authorities when you have sought our assistance to apply for study at those institutions or where disclosure is required for verification purposes.  As such, the location of these overseas recipients would depend on the specific institutions to which you apply or where such verification is required.

For events or conferences, we may disclose some of the information that is collected via the online registration form such as your name or your email address to sponsors for marketing purposes.

Some BCIE Ltd IT systems and data are hosted on servers in countries outside the UK, Australia, UAE, Nigeria, Ghana or Pakistan and we may send your information to one of those servers as part of our business.

BCIE Ltd may hold or transfer the data we collect in or to the following countries (in addition to your home country):

• Australia

• UK

• India

• Canda

• Pakistan

• Ghana

• Nigeria

• United Arab Emirates

• United States
 

This information is stored and accessed only as required to provide our services to you. Where we transfer data to offshore servers, the data is subject to use restrictions and safeguards against unauthorised access.

The information disclosed to overseas recipients consists of any information you have given us to provide the relevant services. By accepting services from us, you consent to us providing your personal information to the relevant overseas recipient as mentioned above. BCIE ltd and its service providers take appropriate steps to ensure there are adequate safeguards in place for the transfer of your personal information.

 

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we hold against interference, loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, and other misuse.

The steps we take include:

• maintenance of computer technology, people and process-based security measures for example firewalls, network security configurations, encryption, use of passwords and other appropriate measures where information is held in electronic form;

• regular updates to security systems and configurations to protect our systems from malicious activity;

• restriction of access to data to only those staff that need access to carry out our business activities;

• training and ensuring that all our employees are required, as a condition of employment, to treat personal information held by us as confidential.

However, you should be aware that if you submit information to us electronically the internet is not a secure environment. We take reasonable steps to provide a secure channel for receiving information but cannot absolutely protect personal information before it reaches us.

Retention

When the personal information that we collect is no longer required, we will destroy, delete it in a secure manner, or ensure that the information is de-identified in accordance with our information destruction and de-identification policy, unless we are required by law to retain a copy of the personal information or the information is contained in a Commonwealth record.

Right to erasure

At your request, we will remove all the data we have for you which we are not required legally to retain.

Right to withdraw consent

For the processing activities where we have asked you for consent, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any point by unsubscribing from a message from us, or by contacting uk@bcie.co.uk

Right to object

You can object to the processing of your personal data.

 

We have procedures in place to deal with your inquiries or complaints.

If you have any questions about our policy or any complaint regarding the treatment of your privacy by us, please contact uk@bcie.co.uk

Updates to this Policy

This version of the policy was published 1st September 2024. From time to time, we may update this privacy policy. We encourage you to take the time to review it any time you provide us with personal information.