GFH Data Privacy Notice

Last updated: 28-July-2026

GFH Bank B.S.C. (hereafter referred to as “we” or “our” or “us” or “GFH” or “organization”) respects your right to data privacy. In this Notice “You” or “Your” refers to data subject whose Personal Data is processed by GFH, including customers, employees, job applicants, website visitors, contingent workers, agents, vendor representatives, partners, service providers, authorized representatives, beneficial owners, directors, shareholders, guarantors, and other relevant third parties.

This privacy notice explains who we are, how we collect, share and use personal data about you, and how you can exercise your data privacy rights. The details on what personal data will be processed and which method will be used depend significantly on the services applied for or agreed upon.

Definitions

Data Subject – An identified or identifiable natural person, and where applicable under relevant personal data protection laws, a legal person whose Personal Data is processed by GFH.

Personal Data – Any information relating to an identified or identifiable data subject who can be identified, directly or indirectly, including but not limited to name, identification number, passport number, address, contact details, image, location data, an online identifier, financial or transaction information, or factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that data subject.

Processing – Any operation or set of operations which is performed on Personal Data or on sets of Personal Data, whether or not by automated means, such as collection, recording, organization, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction.

Special Category / Sensitive Personal data – Means any Personal Data that reveals, directly or indirectly, an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political or philosophical views, religious beliefs, trade union membership, criminal record, health data, sexual life, biometric data, genetic data, or any other category of Personal Data treated as sensitive, special category, or requiring enhanced protection or prior regulatory authorization under applicable personal data protection laws.

Contingent workers – Contingent workers means non-permanent workers including agents, consultants, independent contractors, sub-contractors, temporary workers, professional advisors, interns and those affiliated with third parties.

Data Controller – A person who, either alone or jointly with other persons, determines the purposes and means of Processing any particular Personal Data; except that where the purposes and means of the Processing of Personal Data are determined by law, the person entrusted with the Processing obligation is deemed for the purposes of the applicable law to be the Data Controller.

Joint controller – Where two or more controllers jointly determine the purposes and means of processing, they shall be joint controllers.

Group company (Group) – includes a holding company, subsidiary, associate company (including a joint venture company) and a subsidiary of a holding company to which the company is also a subsidiary.

Applicable Laws – This Notice is intended to be read in line with applicable personal data protection laws and regulatory requirements that apply to GFH Bank and its subsidiaries, including, where relevant, the Kingdom of Bahrain Personal Data Protection Law, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Personal Data Protection Law, the United Arab Emirates Personal Data Protection Law, and any applicable sector-specific banking, financial services, employment, anti-money laundering, sanctions, and regulatory reporting requirements.

If you have any questions or concerns about our Processing of your Personal Data, please contact our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.

When do we collect your Personal Data?

Direct interactions

You may give us your identity information, contact details, or resume by filling in forms or by corresponding with us by phone, email, or otherwise. This includes sharing of Personal Data for the following purpose:

Records of your interactions with us such as emails and other correspondence and your instructions to us;
Providing your feedback;
By filling in forms, for example to download white papers and/or gather insights on case studies;
By sharing your Personal Data such as resume for recruitment purpose;
By interacting with us on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn etc.;
By subscribing to our newsletter on our website or other online medium/channel.

Automated technologies or interactions

Log Files: Log information is data about your use of the service, such as IP (Internet Protocol) address, browser type, referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamps, and related data, which is stored in log files.

Cookies: A cookie is a small data file transferred to your computer (or other device) when it is used to access our service. Cookies may be used for many purposes, including to enable certain features of our service and remember your preferences, your equipment, browsing actions and patterns, to better understand how you interact with our service, to provide you advertising on and off the service, and to monitor usage by visitors and online traffic routing. You may be able to instruct your browser, by changing its options, to stop accepting cookies or to prompt you before accepting a cookie from the online services you visit. If you do not accept cookies, however, you may not be able to use all portions of our service or all functionality of our service.

Please see our cookie policy for further details.

Third parties or publicly available sources

We may receive aggregated Personal Data about you from various third parties as mentioned below:

Technical Data from the following parties:

Analytics providers such as Google, Facebook;
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn;
Publicly available sources, including official company registries, regulatory registers, sanctions and politically exposed person screening databases, court or insolvency records, public websites, professional networking platforms, media sources, and information lawfully made available by government authorities or other public bodies;
Third parties connected with our services, including employers, authorised representatives, intermediaries, introducers, agents, vendors, service providers, financial institutions, payment networks, credit reference agencies, fraud prevention agencies, auditors, legal advisors, regulators, and group companies.

What Personal Data do we collect?

We may collect, store, and use the following categories of Personal Data about you:

Identity Data

Full name;
Resume;
National identification number, passport number, photographs, gender, date of birth, nationality, address, signature, employment details, job title, and any identity documents or verification records required for onboarding, employment, legal, regulatory, or service-related purposes.

Contact Data

Email address;
Telephone numbers/ contact number.

Transaction and Financial Data

Bank account details, KYC data, payment instructions, transaction history, investment records, source of funds, source of wealth, tax information, income details, credit information, beneficial ownership details, and other financial information required to provide services, meet contractual obligations, or comply with legal and regulatory requirements.

Technical Data

Internet protocol (IP) address;
We also track how often you visit and use our website. We do this via email and website cookies and similar tracking technology built into our website. Please see our cookie policy for further details.

Profile Data

Your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses;
Profile image;
About (mentioned in resume).

Usage Data

Information about how you use our website, products and services;
Information on what you view, click on access by way of our emails and text messages, website and mobile.

Marketing and Communications data

We will only process your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes with your prior consent, where required under the Bahrain Personal Data Protection Law (Law No. 30 of 2018), or as otherwise permitted by applicable laws. We may ask you to leave a review or take a survey for providing you better services. We may also collect your Personal Data for responding to your queries and comments, social media posts and questions/ queries. If you would like to opt-out/ unsubscribe from marketing or promotional communications from GFH, you can do so by clicking the unsubscribe button in any marketing email communication you receive from GFH, or by contacting our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.

Aggregated Data

We also collect, use and share aggregated data (sometimes referred to as anonymized data) such as statistical or demographic data for any purpose. Aggregated data may be derived from your Personal Data but is not considered Personal Data under applicable law(s) as this data does not directly or indirectly reveal your identity. For example, we may aggregate your usage data to calculate the percentage of users accessing a specific website feature. However, if we combine or connect aggregated data with your Personal Data so that it can directly or indirectly identify you, we treat the combined data as Personal Data which will be used in accordance with this data privacy notice.

Sensitive Personal Data or Special Category of Personal Data

Where required or permitted by applicable laws, we may collect, store and use Special Category or Sensitive Personal Data about you, including:

Information about your race or ethnicity, religious beliefs and sexual orientation;
Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records, medical records and health professional information;
Any criminal records information in relation to you, and;
Biometric information about you, for example fingerprints, retina scans.

We will only process Sensitive Personal Data where there is a valid legal basis, where required for employment, regulatory, legal, security, onboarding, screening, fraud prevention, anti-money laundering, sanctions, health and safety, or other lawful purposes, or where you have provided explicit written consent where required by applicable laws.

How and why do we use your Personal Data?

We will only use your Personal Data when the law allows us to. We will use your Personal Data in the following circumstances:

The Processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest, or for official purposes or requested by competent public authorities in the Kingdom of Bahrain or other relevant jurisdictions (including the Personal Data Protection Authority, law enforcement, judicial, or other governmental authorities) on a lawful basis;
It is necessary for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, for the purposes of carrying out the obligations and exercising our or your rights in the field of employment, social security and social protection law; or
Based on your explicit consent;
Where we need to perform the contract we have entered into with you;
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests;
Where Processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the Data Subject or of another natural person.

Legitimate Interest

Means the interest of our business in conducting and managing our business to enable us to give you the best service/product and the best and most secure experience;
We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you (both positive and negative) and your rights before we process your Personal Data for our legitimate interests;
We do not use your Personal Data for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by laws);
We may also use your Personal Data in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests);
Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

Purpose/ activity, type of data and lawful basis for Processing

We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use your Personal Data, and which of the legal base(s) we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are, where appropriate.

Note that we may process your Personal Data for more than one lawful ground depending on the specific purpose for which we are using your data. Please contact us if you need details about the specific legal ground we are relying on to process your Personal Data where more than one ground has been set out in the table below.

We process your Personal Data on different lawful bases depending on the specific purpose of the Processing and the applicable jurisdiction. Consent is only relied on where required or appropriate, such as for certain marketing communications, optional services, or non-essential cookies. For other activities, we may rely on other lawful bases, including the performance of a contract with you, compliance with legal or regulatory obligations, protection of vital interests, public interest or official authority, establishment or defence of legal claims, or our legitimate interests where these are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.

Some of the above grounds for Processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your Personal Data.

Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time. However, withdrawing consent will not affect Processing that is required or permitted under another lawful basis, such as Processing necessary to manage your account or relationship with us, meet anti-money laundering, sanctions, know-your-customer, tax, audit, employment, legal or regulatory requirements, prevent fraud, maintain security, or respond to lawful requests from competent authorities.

In some cases, we may process or disclose your Personal Data without obtaining your consent, where this is allowed or required by applicable laws. This may include processing or disclosure required to comply with legal or regulatory obligations, respond to lawful requests from regulators, courts, law enforcement or government authorities, perform a contract with you, protect vital interests, establish or defend legal claims, prevent fraud, conduct anti-money laundering, sanctions or know-your-customer checks, protect our systems and premises, or pursue legitimate business interests that do not override your rights and freedoms.

Purpose/Activity	Type of data	Lawful basis for Processing including basis of legitimate interest
To manage our relationship with you which will include: a) Notifying you about changes to our terms or privacy policy b) Asking you to leave a review or take a survey c) Responding to your queries and comments, social media posts and questions.	a) Identity b) Contact c) Profile	a) Performance of a contract with you b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation c) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to keep our records updated and to study how customers use our products/services) d) Your consent
a) To administer and protect our business and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data)	a) Identity b) Contact c) Technical	a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (for running our business, provision of administration and IT services, network security, to prevent fraud and in the context of a business reorganization or group restructuring exercise) b) Necessary to comply with a legal obligation
a) To deliver relevant website content and advertisements to you and measure or understand the effectiveness of the advertising we serve to you	a) Identity b) Contact c) Profile d) Usage e) Technical	a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to study how customers use our products/ services and to develop them)
a) To use data analytics gathered from our website to improve our website, products/services, marketing, customer relationships and experiences	a) Technical b) Usage c) Aggregated Data	a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to define types of customers for our products and services, to keep our website updated and relevant)
a) To make suggestions and recommendations to you about goods or services that may be of interest to you	a) Identity b) Contact c) Technical d) Usage e) Profile f) Aggregated Data	a) Necessary for our legitimate interests (to develop our products/services)
a) To power our security measures and services in order to protect you and our business	a) Identity b) Technical c) Usage	a) Necessary for our legitimate interest so you can safely access our website and mobile applications.

If we ask you to provide any other Personal Data not described above, then the Personal Data we will ask you to provide, and the reasons why we ask you to provide the Personal Data, will be made clear to you at the point we collect your Personal Data.

However, we may also use your Personal Data for other purposes that are not incompatible with the purposes we have disclosed to you (such as archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes, or statistical purposes) if and where this is permitted by applicable laws.

Change of purpose

We will only use your Personal Data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose.

If we need to use your Personal Data for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

If you wish to get an explanation as to how the Processing for the new purpose is compatible with the original purpose, please contact us using the contact details provided.

Who do we share your Personal Data with?

On occasion we may have to share your Personal Data with the parties set out below for the purposes set out.

Internal Third Parties

Entities, subsidiaries and businesses within our Group. For example, we’ll share information from our website at www.gfh.com with the internal third parties, having similar arrangements between our other businesses. This is because we hope to have a relationship with you across all our businesses, if not now, then sometime in the future and we want to be able to provide you with the same value for money and high quality experience for the services provided to you by us. It’s also the only way we can provide you with the best benefits.

External Third Parties

Regulators and other authorities: acting as processors or Joint Controllers based in Bahrain who require reporting of Processing activities in certain circumstances;
With social media companies such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn: who run promotions for you on their platforms;
Any new business partners: we may have over time, for example, in the event of a joint venture, reorganization, business merger or sale that affects us;
The Police, local authorities, the courts and any other government authority: if they ask us to do so (but only if our doing so is lawful);
Other people who make a ‘data subject access request’: where we are required to do so by law.
We may also share the information we collect where we are legally obliged to do so, e.g. to comply with a court order;
Any social media posts or comments you send to us: (on the GFH Facebook page, for instance) will be shared under the terms of the relevant social media platform (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) on which they’re written, and could be made public. Other people, not us, control these platforms. We’re not responsible for this kind of sharing. Before you make any remarks or observations about anything, you should review the terms and conditions and privacy policies of the social media platforms you use. That way, you’ll understand how they will use your information, what information relating to you they will place in the public domain, and how you can stop them from doing so if you’re unhappy about it. It’s worth remembering too that any blog, review or other posts or comments you make about us, our products and services on any of our blogs, reviews or user community services will be shared with all other members of that service and the public at large. You should take extra care to ensure that any comments you make on these services, and on social media in general are fit to be read by the public, and are not offensive, insulting or defamatory. Ultimately, you are responsible for ensuring that any comments you make comply with any relevant policy on acceptable use of those services;
Third parties: to whom we may choose to sell, transfer, or merge parts of our business or our assets. Alternatively, we may seek to acquire other businesses or merge with them. If a change happens to our business, then the new owners may use your Personal Data in the same way as set out in this privacy notice. We require all third parties to respect the security of your Personal Data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third party service providers to use your Personal Data for their own purposes and only permit them to process your Personal Data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

International Transfers

We may share your Personal Data within GFH Bank and the Group’s entities on a need-to-know basis and subject to confidentiality obligations. This may involve transferring your Personal Data outside the Kingdom of Bahrain.

This may include transfers to jurisdictions where GFH Group entities, service providers, or business partners are located, including the Kingdom of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and other relevant jurisdictions, where required for the purposes described in this Notice.

Some of our external third parties may be based outside the relevant jurisdiction. Whenever we transfer your Personal Data out of the relevant jurisdiction, we will ensure that an appropriate level of protection is applied in accordance with applicable personal data protection laws, including through one or more of the safeguards below:

Transfers to countries, territories or international organisations that have been recognised as providing an adequate level of protection under the relevant applicable law or approved whitelist.
Where a destination country is not whitelisted or does not provide an adequate level of protection, we will use appropriate safeguards where required, such as contractual data protection clauses, binding intra-group arrangements, transfer impact assessments, security controls, explicit consent where valid, or another lawful transfer mechanism permitted by applicable laws.

Please contact our Data Protection Guardian (“DPG”) if you want further information on how we transfer your Personal Data out of the relevant jurisdiction.

A list of third countries and international organizations to whom Personal Data may be shared can be made available by contacting our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.

How do we protect your Personal Data?

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the Personal Data that we collect and process. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of Processing your Personal Data.

A lot of the information we receive reaches us electronically, originating from your devices, and is then transmitted by your relevant telecoms network provider. Where it’s within our control, we put measures in place to ensure this ‘in flight’ data is as secure as it possibly can be.

Sensitive data, such as passwords, is protected for data in transit by data encryption. In addition to encryption, we have implemented robust network security controls to help protect data in transit. Network security solutions such as firewalls and/or network access controls are used to secure the networks used to transmit data against malware attacks or intrusions.

We use secure means to communicate with you where appropriate, such as ‘https’ and other security and encryption protocols.

How long will we keep your Personal Data?

To make sure we meet our legal data protection and privacy obligations, we only hold on to your information for as long as we actually need it for the purposes we acquired it for in the first place. After that we will either delete it, mask it or anonymize it so that it cannot be linked back to you.

We retain Personal Data we process where we have legitimate interest, performance of the contract, vital interest of Data Subject or of another natural person, performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested or for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or other regulatory reporting requirements or with your consent.

By law and applicable regulatory requirements, we may be required to retain certain categories of Personal Data, including customer, employee, vendor, transaction, financial, due diligence, compliance, audit, and legal records, for minimum retention periods after the end of the relevant relationship or transaction. The applicable retention period may vary depending on the type of Data Subject, the purpose of processing, and the relevant legal, regulatory, accounting, employment, or contractual requirement.

Automated Decision Making

Automated decisions are decisions concerning you which are made automatically on the basis of a computer determination (using software algorithms), without human intervention. We do not use automated decision making.

What are your data protection rights?

Your duty to inform us of changes

It is important that the Personal Data we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your Personal Data changes by keeping your details up to date on our website and by sharing your updated details with our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.

Your rights in connection with Personal Data

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

Right to be informed: To receive clear information about how we collect, use, share, retain and protect your Personal Data, including the purposes of processing, lawful bases, categories of recipients, international transfers, retention periods, and how to exercise your rights;
Request access: To your Personal Data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the Personal Data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully Processing it;
Request rectification: Of the Personal Data that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected. We may need to verify the accuracy of any new data you provide to us;
Request erasure: Of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove Personal Data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your Personal Data where you have exercised your right to object to Processing, where we may have processed your information unlawfully or where we are required to erase your Personal Data to comply with local law. Note, however, that we may not always be able to comply with your request of erasure for specific legal reasons which will be notified to you, if applicable, at the time of your request;
Object to Processing: Of your Personal Data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to Processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are Processing your Personal Data for direct marketing purposes. In some cases, we may demonstrate that we have compelling legitimate grounds to process your information which means we can continue to process your Personal Data;
Request the restriction of Processing: Of your Personal Data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the Processing of your Personal Data in the following scenarios:
1. if you want us to establish the data’s accuracy;
2. where our use of the data is unlawful but you do not want us to erase it;

where you need us to hold the data even if we no longer require it as you need it to establish, exercise or defend legal claims; or
You have objected to our use of your data but we need to verify whether we have overriding legitimate grounds to use it.
Right to withdraw consent at any time: Where we are relying on consent to process your Personal Data. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any Processing carried out before you withdraw your consent. If you withdraw your consent, we may not be able to provide certain products or services to you. We will advise you if this is the case at the time you withdraw your consent.
Right to lodge a complaint with the Personal Data Protection Authority in the Kingdom of Bahrain (or other competent supervisory authority in the relevant jurisdiction): In case you consider that the Processing of your Personal Data infringes any of your rights or provisions related to the laws and regulations in scope.

Fees for excessive or unreasonable requests

You will not have to pay a fee to access your Personal Data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Time limit to respond

We will respond to valid data subject requests within 10 working days of receiving the request and verifying the requester’s identity. Occasionally, it may take us longer than this period if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that Personal Data is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.

Indemnity and Limitation of Liability

You agree to defend, indemnify and hold harmless GFH, its officers, directors and employees from and against any and all claims, liabilities, damages, losses or expenses, including settlement amounts and reasonable legal fees and costs, arising out of or in any way connected with your access to or use of this site. Although the organization shall make every attempt to keep the website free from viruses, it cannot guarantee that it is virus/ malware free. For your own protection, you should take necessary steps to implement appropriate security measures and utilize a virus scanner before downloading any information from the website.

GFH, its officers, directors and employees, shall not be liable in any manner whatsoever for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damage resulting from the use of, access of, or inability to use the information available on the website or the services provided by the organization. GFH, its officers, directors and employees shall not be liable in any way for possible errors or omissions in the contents in the website.

Intellectual Property Rights

All information on this website is protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. No images, text or other content from this website may be distributed or reproduced without the prior written approval from the organization.

Changes to this data privacy notice

We may update this data privacy notice from time to time in response to emerging legal, technical, contractual, regulatory or business developments. When we update our data privacy notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the significance of the changes we make. We will obtain your consent to any material privacy notice changes if and where this is required by applicable laws.

You can see when this privacy notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this privacy notice.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact our Data Protection Guardian at DPG@gfh.com.