Terms of Use

General

  1. By accessing any part of this website (further referred to as ‘Site’), you will be deemed to have accepted these terms (further referred to as ‘Terms’).
  2. In the Terms, ‘you’ and ‘your(s)’ means the user of the Site, and ‘we’, ‘our(s)’ and ‘us’ means the Qatar Financial Centre Authority (further referred to as ‘QFCA’).
  3. The Terms relate to the use of the Site and materials contained herein as well as any electronic communications sent in connection with your use of the Site, such as (but not limited to) confirmation emails, follow-up emails, and email newsletters.
  4. The Terms are governed by and interpreted in accordance with the laws of the Qatar Financial Centre (further referred to as ‘QFC’).
     

Disclaimer

  1. We do not guarantee or represent that the Site will be able to meet your requirements. You are using the Site at your sole risk.
  2. The QFCA seeks to ensure that the information and materials on this Site (or sent in connection with your use of the Site) are correct at the time of inclusion but provides these without warranty or representation of any kind, whether express or implied. The QFCA does not accept any liability for inaccuracies, errors or omissions.
  3. In no circumstances shall the QFCA be liable for any damages (including, without limitation, damages for loss of business or loss of profits) arising in contract, tort or otherwise including but not limited to those arising from the use of or inability to use this Site, or any material contained in it (including any documents available for download as the case may be), or from any action or decision taken as a result of using this Site or any such material.
  4. The materials on this Site do not and are not intended to constitute financial, legal or other professional advice. You should seek advice from a professional adviser.

Contents

  1. The electronic versions of legislation and other official materials (including but not limited to regulations, rules, standards and principles, codes of practice, waivers and exemptions) on this Site, and any copies printed from them, are provided for convenience and information only. They are not the authoritative or definitive texts and should not be relied on as such. Official copies of legislation can be viewed at the offices of the QFCA or the QFC Regulatory Authority or obtained on request to them. A fee may be charged for particular items.
  2. Certain Regulations and Rules appearing on this Site are, where so stated, in draft form and purely for information purposes. Descriptions and references in any material appearing on this Site to any such Regulations and Rules should be treated accordingly. The content of all draft material is subject to change and may differ from the final version. You may not rely on any such drafts either as a statement of the law or regulatory requirements nor as an indication of policy. Copies of the final versions of Regulations and Rules will appear on this Site once enacted or issued.
  3. This site may contain material sent to the QFCA by third parties. You should note that the third parties are responsible for ensuring that the material they submit to the QFCA complies with applicable laws and the QFCA is not responsible for any error, omission or inaccuracy in the material. The QFCA reserves the right to omit, suspend or change any third-party material submitted as it considers appropriate. 
  4. At various points on this Site you may be offered links to other sites, but these links are for information and convenience only and should you leave this Site via a link contained herein, you do so at your own risk. The QFCA does not control these sites and is not responsible for the content of any linked site or any link in a linked site, or any changes or updates to such sites. These sites will have their own terms and policies and you are advised to read them carefully.

Copyright

  1. The QFCA owns the copyright and any other rights in this Site and all material on it, unless otherwise stated, and you are responsible for obeying all applicable laws relating to the intellectual property laws subsisting in this Site and the material on it.
  2. The QFCA allows you to make copies of this Site as necessary incidental acts during your viewing of it and the like. You may also print or store so much of the Site as is reasonable for personal use or for use within an individual firm or organisation, but material should not be copied, used or re-published in whole or in part without prior written permission from the QFCA and without acknowledging the source, either by the use of appropriate words or by our copyright notice (© Qatar Financial Centre Authority). 
  3. The QFCA will allow you to: 
    • print or store online application forms;
    • copy to individual third parties no more than a small number of relevant provisions if incidental to advice or other activities.
 

Service Access

  1. The QFCA will use reasonable efforts to ensure this Site is available to you, without warranty of any kind, whether express or implied. Due to the possibility of human and technical errors, the QFCA will not be liable if, for any reason, the Site is unavailable for a period of time.
  2. The QFCA reserves the right to temporarily or permanently suspend the Site without any prior notice.
     

Privacy Statement

The QFCA respects and takes your privacy seriously. It has a privacy policy including a cookie policy. By accessing this Site, you are acknowledging and accepting these policies.

 

QFCA Privacy Policy

This privacy policy will explain how our organisation (Qatar Financial Centre Authority, further referred to as ‘the QFCA’, ‘we’ or ‘us’) uses the personal data we collect from you when you use our website (further referred to as ‘Site’). Topics:

  • What data do we collect?
  • How do we collect your data?
  • How will we use your data?
  • How do we store your data?
  • Marketing
  • What are your data protection rights?
  • What are cookies?
  • How do we use cookies?
  • What types of cookies do we use?
  • How to manage your cookies
  • Privacy policies of other websites
  • Changes to our privacy policy
  • How to contact us
  • How to contact the appropriate authorities
 

What data do we collect?

The QFCA collects the following data:

  • Personal identification information (name, email address, phone numbers etc.);
  • Company identification information (organization name, registration data etc.);
  • IP address; your device, browser, and operating system; your location, pages visited, and the duration of your stay on our Site.

How do we collect your data?

You directly provide the QFCA with most of the data we collect. We collect data and process data when you:

  • Create an account on our Site;
  • Fill out a form registering your interest in events or services;
  • Fill out an email subscription form;
  • Fill out a contact form;
  • Apply for an open position with the QFCA or affiliated companies;
  • Request information or email an enquiry to us;
  • Make a submission on any matter requiring public consultation;
  • Participate in any survey or other similar exercise undertaken by us;
  • File a complaint;
  • Use or view our Site using your browser's cookies;
  • Send personal data to the QFCA by any other means.
     

How will we use your data?

The QFCA collects your data so that we can:

  • Carry out and fulfil our statutory and legal obligations and functions as a regulator in the QFC;
  • Provide and improve our services to you;
  • Manage our relationship with you and QFC-licensed firms and to communicate with you;
  • Administer and improve our Site; including compiling anonymous statistics, for example, Site usage statistics;
  • Market, enhance and improve our services;
  • Maintain internal record keeping and audits;
  • Recruit new employees;
  • Comply with legal regulations;
  • Legitimately pursue our activities;
  • Send our email newsletter to you as well as other emails that might be of interest.
     
If you agree, the QFCA will share your data with the following partners in order to facilitate the provision of relevant services:
  • Government and regulatory bodies or entities in and outside of QFC;
  • Other businesses and third parties (such as our service providers, IT hosting and maintenance providers and other contractors) which we engage to help us run our business, for example to provide services to you;
  • Analytics, technology and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our Site;
  • Such other entities or bodies as may be required by law;
  • Other parties to which you authorise us to release it. 
     

How do we store your data?

The QFCA securely stores your data using IT systems including databases hosted in the cloud. We will keep your data as outlined above in accordance with our data retention policy. We typically keep data for ten years from the end of our relationship. Sometimes data might be needed for a longer period for legitimate purposes, e.g. to resolve open enquiries. If certain data are deemed not to be longer required, we may delete, destroy or anonymise them.

Marketing

The QFCA would like to send you information about services and events of ours that we think you might like. If you have agreed to receive marketing messages, you may always opt out at a later date.

You have the right at any time to stop the QFCA from contacting you for marketing purposes or providing your data to other entities.

If you no longer wish to be contacted for marketing purposes, please unsubscribe here.

What are your data protection rights?

The QFCA would like to make sure you are fully aware of all of your data protection rights. Every user is entitled to the following:
 
The right to access – You have the right to request the QFCA for copies of your personal data. We may charge you a small fee for this service.
 
The right to rectification – You have the right to request that the QFCA correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request the QFCA to complete information you believe is incomplete.
 
The right to erasure – You have the right to request that the QFCA erase your personal data, under certain conditions.
 
The right to restrict processing – You have the right to request that the QFCA restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
 
The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to the QFCA’s processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
 
The right to data portability – You have the right to request that the QFCA transfer the data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
 
If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you. If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please contact us
Email us at: marketing@qfc.qa
Call us at: +974 4496 7777
Or write to us:
Head of Corporate Communications and Marketing
Qatar Financial Centre Authority
QFC Tower 1
Al Wahda Street, West Bay
PO Box 232 45, Doha, the State of Qatar

What are cookies?

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard Internet log information and visitor behaviour information. When you visit our Site, we may collect information from you automatically through cookies or similar technology.
For further information, visit allaboutcookies.org.

How do we use cookies?

QFC uses cookies in a range of ways to improve your experience on our Site, including:

  • Keeping you signed in;
  • Understanding how you use our Site;
  • Personalise Site content for you;
  • Providing you with more information matching your identified interests;
  • Complete a request made by you.
     

What types of cookies do we use?

There are a number of different types of cookies; however, our Site uses:

  • Necessary – These cookies are essential to make our Site work correctly as they enable you to move around our Site and use our features. Examples include remembering previous actions (e.g. entered text) when navigating back to a page in the same session.
  • Performance – These cookies help us understand how visitors interact with our Site by providing information about the areas visited, the time spent on the Site, and any issues encountered, such as error messages. This helps us improve the performance of our Site.
  • Functionality – The QFCA uses these cookies so that we recognize you on our Site and remember your previously selected preferences. These could include what language you prefer and location you are in. A mix of first-party and third-party cookies are used.
  • Advertising – The QFCA uses these cookies to collect information about your visit to our Site, the content you viewed, the links you followed and information about your browser, device, and your IP address. The QFCA sometimes shares some limited aspects of this data with third parties for advertising purposes. We may also share online data collected through cookies with our advertising partners. This means that when you visit another website, you may be shown advertising based on your browsing patterns on our Site.
     

How to manage cookies

You can set your browser not to accept cookies, and the above-mentioned website tells you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases, some of our Site features may not function as a result.

Privacy policies of other websites

Our Site contains links to other websites. Our privacy policy applies only to our Site, so if you click on a link to another website, you should read their privacy policy carefully.

Changes to our privacy policy

The QFCA keeps its privacy policy under regular review and places any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 9 December 2019.

How to contact us

If you have any questions about the QFCA’s privacy policy, the data we hold on you, or you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, please do not hesitate to contact us.
 
Email us at: marketing@qfc.qa 
Call us at: +974 4496 7777
Or write to us: Head of Corporate Communications and Marketing, Qatar Financial Centre Authority, QFC Tower 1, Al Wahda Street, West Bay, PO Box 232 45, Doha, the State of Qatar

 

How to contact the appropriate authority

Should you wish to report a complaint or if you feel that QFCA has not addressed your concern in a satisfactory manner, you may contact the Information Commissioner's Office.

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