Last updated: 17 October 2026
Baikal Financial Services Uganda Ltd (“Baikal”, “we”, “us”) is a Tier 4 microfinance institution regulated by the Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority (UMRA). We finance motorbikes, tuk-tuks and other assets for working Ugandans. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, and the rights you have under the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019.
If anything here is unclear, ask us — contact details are at the end.
1. This website
This website does not use cookies, analytics or advertising trackers. When you use the “Check if I qualify” form or a WhatsApp button, the details you type are placed into a WhatsApp message on your own phone — nothing is stored on our servers from the website, and nothing is sent until you press send in WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is operated by Meta under its own privacy policy. Once your message reaches us, we handle it as described below.
2. What we collect when you apply or borrow
- Identity: your name, date of birth, gender, National Identification Number (NIN) and a copy of your National ID. For non-Ugandans, your passport and work permit.
- Contact details: phone numbers, email, residential address, village, parish and district.
- Home and workplace verification: during vetting, our field officer records the GPS location of your home and of your boda stage or place of work, and may take photographs of them.
- Work and income: where you work, your stage, and information about your earnings.
- Guarantors and next of kin: the names, phone numbers and ID details of the people you name. Please tell them you have shared their details with us.
- Credit information: your credit report from a licensed credit reference bureau, which we request using your NIN.
- Loan and payment records: your loan, repayment schedule, every payment you make by mobile money, bank or cash, and transaction references.
- Vehicle location: every motorbike and tuk-tuk we finance is fitted with a GPS tracker. For the life of your loan we receive the vehicle’s location and movement. We use this to protect the vehicle against theft and to recover it if the loan is not repaid as agreed.
- Communications: WhatsApp messages, SMS, calls, and notes our staff make about your account.
3. Why we use it
- To check your identity and meet our anti-money-laundering obligations.
- To assess your application and decide whether we can lend to you.
- To set up and manage your loan, and to process your repayments.
- To remind you of payments by SMS, WhatsApp or phone.
- To protect and, where necessary, recover the financed vehicle.
- To report your repayment history to credit reference bureaus, as the law requires.
- To meet our legal and regulatory duties, including to UMRA and the Uganda Revenue Authority.
- To prevent and investigate fraud.
We rely on your consent, which you give when you apply and sign your loan agreement; on the need to perform that agreement; on our legal obligations; and on our legitimate interest in protecting the vehicles we finance.
4. Who we share it with
We do not sell your personal information. We share it only where needed, with:
- Credit reference bureaus — to check your credit history and to report how you repay.
- Regulators and authorities — UMRA, the Financial Intelligence Authority, the Uganda Revenue Authority, the police and courts, when the law requires it.
- Payment providers — mobile money operators, banks and payment aggregators that process your repayments.
- Service providers working for us — our SMS provider, our GPS tracking providers, and our cloud hosting provider. They may use your information only to provide their service to Baikal.
- Baikal Tech Ltd, our related company, which supplies the vehicles we finance and issues the related invoices.
- Insurers, where your vehicle is insured.
- Our auditors and professional advisers, under a duty of confidentiality.
5. Information stored outside Uganda
Our systems are hosted on Google Cloud servers located in Belgium, and some of our GPS tracking services are operated outside Uganda. Where your information leaves Uganda, we transfer it only where the Data Protection and Privacy Act permits, and with safeguards to keep it secure.
6. How long we keep it
We keep your information for as long as your loan is active and afterwards for as long as the law requires us to keep financial, tax and anti-money-laundering records. After that it is deleted or anonymised.
If your application is declined, we keep the record so we can meet our legal duties and prevent fraud, and we do not use it for any other purpose.
7. How we protect it
Access to your information is limited to staff who need it for their work, and is protected by individual logins. Information travels encrypted between your phone, our staff and our systems, and our records are backed up daily to a separate secure location.
8. Your rights
Under the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 you have the right to:
- know what personal information we hold about you;
- ask for a copy of it;
- ask us to correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
- object to us using it, or ask us to stop — although we must keep using information we need to manage an active loan or to meet a legal obligation; and
- complain if you believe we have mishandled it.
To use any of these rights, contact us or visit any branch with your National ID. We will respond within the time the law allows.
9. Complaints
Please raise any concern with us first and we will try to put it right. If you are not satisfied, you may complain to the Personal Data Protection Office of Uganda.
10. Age
We lend only to adults aged 18 and over, and we do not knowingly collect information about children.
11. Changes to this policy
We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed. Where a change materially affects how we use your information, we will tell our customers.
12. Contact us
Data Protection Officer, Baikal Financial Services Uganda Ltd
TMT Atrium, Plot 90, 3rd Floor, Bukoto–Ntinda Road, Kampala
Email: info@baikalfinance.ug
Phone: 0800 388 744 (toll-free)