Privacy

1. The short version

You can read every page here without giving anything. Visits are measured in aggregate. If you fill in the contact form, we receive what you typed and use it to reply. If you join the reader list, your address goes on that list and is used for that list. Those three things are kept separate from each other.

2. When you read a page

Every page on this site is prerendered and identical for every visitor. Nothing on a page is personalised to you.

The site uses Google Analytics 4 to count visits and see which pages get read. It sets a first-party cookie and reports a page path, an approximate location worked out from your IP address, and your browser and device type. Two settings are switched off: Google signals, which would let Google join a visit here to its cross-site advertising identity for you, and ad personalization signals, which would let the data feed ad targeting. With both off this is first-party measurement and is not sharing for cross-context behavioural advertising. Any content blocker stops it and nothing on the site depends on it.

The site currently carries no advertising network and no advertising pixel, and embeds no social media widgets. Fonts are served from this site rather than from a third party, so reading a page does not tell anyone else that you did. Where the site later carries measurement, advertising, sponsorship or affiliate technology, this notice describes it and section 5 already permits it.

Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, which include IP address, timestamp, requested URL and user agent. These exist to operate and secure the service.

3. When you send an enquiry

The contact form asks for your name, email address and a message, optionally your company, and, if you are registering as a buyer, the kind of buyer you are, the sectors and geographies you buy in, the purchase price you can transact at, how a purchase would be funded and your timeline. It also records which page you opened the form from. We receive exactly what you enter.

A buyer registration is a record of criteria. It is not a subscription, and registering does not add you to the reader list or to any marketing list.

Please do not send confidential financial information, trade secrets or anything sensitive in a first message. Email is not a secure channel, and as the terms explain, no advisory relationship or professional privilege exists before a signed engagement.

The form includes a hidden field that automated submissions tend to fill in. If it is completed, the message is discarded. This is a spam control and it collects nothing about you.

4. When you join the reader list

The signup form collects an email address and nothing else. It is held by our newsletter provider and used to send the occasional email described next to the form: what changed when the underlying federal extract was restated. Every email carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing removes you from the list.

5. How information is used

Information collected through this site is used to:

• reply to you, and to carry on a conversation you started;
• hold and act on buying or selling criteria you have registered, including routing them within FIH.com and to professional advisers working on a matter where that is what you asked for;
• send the reader list, and other email you have asked to receive, and to measure whether those emails are opened and acted on;
• measure how the site is used, including through analytics, attribution and conversion measurement, and to improve what is published;
• support advertising, sponsorship and affiliate arrangements the site carries, without selling your identity to anyone;
• produce aggregate or de-identified statistics, which are not personal information and may be used and published without limit;
• operate and secure the service, detect abuse, and meet legal obligations.

Personal information is not currently sold or shared as those terms are defined under California law, and is not used for cross-context behavioural advertising. Any change is reflected in this notice together with the opt-out mechanism the law requires.

6. Why we are allowed to hold it

Where the UK GDPR or EU GDPR applies, our lawful basis for handling an enquiry or a registration is legitimate interests: you contacted us and we have an interest in responding. For the reader list and any other marketing email the basis is consent, which you can withdraw at any time. Server logs are handled on the basis of legitimate interests in operating and securing the site.

7. Who else touches it

• Hosting. Our hosting provider serves the pages and keeps the server logs described above.
• Analytics. Google Analytics, configured as described in section 2.
• Transactional email. An email provider delivers form submissions to FIH.com and processes the message in transit.
• Newsletter delivery. A newsletter provider stores the reader list and sends from it.
• Email hosting. Once delivered, a message sits in FIH.com's email system like any other.

Each acts on our instructions under a processing agreement and is not permitted to use your information for its own purposes. These providers operate in the United States, so information sent from outside the United States is transferred there.

8. How long it is kept

Enquiries and registered criteria are kept for as long as needed to deal with them and for a reasonable period afterwards, normally not more than twenty-four months, unless they become part of a client relationship with its own retention requirements. Reader list membership is kept until you unsubscribe. Server logs are kept for a short period on our provider's standard schedule.

9. Security

The site is served over TLS. Access to enquiry data is limited to people at FIH.com who need it, and provider credentials are held as server-side secrets rather than in anything the browser can read. No transmission over the internet is completely secure, which is why the contact page asks you not to send sensitive material in a first message.

10. Your rights

Depending on where you live you may have the right to ask what we hold about you, to have it corrected, to have it deleted, to object to or restrict how we use it, to receive a portable copy, and to withdraw consent. Residents of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas and other United States states with comprehensive privacy statutes have comparable rights, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them, and the right to appeal a refusal.

To exercise any right, use the contact form, or reply to any email you have received from us. We respond within the period the applicable law requires. If you are in the UK or EU and are unhappy with our response, you may complain to your national supervisory authority.

11. If you appear in the source data

The Small Business Administration publishes its 7(a) loan records, including borrower names and addresses, as a public federal disclosure. This site does not republish any of that. Every page here is an aggregate of many loans, and no borrower name, address or individual loan appears anywhere on it.

If you believe your loan record should not be public, that is a matter for the SBA rather than for us, because we publish nothing here that identifies you.

12. Children

This site is intended for business owners and professionals. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

13. Changes to this notice

This notice may be updated as the site changes. The review date at the top of the page is when it was last revised, and material changes are dated there. Continuing to use the site after that date means you accept the updated notice.

14. Contact

QEIP LLC is the controller for information collected through this site. Reach us through the contact form.