Privacy Policy

1. About us

We are Tequma AG with its registered seat in Zürich, registered under number CHE-435.535.893 (“Tequma”, “we” or “us”). We are a Data Controller, who is the responsible party for the processing of personal data collected through your use of our website www.tequma.com as per the applicable data protection laws, in particular the revised Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (revFADP) and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

2. Information we may collect

We collect and process the contact details and information necessary to conduct our activities and to develop or maintain business and contractual relationship in a business to business environment.

The personal information we process mostly relates to employees, candidates, clients and suppliers.

We obtain personal data directly from you in a variety of ways, including obtaining personal data from those who provide us their business card, complete our online forms, subscribe to our newsletters, register for webinars, attend meetings or events we host or apply for open positions.

We may also obtain personal data when, for example, establishing a business relationship, performing professional services through a contract, or through our software applications.

The contact form. When you send us an enquiry through the form on our contact page, we collect your name, work email address, and the company, telephone number and message you choose to give us. The submission is passed to our customer relationship management system, where it is recorded as an enquiry and someone from our team follows it up.

The consent checkbox on that form covers our contacting you about your enquiry. It is separate from any marketing, which we send only where you have separately agreed to receive it.

3. Categories of personal data we may collect

We may obtain the following categories of personal data about individuals through direct interactions with us, or from information provided through client engagements, from applicants, our suppliers and through other situations including those described in this Privacy Policy.

The data we collect is as follows:

• Contact details (e.g., name, company name, job title, work and mobile telephone numbers, email and postal address).
• Professional details (e.g., job and career history, educational background and professional memberships, conducted projects).

4. Legal basis for processing personal data

We only process your personal data if this is necessary to provide a functional website or to provide you with our products and services.

GDPR requires every organization processing personal data to have a valid legal basis for that processing activity. To follow this rule and operate our business as well as provide you with our products and services, legal basis for processing your data may be:

• Consent - we may rely on your freely given consent at the time you provided your personal data to us.
• Performance of a contract - we may process personal data in order to perform our contractual obligations.
• Legitimate interests - we may rely on legitimate interests based on our evaluation that the processing is fair, reasonable and balanced such as:
  • Delivering services and products - to deliver the services and products our clients have engaged us to provide.
  • Marketing - to deliver our insights and professional knowledge, offerings and invitations we believe are welcomed by our business clients, prospects and other individuals.
  • Recruitment - to seek for qualified candidates.
• Legal requirements and public interest - we may process personal data in order to meet regulatory and public interest obligations or mandates.

5. Purposes of processing your personal data

In order to show you why we may collect and process personal data, we present common situations such as:

• Providing our professional services and products.
• Promoting our professional services, products and capabilities to our existing and prospective clients.
• Sending invitations and providing access to participants attending our events and webinars.
• Administering, maintaining, developing and ensuring the security and functionality of our information systems, website and applications.
• Processing online requests, including responding to communications or requests for quotations.
• Complying with legal and regulatory obligations.
• Employment of personnel and work processes as well as searching for new talents.

In some situations the provision of personal data is required to provide the services. In such cases this is indicated on the website accordingly or specified in our agreements.

Moreover, we may be required to collect certain personal data by law.

6. Your data protection rights

If Tequma processes personal information about you, we ensure that all persons whose personal data is processed have appropriate rights resulting from the GDPR.

Therefore, you have:

• The right of access to your personal data - including the right to obtain a copy of this data.
• The right of rectification of personal data - if the personal data is incorrect or incomplete.
• The right to deletion of personal data - after you withdraw your consent to processing or when we no longer need it for the purpose it was originally collected and no retention requirements exist.
• The right to request a restriction to the processing of personal data - in such events as:
  • the data subject questions the correctness of personal data,
  • data processing is unlawful and the data subject opposes data deletion, demanding their restriction instead,
  • the administrator no longer needs data for his purposes, but the data subject needs them to identify, defend or pursue claims,
  • the data subject has objected to the processing of the data - pending determination of whether the legitimate grounds on the part of the administrator override the grounds of objection.
• The right to transfer personal data - provided that the processing takes place on the basis of a contract concluded with you or on the basis of your consent.
• The right to withdraw consent to the processing of personal data - to the extent you consented to the processing of personal data, you have the right to withdraw it.
• The right to object - you may object at any time to processing based on our legitimate interests. Where you object to processing for direct marketing, we will stop; this right is absolute and we do not weigh it against our own interests.
• The right to lodge a complaint - if you believe we have processed your personal data unlawfully, you may complain to the Swiss Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC), Feldeggweg 1, 3003 Bern, or, where the GDPR applies to our processing, to the supervisory authority of the EU or EEA state in which you live or work.

Withdrawal of consent does not affect the lawfulness of the processing of data which was made on the basis of consent before its withdrawal.

It may mean we are not able to provide certain products or services to you.

To submit a data request, email us at info@tequma.com or write to us at the following address:

7. Recipients of your data

Your personal data may be disclosed to our trusted external partners with whom we collaborate to offer our products, services or carry out projects.

The service providers who process personal data on our behalf, and only on our instructions, are:

• Google - hosting of this website, the database behind it, and, where you consent to analytics cookies, Google Analytics.
• Usercentrics (Cookiebot) - obtaining and recording your cookie consent.
• Tylko Advisors - our customer relationship management system, which holds enquiries sent through the contact form and the records of our client relationships.
• Microsoft - our email, and the booking page used when you schedule a meeting with us.

Beyond those, personal data may be disclosed to the following categories of recipient:

• Partners working with the Company, such as subcontractors and consultants.
• Our professional advisers, including lawyers, HR specialists, accountants and insurers.
• Payment, marketing and recruitment services providers.

8. Automated Decision-Making and profiling

We do not make decisions about you by automated means that produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.

Where you consent to analytics cookies, Google Analytics is loaded through Google Tag Manager and processes your IP address, cookie identifiers and approximate location in order to measure how the website is used. Nothing of this kind runs before you consent, and the Cookiebot declaration lists what is actually set.

You can withdraw that consent at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer, and you may object to processing for direct marketing at any time under section 6, in which case we stop.

9. Transfer of your personal data outside Switzerland

We are established in Switzerland, and most of the personal data we hold stays in Switzerland or the European Economic Area. Our customer relationship management system and our consent management provider both operate within the EEA.

Two of our providers, Google and Microsoft, are established in the United States and may process personal data there or in other countries where they operate. Those transfers rely on the adequacy decisions covering transfers from Switzerland and the European Union to certified organisations in the United States, and, where an adequacy decision does not apply, on the standard contractual clauses approved for that purpose.

In every case the recipient is bound by contract to protect the data to the standard our own obligations require, and we follow the guidance issued by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner on transfers abroad.

10. Duration of storage of personal data

We keep personal data only as long as we need it for the purpose it was collected for, or as long as the law requires. In practice that means:

• Contracts, invoices and accounting records - ten years, as required by Article 958f of the Swiss Code of Obligations.
• Enquiries that do not lead to a business relationship - twenty-four months from your last contact with us, after which they are deleted.
• Marketing consent and the data it covers - until you withdraw it or object, whichever comes first.
• Applications for a role with us - six months after the recruitment process ends, unless you agree to us keeping your application on file for future openings.

Where an enquiry does lead to a business relationship, the data becomes part of that relationship and follows the contractual period above.

At the end of the storage period, personal data is deleted or made anonymous.

11. How we protect your data

We take appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data against loss, misuse and unauthorised access, as Article 32 of the GDPR requires.

These include:

• Encryption of data in transit between your browser, this website and the systems behind it.
• Multi-factor authentication on the accounts that can reach personal data.
• Periodic review of who holds access, so that it is removed when it is no longer needed.

No system can be guaranteed completely secure. If a breach of personal data occurs that is likely to result in a risk to your rights and freedoms, we will notify the competent supervisory authority and, where required, you.

12. Cookies

Cookies are small data files, in particular text files, saved by the server on your computer.

These files allow to recognize the device and properly display the website, adjusting it to your preferences.

Cookies usually contain the name of the website they come from, their storage time on the device and a unique number.

You may grant us your consent for storing cookies on our computer that are necessary for the proper provision of services by us.

These files do not collect your personal data, do not change the configuration of your computer, are not used to install or uninstall any computer programs, viruses or Trojans, do not interfere with the integrity of the system or your data.

We use Cookiebot (Usercentrics A/S) to obtain and record your cookie consent. Non-essential cookies, including those set by Google Tag Manager, are blocked until you consent. You can change or withdraw your choice at any time using the Cookie settings link in the footer of any page.

The following types of cookies are used on our website:

• Session cookies - temporary files that remain on the User's device until logging out of the website or turning off the web browser.
• "Permanent" cookies - files remain on the User's device for the time specified in the parameters of "cookies" or until they are manually deleted.
• Cookies of external entities with their own privacy policy - Google (Google Tag Manager) and Cookiebot (Usercentrics A/S), which records your consent choice.

Cookies are used for statistical and marketing purposes, as well as to adapt the content of the website to your preferences.

You can change your web browser settings at any time so that it does not accept cookies or informs you about their transmission.

Failure to make changes means that the above-mentioned information may be posted and stored on your end device.

In your web browser, you can independently manage cookies by:

• accepting cookies, which gives you full access to the options offered on the website,
• individual cookie management on websites,
• determining individual settings for various types of cookies,
• blocking or deleting cookies.

More information on disabling the automatic saving of cookies can be found in the browser settings.

However, it should be remembered that not accepting cookies may cause difficulties in using our website.

Where cookies are used, a statement will be sent to your browser explaining the use of cookies.

13. Changes to this policy

We review this policy when our processing changes and update it here. The date at the top of the page shows when the current version took effect, and it is always the authoritative one.

Where a change materially affects how we handle your personal data, we will tell you directly if we hold contact details for you and the change requires it, rather than relying on you to notice this page has moved on.

14. Contact us if you have any privacy questions or concerns - we are here for you!

Should you have any questions concerning the manner or scope of processing of your personal data by Tequma, please email us at info@tequma.com or contact us by post at the following address: