Privacy Policy

Information we collect

From coaches

Mandatory: your name; the email address you register and log in with; your coaching category selections; your minimum hourly rate.

Optional, where you choose to provide them: mobile number; date of birth (used only to show an age band - your exact date of birth is never shown publicly); gender and coaching preferences; profile photo and gallery images; your biography and coaching-approach narrative; qualification/certificate details and files; languages; availability; your location (via What3Words) and map coordinates; travel radius; website and social links.

Generated/derived by us: your Founder Coach status and join date; your profile-completeness and quality-review results; a record of which profile sections were AI-assisted (see "AI features" below).

Billing records: your chosen plan, Introduction Credit and Notification Wallet transaction history, and (once real subscriptions begin) your Stripe billing identifiers.

Security logs: your IP address and verification data collected at signup, used to confirm your account is genuine.

From clients

Mandatory: your name; email address; the coaching category and core details of what you're looking for.

Optional, where you choose to provide them: phone number; further details about your situation, goals, challenges and preferences; your budget; your meeting location (via What3Words) and map coordinates, if you want in-person coaching; details of any coach you choose to contact and the message you send them.

Security data: your IP address, collected to help confirm your request is genuine.

A note on sensitive information: the free-text fields on our client request form (such as "current situation" and "goals") sometimes contain health, neurodiversity or other sensitive ("special category") information, because people naturally explain why they want a particular kind of coach. We only ask you to share what's relevant to being matched well, and we ask for your explicit consent to this specific processing before you can submit a request - see "Special-category information" below.

Purposes and lawful bases

Activity	Categories of data	Lawful basis (Article 6)	Notes
Coach account/profile management	Coach account and profile data	Contract	Performing our agreement with you as a coach
Client request and matching	Client request data	Contract / steps taken at your request before a contract	Special-category data additionally relies on your explicit consent
Coach/client communications	Contact details, messages	Contract
Payment and financial records	Billing/transaction data	Contract; legal obligation	Record-keeping required by law
Fraud/security	IP address, verification/security logs	Legitimate interests	Keeping the platform safe and genuine
Service improvement	Aggregated/derived usage data	Legitimate interests
Optional marketing	Contact details	Consent	No optional marketing consent currently exists on the platform
AI Profile Assistant	Coach-supplied questionnaire answers/profile text	Consent	You choose to use this optional feature
Resource article generation	Coaching-style name and a generic topic only	Legitimate interests	Never any personal data
Legal claims/disputes	Whatever is genuinely relevant	Legitimate interests; legal obligation where applicable

Special-category information

Because our client request form's free-text fields may contain health, neurodiversity or other special-category information, we rely on your explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9(2)(a)) for this specific processing, in addition to our other lawful bases for the rest of your request. Before you can submit a request, you must tick a clear, separate checkbox confirming this consent - it is never pre-ticked, and it is not bundled with any other agreement. We record the exact wording you agreed to, the Privacy Policy revision that was in effect, and the time your request was verified.

You can withdraw this consent at any time by contacting us at the privacy email shown at the top of this page. Withdrawing consent will not affect the lawfulness of anything we did before you withdrew it, but may mean we can no longer use that specific information to continue matching you with a coach. We only ever collect the sensitive information you choose to share - we do not ask follow-up questions to gather more.

Who we share information with

• Hosting - Heroku (Salesforce), for application hosting and a managed PostgreSQL database.
• File storage - Amazon Web Services S3, for profile photos, gallery images and qualification files.
• Email - our email delivery provider, for account, verification and service emails.
• Payments - Stripe, for subscription billing, Introduction Credit purchases and Notification Wallet top-ups, once/where these are enabled for you.
• SMS - Twilio, only for coaches who opt in to paid SMS alerts, and only once this is genuinely enabled. Paid SMS alerts are not currently enabled. If enabled, this policy will be updated to confirm the active provider before any coach data is sent to them.
• Location - What3Words, for converting a memorable three-word address into map coordinates.
• Maps - our map tile provider (OpenStreetMap), which may receive your device's IP address when a map is shown in your browser, in the same way any embedded map does.
• AI content assistance - OpenAI, used only for the optional coach AI Profile Assistant, and to help draft generic educational resource articles from a coaching-style name and a generic topic. We never send client request data, match scores, billing information or other private marketplace data to OpenAI.
• Analytics - only if and when a genuine analytics integration is enabled - none is currently installed.

AI features

Coaches may optionally use an AI Profile Assistant to help draft or improve specific parts of their profile. This is entirely optional, never writes or submits a profile automatically, and never makes an approval decision. If a coach uses it, we send OpenAI only their own questionnaire answers (or the specific text they've asked to improve), their selected coaching categories/style, and their chosen tone - never client data.

Working questionnaire/generation data behind an unaccepted, discarded or failed suggestion is normally retained for around 30 days before being cleared. Once a coach accepts a suggestion, the resulting wording becomes normal profile content and is kept under the same retention as the rest of their profile, and a minimal record that AI assistance was used for a particular section may be kept longer as an internal transparency record. No client-request data is ever used for AI profile writing or for resource-article generation.

International transfers

Some of the providers listed above may process data outside the UK. Where this happens, we rely on the safeguards each provider offers - which may include the UK's data-adequacy regulations for a particular country, the UK International Data Transfer Agreement, or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Contact us at the privacy email above if you'd like more detail about the safeguards in place for a specific provider.

How long we keep information

We keep different categories of information for different lengths of time, set out in the retention table on this page. Deletion is currently a manual staff process for most categories - we do not claim automatic deletion where no automated process genuinely exists yet.

Your rights

Subject to UK GDPR, you may have the right to request access to, correction of, deletion of, restriction of, or objection to our processing of your information, to receive a copy of it in a portable format, and to withdraw consent where we rely on it - including the special-category consent described above. To make a request, contact us using the details at the top of this page.

You also have a specific right to object to processing based on our legitimate interests, and the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk if you believe we have not handled your information properly.

Account closure

If you close your Coach Finder 4U account, we remove your profile from matching immediately. We then erase or anonymise personal profile content that isn't needed for a lawful retention reason - including your profile photo, gallery images, biography, qualification files, and other profile text - and delete the corresponding files from our storage provider. We revoke your active login sessions and prevent further login.

We retain a limited set of records after closure where the law requires it or we have a legitimate reason to keep them - in particular, financial/billing transaction records (kept for the period shown in our retention table, for UK tax and accounting purposes), evidence of Stripe payment events, records of credits already spent on a prior client introduction, staff approval/closure audit records, and legal-policy acceptance evidence. Where a retained record would otherwise identify you, we replace the identifying details with a non-identifying reference rather than keeping your personal details attached to it. Your right to erasure, like every right described above, is subject to the lawful exceptions that already apply to those rights generally - see "Your rights" above.

If you have questions about what's been retained after closing your account, contact us using the details at the top of this page.

Account closure forfeiture

Closing your account forfeits any remaining Introduction Credits and Notification Wallet balance, exactly as described in our Terms & Conditions. The forfeiture itself is recorded as a restricted financial/audit entry, retained for the period shown in our retention table - it is never a pending refund, and once your account is closed it is never linked back to your identifiable profile information.

Feedback, outcomes and testimonials

Asking clients how it went

Some time after we send a client their shortlist (normally about 30 days), we may email them once - and at most once more as a reminder - to ask how their search for a coach went. Answering is entirely optional. If a client answers, we keep:

• where things have got to (for example, working with a coach, still deciding, or not going ahead);
• which coach from their shortlist they chose, if they choose to tell us;
• any reasons they choose to give for not going ahead;
• an optional 1-5 rating of Coach Finder 4U's own service (never a rating of a coach); and
• any comments they choose to write.

We use this, under our legitimate interests, to understand whether our matching genuinely helps people and to improve it. These answers are private to the Coach Finder 4U team. We never share a client's survey answers, reasons, rating or comments with any coach, and we never tell a coach what a client said about them. These emails are service messages about the client's own request, never marketing, and every one includes a link to stop receiving them. We keep a record of that choice (as a one-way scrambled form of the email address, not the address itself) so that we can keep honouring it.

Testimonials

A client may choose to let us use their comments as a testimonial. We only ever do this with the client's explicit, opt-in consent, given by ticking a separate box that is never pre-ticked. The client chooses how they are named - not at all, first name only, or first name and last initial - and whether the type of coaching they were looking for may be mentioned, which is a separate, optional permission. Because some types of coaching (for example ADHD, autism or health coaching) can suggest something about a person's health or circumstances, those types are only ever shown without any name.

We record exactly what the client agreed to, the wording they agreed to, when, and which version of this policy applied. Nothing is published automatically: every testimonial is reviewed by our team first, and we may decide not to use it. We don't change the meaning of anyone's words. A client can withdraw their permission at any time using the link in their survey email or by contacting us, and we will stop using the testimonial as soon as reasonably possible.

Coach introduction outcomes

After a client contacts a coach, we may email that coach - normally about two weeks later and, if it is still unresolved, once more about two months later - to invite them to record how the introduction went. Coaches can turn these emails off in their profile settings. Anything a coach records about an introduction (its status, private notes, follow-up dates and any value of business won) is private to that coach and our team, and is never shown to the client or to any other coach.

We may compare what a client and a coach have each separately told us, to understand how often introductions genuinely lead to coaching. We never treat one side's answer alone as confirmation, and we don't publish claims about outcomes without appropriate evidence.

Coach activity statistics

We show each coach statistics about their own activity on the platform - for example how many client enquiries they were matched to, how they responded, how often they were shortlisted, how often a client opened their profile and how often a client contacted them. These are calculated from records we already keep to run the service. Our team can see the same statistics. They never include any client's name or contact details, and no coach can see another coach's statistics.

How long we keep this information

Survey answers are kept with the client's request and follow the same retention period as the request itself. Testimonial consent records are kept for as long as the testimonial is in use and for a period afterwards, so we can show that we had permission. If a client's request is deleted, its survey answers and any testimonial permission are deleted with it. If a coach's account is permanently deleted, the records of clients contacting that coach and any follow-up emails about those contacts are deleted with it.

Your rights

You can ask us for a copy of, or to correct or delete, the feedback information we hold about you, object to our use of it, or withdraw testimonial consent at any time, using the contact details at the top of this page.

Abandoned coach signups

If you create a coach account and verify your email address but never complete and submit your profile, we send you reminders about 4, 14 and 30 days after you signed up. If your profile is still incomplete 30 days after that final reminder, we email you a final warning to say that we do not want to keep a partial profile indefinitely. If your profile is still incomplete and has not been submitted 72 hours after that warning, the abandoned signup is removed automatically, together with the profile details and any files you had uploaded.

Completing and submitting your profile before then stops the removal. We do not remove a signup automatically because of its age alone: the reminder and the warning must each have been sent first. This does not apply to profiles that have been submitted for review, approved, rejected or suspended, or to accounts that have been closed, which are covered by the retention periods set out on this page. If your signup is removed, you are welcome to sign up again at any time.

This removal is automated. It is the exception to the general statement on this page that deletion is a manual staff process.

Feedback from clients and coaches, and published testimonials

This section adds to "Feedback, outcomes and testimonials" above. Where the two differ, this section applies.

What we may ask a client

We may ask a client for feedback about how their search for a coach went. As well as the answers described above, a client may choose to tell us:

• which of the coaches on their shortlist they contacted (one, several, or "I'd rather not say"); and
• which one coach they chose to work with, if any.

Every question except the first is optional. For a short period after answering (currently 14 days) a client can correct their answers using the same link.

What we may ask a coach

We may ask a coach how an introduction progressed - for example that the client made contact, that a discovery call took place, that they are still discussing, that the client became a paying client, or that it did not proceed, and if they wish, the main reason it did not proceed.

Ratings and written feedback

Clients and coaches may each, if they wish, give a 1-5 star rating and written feedback about their experience of Coach Finder 4U. A client's rating is never a rating of a coach, and a coach's rating is never a rating of a client. Giving a rating or feedback is always optional.

Feedback is private, and private from the other party

Feedback is read by the Coach Finder 4U team only. We do not show a client's answers, rating or comments to any coach, and we do not show a coach's outcome, rating or comments to the client. Our team may compare what each side has separately told us, to understand how often our introductions lead to coaching.

Testimonials need separate permission

Feedback stays private unless the person who wrote it separately gives us permission to use it as a testimonial. That permission is optional, is given by ticking a box that is never ticked in advance, and is separate from giving the feedback itself.

The person decides how they are named:

• a client can choose no name, first name only, or first name and last initial;
• a coach can choose their full name, first name only, or no name.

Every testimonial is reviewed by our team before it is published, and we may decide not to use it. We do not change anyone's words. Once approved, a testimonial may appear on our public testimonials page, and our team may also choose to show it on our home page, together with the star rating the person gave Coach Finder 4U and the name exactly as they chose.

If a person corrects their feedback in a way that changes the words, the name or what may be shown, the testimonial is taken down until our team has reviewed it again.

Sensitive information

The type of coaching a client was looking for is only shown with their testimonial if they gave a further, separate permission. Types of coaching that could suggest something about a person's health or circumstances are only ever shown on a testimonial without any name. A coach's testimonial never states the type of coaching and must not name or describe the client.

Withdrawing permission

Permission to use a testimonial can be withdrawn at any time: a client by using the link in their feedback email, a coach from their introduction page, or either by contacting us. A withdrawn testimonial is removed from our public pages straight away. Withdrawing permission does not delete the private feedback itself; you can ask us to delete that using the contact details at the top of this page.

How long we keep coach feedback

A coach's feedback on an introduction is kept with the record of that introduction. If the client's request or the coach's account is permanently deleted, that feedback and any testimonial permission attached to it are deleted with it.

Feedback when you close your account

When you close your coach account we ask why you are leaving. You choose a reason from a short list and may add a comment. We use this to understand why coaches leave and to improve Coach Finder 4U. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in improving the service.

Your reason and comment are sent to the Coach Finder 4U team and stored together with your name, your email address, the dates you joined, were approved and left, and the plan you were on. We keep your name and email address with that record for 30 days, so that we can read your feedback in context and reply if that would help. After 30 days your name and email address are removed from the record automatically. Your reason, your comment and the dates are then kept without anything that identifies you. Please do not include sensitive personal information in your comment.

This is an exception to the statement under "Account closure" that identifying details on retained records are replaced straight away: for this one record, they are replaced after 30 days. If you would like your name and email address removed sooner, contact us using the details at the top of this page.

How you found us

When you make a coaching request or register as a coach, we ask how you heard about Coach Finder 4U. Answering is optional. If you choose "Other" you may tell us more in your own words - please do not include anyone's personal details.

If you arrived through a link that carries campaign labels (for example a link in one of our Facebook posts that names the campaign it belongs to), we also record those labels, and the name of the website that sent you to us (for example "facebook.com"). We record only the website's name, never the full address of the page you came from, and we discard anything that looks like an email address.

We do not use a cookie, browser storage, tracking pixel or third-party analytics service for this. The labels travel with the page address while you move around our site and are saved only if you submit your request or registration.

We use this information, in totals, to understand which of our marketing works so that we can spend it sensibly. Our lawful basis is our legitimate interest in understanding how people find our service. It is visible only to the Coach Finder 4U team - never to coaches, other clients or the public - and is kept for as long as the request or account it belongs to.

Your coach shortlist: page views and feedback

Shortlist page views. When your private shortlist page has been open and visible in your browser for a few seconds, we record that it was viewed: the first and most recent time, and how many times (repeat visits within 30 minutes count once). We do not record a view when the link is only fetched, for example by an email security scanner or a link preview, and we do not track which links you click in our emails. This uses no additional cookies and no third-party tracking. We use it to understand whether shortlists are reaching clients, to word our reminder emails appropriately, and to tell a coach on your shortlist only that you have viewed the shortlist. A coach is never told anything else about your visits.

Feedback you choose to give. You can tell us how your coach search is going, add a comment, ask our team to get in touch, close your request, or - if your shortlist expired - tell us why you didn't proceed. All of this is optional. Your answers and comments are seen only by the Coach Finder 4U team, never by any coach, and we never ask which coach you chose. We use them to look after your request (including contacting you if you ask us to), to stop reminders you no longer need, and to improve the service. Please don't include sensitive personal information in a comment.

Reminder emails. You can stop the reminder emails about a shortlist at any time using the link in those emails. If your shortlist then closes, we still send one short service email to confirm it, so that you know your private link has stopped working.

Our lawful basis for this is our legitimate interest in running the shortlist service well and fairly for clients and coaches. This information is kept with your coaching request and handled under the retention periods described in "How long we keep information" above.