Privacy notice
for Föreningen FVO when applying for financial support
Last updated: 29 June 2026
1. Introduction
Under Section 1 of Föreningen FVO’s statutes, the association’s purpose is to provide help and advice to people in need, primarily by supporting older people, people who are ill or have disabilities, and the care, upbringing and education of children and young people.
FVO fulfils this purpose by providing financial support to people who submit an application. Our office also offers telephone support and appointments booked in advance. During these contacts, we may provide advice or refer people to other organisations that offer financial support, where appropriate.
FVO also works on behalf of other charitable foundations, organisations and associations with the same or similar purposes. This may involve receiving applications, assessing applicants’ circumstances or distributing funds on their behalf.
Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to know how your personal data is processed. This notice explains how FVO, as the data controller, processes your personal data when you apply for financial support. You can find information about how to apply to FVO here.
If you have any questions about how FVO processes your personal data, you’re welcome to contact us using the details provided below.
2. Who is the data controller?
FVO is the data controller responsible for processing your personal data when you apply for financial support from us.
3. What personal data does FVO process?
When you submit an application to FVO, we process the personal data you provide in your application. FVO may process the following categories of personal data:
- Name, Swedish personal identity number, nationality and marital status.
- Address, postcode, town or city, email address and telephone number.
- Housing details, such as type of accommodation, parish and monthly rent.
- Household information, such as joint applicants, spouse, cohabiting partner, children and other adults living in your household.
- Information about your health.
- Information about your education and employment.
- Information about your income, benefits, financial support, expenses, debts and assets.
- Bank details, including bank name, clearing number and account number.
- Information contained in attachments to your application, such as your income tax return, annual bank statements, Family Certificate (familjebevis), rent invoice and documents from social services. You can find information about which attachments you may need to provide on our website.
Some information and attachments are required from everyone who applies. Others depend on what is relevant to your application. If you do not provide the required information, FVO will not be able to approve your application for financial support, as we cannot assess your financial needs.
4. How does FVO process your personal data?
FVO processes the personal data listed above to:
- Receive and register your application. For online applications, FVO’s AI tool checks whether your application is complete before a caseworker reviews it. This includes checking that all required information and attachments have been provided and that the documents are readable. You can find more information about FVO’s AI tool in Section 7.
- Assess whether you are in financial need under the Swedish Tax Agency’s rules. The funds FVO distributes must go to people who are considered to be in financial need under these rules.
- Understand your needs and assess which support may be available to you. When you apply for financial support from FVO, we review your application and match it with the foundations and organisations that have asked us to distribute funds on their behalf. Different foundations and organisations have different purposes and eligibility requirements. For example, some may only support people living in a particular area, while others provide support specifically to women, children or older people. Some foundations support people working in certain professions, while others focus on people with particular educational backgrounds.
- Contact you and process your application. This includes answering your questions, requesting additional information and deciding whether to approve or reject your application.
- Pay out financial support.
- Comply with applicable laws and regulations, such as accounting requirements.
5. What is the legal basis for processing your personal data?
A legal basis is the lawful reason that allows FVO to process your personal data under the GDPR.
FVO processes your personal data on the legal basis of legitimate interests. FVO has a legitimate interest in receiving, assessing, making decisions on and otherwise managing applications for financial support from people who choose to apply to us. Legitimate interests means that FVO needs to process personal data for a purpose that is important to our work, and that the processing is necessary for that purpose.
When processing personal data based on legitimate interests, FVO has carried out a balancing test. This means we have weighed our need to process your personal data against your interest in having it protected. We have concluded that the processing is necessary to handle applications for financial support and that we cannot achieve this purpose in a way that has less impact on your privacy. We have also concluded that your interests, fundamental rights and freedoms do not outweigh our legitimate interests.
In making this assessment, we have taken particular account of the following:
- We only process the personal data needed to receive, assess and make decisions on applications.
- You choose whether to submit an application and can reasonably expect us to need your personal data to assess it.
- Your personal data is only used for clearly defined purposes related to the application process.
- Access to your personal data is restricted, and we take measures to protect it.
When FVO must retain or use certain personal data to comply with a legal obligation, such as accounting requirements, the legal basis is legal obligation. This means that FVO must process certain personal data to comply with the laws that apply to our organisation.
Information about your health or disabilities is considered special category personal data under the GDPR. If you choose to provide this information to FVO, we will ask for your explicit consent to process it so that we can assess your application.
Providing special category personal data is voluntary. However, if this information is needed to demonstrate your need for financial support, choosing not to provide it may affect our ability to assess your application fully.
6. How does FVO collect personal data?
FVO mainly collects personal data directly from you when you apply for financial support. This may be when you complete a paper application form and include relevant documents, or when you enter information or upload documents through FVO’s online application system. To start an online application, you must also verify your identity using BankID.
If you contact FVO by email, in person or by phone, we may also collect personal data during these interactions, where it is relevant to your application.
FVO also collects information from the documents you submit, such as income tax returns, Family Certificates (familjebevis), annual bank statements, decisions from public authorities, rent documents and forms from social services. If you provide information about joint applicants, children or other people in your household, FVO receives their personal data from you.
7. How FVO uses AI in the application process
This section explains how we use an AI tool to carry out an initial review of online applications.
FVO uses an AI tool to support the processing of online applications. The tool helps our caseworkers by carrying out an initial review to check whether an application is complete. It checks that all required information and attachments have been included, that all pages are present and that the documents are readable. A caseworker then takes over and processes the application.
The AI tool does not make any decisions about your application. It is only used to help us process the applications we receive more efficiently. Decisions to approve or reject applications are always made by an FVO caseworker.
FVO regularly tests, checks and evaluates the AI tool to make sure it works as intended. We keep records of our reviews and their results, follow established testing procedures and improve the tool when needed. This helps us maintain quality, accuracy and fairness in the assessment process.
8. How long does FVO keep your personal data?
FVO keeps approved applications and their supporting documents for seven years, in accordance with the Swedish Bookkeeping Act. Applications that are seven years old are deleted once a year. Rejected applications are deleted throughout the year in which they were received.
9. Does FVO share your personal data with anyone?
FVO may share your personal data with the following categories of recipients:
- Foundations and organisations we work with
FVO handles applications on behalf of foundations. We may therefore share your personal data with these foundations, for example when reporting results to them or during an audit. - Banks
When financial support is paid out, FVO provides the recipient’s name and bank account details to the bank responsible for processing the payment. - Public authorities
FVO may share personal data with public authorities when required by law, for example with the Swedish Tax Agency. - Service providers and data processors
FVO may share personal data with service providers or data processors that process personal data according to our instructions. - Other recipients
In some cases, FVO may need to share personal data with third parties to arrange payments. For example, we may share information with a dentist when paying for dental treatment.
10. Transfers outside the EU/EEA
As part of the application process, FVO only processes your personal data within the EU/EEA.
11. How does FVO protect your personal data?
FVO uses technical and organisational measures to protect the personal data you share with us.
Paper documents containing personal data are handled in premises with appropriate security measures, including restricted access and controlled entry for visitors. Any external service providers who have access to the premises are bound by confidentiality obligations. The premises are also protected by security measures, such as alarms, outside normal working hours.
Online applications are managed through a platform provided by an external cloud service provider that is certified to the ISO 27001 information security standard. Access to the platform is restricted to authorised staff, who must use individual login credentials. The provider of FVO’s AI tool is also certified to the ISO 27001 information security standard.
12. Your rights
This section only concerns your rights under the GDPR in relation to how FVO processes your personal data. These rights do not entitle you to financial support from a foundation or guarantee that you will receive it. They also do not affect how FVO assesses your application.
Under the GDPR, you have certain rights relating to the processing of your personal data. FVO respects these rights where they apply to your circumstances. To exercise your rights, please contact FVO using the contact details below.
Right of access
You have the right to find out whether FVO processes your personal data. If we do, you can request a copy of that data and further information about how it is processed.
Right to rectification
You have the right to ask FVO to correct inaccurate personal data about you and complete any information that is incomplete.
Right to erasure
In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask FVO to delete your personal data. Please note that if financial support has been approved and paid out, FVO may need to keep your data to comply with its obligations under the Swedish Bookkeeping Act.
Right to restriction of processing
In certain circumstances, you have the right to ask FVO to restrict how your personal data is processed, for example if you dispute its accuracy.
Right to data portability
If the processing is based on consent or a contract and is carried out by automated means, you have the right to receive the personal data you have provided to FVO in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to transfer this data to another data controller
Right to object
You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data when it is based on legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f) of the GDPR). If you object, FVO will stop processing your data unless we can demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds that outweigh your interests, rights and freedoms.
Right to withdraw consent
If the processing of your personal data is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent at any time. Withdrawing your consent does not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before you withdrew it. You can withdraw your consent by contacting us using the contact details provided above.
Right not to be subject to automated decision-making
You have the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing if those decisions have legal effects or similarly significant consequences for you. FVO uses an AI tool to carry out an initial review of online applications. However, the AI tool does not make any such decisions. All decisions to approve or reject applications are made by an FVO caseworker.
13. Right to lodge a complaint
If you believe that FVO’s processing of your personal data breaches the GDPR, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant supervisory authority. In Sweden, this is the Swedish Authority for Privacy Protection (Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, IMY).
Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY)
Address: Box 8114, 104 20 Stockholm
Email:
Phone: 08-657 61 00
Website: www.imy.se
However, we would appreciate it if you contacted us first with any concerns or complaints, so that we have an opportunity to address them and, where possible, resolve the issue.
14. Changes to this privacy notice
FVO may update this privacy notice from time to time, for example if legislation changes or if we make changes to our operations or how we process personal data. The latest version will always be available on FVO’s website. If we make significant changes that may affect you, we will inform you in a way that is appropriate to the circumstances.