Privacy Policy

1.1 Information You Provide Directly

We collect information you provide when registering your cooperative, creating member profiles, submitting loan applications, or contacting our support team. This includes: full name, email address, phone number, national identity number (NIN) or BVN where required, cooperative registration details, financial transaction records, and any other information you choose to provide.

1.2 Information Collected Automatically

When you access the platform, we automatically collect certain technical data including your IP address, browser type and version, device identifiers, operating system, pages visited, time and date of visits, referring URLs, and session activity logs. This data is used for security, fraud prevention, and improving our services.

1.3 Financial Data

As a financial management platform, we process sensitive financial information including savings balances, loan records, contribution histories, dividend distributions, and transaction data. This information is processed solely for the purpose of operating cooperative management functions and is never sold to third parties.

2.1 To Provide and Operate the Platform

We use your information to create and manage your account, process transactions, generate reports, send notifications and account-related communications, and provide customer support.

2.2 Legal Compliance

We may process your information to comply with applicable laws, regulations, and legal obligations including anti-money laundering (AML) laws, Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements, tax obligations, and court orders or regulatory directives.

2.3 Security and Fraud Prevention

We use technical and organisational security measures to monitor for suspicious activity, prevent unauthorised access, detect and investigate fraud, and maintain audit logs for compliance purposes.

3.1 Within Your Organisation

Data shared within the platform is governed by role-based access controls. Organisation Administrators can access member records within their cooperative. Super Administrators can access system-wide data for platform management. Members can only access their own individual records.

3.2 Third-Party Service Providers

We may share your data with carefully vetted third-party providers who assist in operating the platform, including cloud hosting providers (Supabase/AWS), transactional email services (Brevo), payment processors (where applicable), and analytics services. All third parties are bound by data processing agreements.

3.3 Legal Obligations

We may disclose your information when required by applicable law, in response to valid legal process, to protect the rights and safety of Anchor, our users, or the public, or to prevent fraud or illegal activity.

4.1 Technical Safeguards

We implement industry-standard security measures including TLS/SSL encryption for all data in transit, encryption at rest for sensitive data fields, Row Level Security (RLS) for database-level tenant isolation, multi-factor authentication (MFA) capabilities, regular security audits and penetration testing, and automatic session expiration.

4.2 Data Breach Response

In the event of a data breach that affects your personal information, we will notify affected organisations and individuals as required by applicable law, typically within 72 hours of discovery.

5.1 Retention Periods

We retain your data for as long as your cooperative account is active and for a period of 7 years after account closure, unless a longer retention period is required by law. Financial transaction records may be retained for up to 10 years for regulatory compliance purposes.

5.2 Deletion

Upon account termination, personal data will be anonymised or deleted within 90 days, except where retention is required by law. Financial transaction records required for audit purposes will be retained in anonymised form.

6.1 Data Subject Rights

Subject to applicable law, you have the right to access personal data we hold about you, request correction of inaccurate data, request deletion of your data (subject to legal retention requirements), object to certain processing activities, request restriction of processing, and data portability where technically feasible.

6.2 Exercising Your Rights

To exercise any of these rights, please contact your Organisation Administrator or contact us directly at privacy@anchorcoopms.com. We will respond to all verified requests within 30 days.

7.1 Essential Cookies

We use essential session cookies necessary for authentication and platform functionality. These cannot be disabled as they are required for the platform to operate. We do not use third-party advertising or tracking cookies.

The Anchor platform is intended for use by adult cooperative society members and administrators. We do not knowingly collect personal information from individuals under the age of 18. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, please contact us immediately.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify Organisation Administrators of material changes via email and by updating the "Last Updated" date at the top of this page. Your continued use of the platform after changes constitutes acceptance of the revised policy.

If you have questions, concerns, or requests regarding this Privacy Policy or our data practices, please contact us at: privacy@anchorcoopms.com or write to Anchor Cooperative Management Software, Lagos, Nigeria.