Student Fees & Funding - Privacy Notice

The Credit Control Service provides staff, students, and visitors with financial services related to the invoicing, payments and refunds for tuition, residence, and commercial income.

Student Funding provides oversight of Student Funding including Student Loans Company, US Federal Loans, Hardship, Scholarships & Bursaries.  

We collect a variety of personal information depending on the service being accessed. This includes:
 

• Basic personal information, such as your name, student number, contact details, age, gender, nationality
• Next of kin details
• Details about your residence, where applicable
• Fee status
• Salary details
• Programme and course information along with details about your faculty or department
• Special and more sensitive category data such as disability information, bank details and debt status
• Information relating to complaints, disciplinaries and appeals
• Name and contact details of sponsors and amount and duration of sponsorship

We collect this information from you, your sponsor or any third party paying on your behalf when you:
 

• Apply and/or enrol at the College via our student record management systems
• Correspond with us
• Request any extensions
• Lodge a complaint
• Apply for any scholarships, bursaries, hardship funds
• Apply for a place on the Erasmus+ educational exchange programme
• Have a liability to King’s for services relating to tuition, residence or general sundry (commercial)
• Apply for a travel card
• Request a refund

We use this information to enable us to:

• Confirm your enrolment and release loans, including any maintenance loan
• Invoice, collect fee payments, pay refunds, and follow up any incidence of non-payment of fees
• Manage our relationship with you and your sponsor, where relevant
• Administer the complaints process
• Confirm eligibility for travel cards
• Assess eligibility for scholarships, bursaries, and hardship funds
• Make payment of the Erasmus Grant where you have successfully applied to that programme

We rely on the following lawful bases to process your personal data:
 

• Contract, where the processing is necessary to fulfil the terms of our contract with you
• Your consent, in circumstances where you have a genuine choice about the processing, and the ability to change your mind at any time
• Legitimate interests, where the processing is for a legitimate interest of the university or a third party, and that interest is not overridden by your interests and rights such as producing statistics and internal research to improve our services
• Public task, where the processing is necessary for the College to carry out its official functions

We also process data to meet our statutory obligations such as monitoring and gathering data to meet our equal opportunities obligations and our reporting requirements to governmental bodies.

To provide some of our services we also need to process data that is considered more sensitive by the law (known as ‘special category data’). Because of this sensitivity, this data needs an additional lawful basis.

When processing your special category data, Student Fees & Funding will rely on your explicit consent in circumstances where you have a genuine choice about the processing, and the ability to change your mind at any time.
 

Our provision of an effective fees and funding service at King’s includes multiple internal teams including our central student support service and faculty teams. Your personal information will be shared by us internally within King’s on a need-to-know basis and in compliance with the King’s Data Protection Policy and Procedure.

We disclose your data to third parties where they are acting as authorised agents for the university for the purposes listed below; or where we are permitted or required to do so under UK law.

Typical third party data sharing includes:
 

• Public authorities (such as the Office of the Independent Adjudicator) and public partnerships such as police or government departments, if required by law
• Government departments, for example, Office for Students, HESA
• Funding bodies, for example, Student Finance England (SFE) and other regional funders
• US Private & Federal Loans
• Relevant Funders/Sponsor (e.g., Student Loans Company, Trusts, Research Councils, funders of awards/prizes)
• National Health Service (NHS) Shared Services, where student sponsored by NHS
• Third party sponsor portals such as embassies, ELCAS (Enhanced Learning Credit Administration Service)
• Businesses contracted to help us deliver services
• Debt collection agencies, solicitors, court of students’ local jurisdiction and enforcement agents, acting to recover a debt on behalf of the university, where applicable. Please see the STA International Ltd STA Privacy Policy for more information.
• Transport for London (TfL) to confirm your attendance to enable your application to be approved

Examples of businesses contracted to help us deliver our services include:
 

• DTP Group to transmit college fee invoices to third party sponsors, excluding Student Loans Company
   
• Conversa (platform for receiving funds from the US Department of Education to enable loan disbursements against tuition/residence invoices and to refund any remaining balance. Please see their privacy policy at: Conversa Privacy Policy
   
• Third Party Financial Institutions such as Convera and the WPM Payment Platform, providing payment solutions and responsible for administering your payment or a payment on your behalf and/or refund

Legally enforceable data sharing agreements are put in place with third-party suppliers in compliance with the King's Data Protection Policy and Procedure

Your data is securely stored and retained in line with the King's Records Retention Schedule.

To find out more about how the university deals with your personal information, including your rights and who to contact if you have a concern, please see the King's College London Core Privacy Notice.

If you need to get in touch with us about our services, please contact us through Student Services Online.