Site Cookie Policy

Last updated: 13 March 2025

Below is information about how Bank of London (“we”) use cookies and other similar technology on this website.

1. OVERVIEW

Our Cookie Policy should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy. We will update both policies from time to time.

Your privacy is important to us, so we currently only use a small number of cookies to continuously improve our website and your browsing experience. Some cookies are also essential for our website’s basic functionality.

We can place cookies and other similar technology on your device, including mobile device, in accordance with your preferences set on our Cookie Consent Manager.

2. WHAT ARE COOKIES?

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your computer or mobile device when you visit a site and allow a site to later recognise your device as one which has previously visited. Cookies managed exclusively by Bank of London only are called “first party cookies”, whereas cookies from third parties are called “third party cookies”, as explained below.

3. WHY DO WE USE COOKIES AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES?

Cookies do a lot of different jobs, such as letting you navigate between pages efficiently, remembering your preferences and generally improving the user experience.

4. WHAT COOKIES DO WE USE?

We currently use a small number of cookies to continuously improve our website and your browsing experience. Some cookies are also essential for our website’s basic functionality.

Essential cookies: these are cookies without which our website cannot function. They help you access our website and each of its web pages by enabling basic functions like setting cookies. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Non-essential cookies: we need your permission to hold and use these. For example, we use a third party service, PostHog, that helps assess the behavioural patterns on our website. By collecting visitors’ internet log information (such as IP address and type of browser) we can track the number of visits to each section of our website. This helps us improve the design of our website and its functionality. Please note, we do not make any attempt to find out the identities or nature of those visiting our website.

This policy describes in more detail how you can manage your cookies, the types of cookies we use and why we use them. You will always have the option to prevent some cookies from being stored, however, this could impact your experience.

Apart from whether cookies are considered Essential or Non-essential, the cookies we use on our website, bankoflondon.com, and each of its web pages can be further categorised into one or the other of two types of cookies:

Session cookies: these are temporary cookies which are stored only whilst you are browsing our website and are removed as soon as you close your browser. We use them to provide you with a better experience, for example, to avoid the re-entry of information.

Persistent cookies: These remain on your device even after you exit our website. We use them to recognise you when you come back and to remember your preferences. We can also use them to manage the traffic on our website efficiently and to improve your experience on our website. We store these for a maximum of 90 days.

5. THIRD PARTY COOKIES

Session and persistent cookies can be either first- or third-partycookies. A first-party cookie is set by us, whilst a third-party cookie is provided by a third party we are using to provide a particular service.

The list below summaries all the cookies that we use.

Cookie Preferences (CookieConsent)

Type: Essential, third-party, persistent.
Description: This cookie is set by our website because we use CookieBot, our cookie law compliance solution. It is set after you have seen a cookie information notice and only when you actively close the notice down. It enables our website not to show the message more than once. This cookie is required by the IAB Europe Transparency & Consent Framework to store the user's consent.
Retention period: The cookie has a 90-day lifespan and contains no personal information.

Cookie Preferences (Cookiesession1)

Type: Essential, third-party, persistent.
Description: This cookie is also set by the cookie compliance solution from Cookiebot. It stores information about the categories of cookies the site uses and whether you have given or withdrawn consent for the use of each category. This enables us to prevent cookies in analytics categories from being set in the users browser, when consent is not given. It contains no information that can identify the site visitor.
Retention period: The cookie has a 90-day lifespan, so that returning visitors to the site will have their preferences remembered.

reCaptcha (_GRECAPTCHA)

Type: Essential, third-party, session.
Description: This cookie is set by our website because we use reCaptcha by Google to prevent automated attacks against our site.
Retention period: The cookie has a less than one day, session only lifespan.

DataDog (_dd_s)

Type: Non-essential, Third-party performance (analytics), session.
Description: This cookie is associated with DataDog and is used to distinguish unique users’ session and campaign data for the sites analytics reports.
Retention period: The cookie has a less than 4 hour, session only lifespan, so that analytics for that session can be captured.

DataDog (dd_site_test_*)

Type: Non-essential, Third-party performance (analytics), session.
Description: This cookie is associated with DataDog and is used to test the browser for cookie support.
Retention period: The cookie expires instantly once the testing is complete.

DataDog (dd_cookie_test_*)

Type: Non-essential, Third-party performance (analytics), session.
Description: This cookie is associated with DataDog and is used to test the browser for cookie support.
Retention period: The cookie expires instantly once the testing is complete.

Google Analytics (_ga)

Type: Non-essential, Third-party performance (analytics), persistent.
Description: This cookie is associated with Google Analytics and is used to distinguish users who visit our site.
Retention Period: The cookie has a retention period of 2 years.

Google Analytics (_ga_VXCPEW7T5X)

Type: Non-essential, Third-party performance (analytics), persistent.
Description: This cookie is associated with Google Analytics and is used to persist session state.
Retention Period: The cookie has a retention period of 2 years.

HubSpot Analytics (__cf_bm)

Type: Essential, third-party, session.
Description: This cookie is set by HubSpot's CDN provider and is a necessary cookie for bot protection. Learn more about Cloudflare cookies.
Retention Period: This cookie has a retention period of 30 minutes.

HubSpot Analytics (__hstc)

Type: Non-essential, third-party, persistent,
Description: The main cookie for tracking visitors through HubSpot. It contains the domain, hubspotutk, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session).
Retention Period: This cookie has a retention period of 6 months.

HubSpot Analytics (hubspotutk)

Type: Non-essential, third-party, persistent.
Description: This cookie keeps track of a visitor's identity. It is passed to HubSpot on form submission and used when deduplicating contacts. It contains an opaque GUID to represent the current visitor.
Retention Period: This cookie has a retention period of 6 months.

HubSpot Analytics (__hssc)

Type: Non-essential, third-party, session.
Description: This cookie keeps track of sessions. This is used to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. It contains the domain, viewCount (increments each pageView in a session), and session start timestamp.
Retention Period: This cookie has a retention period of 30 minutes.

HubSpot Analytics (__hssrc)

Type: Non-essential, third-party, session.
Description: Whenever HubSpot changes the session cookie, this cookie is also set to determine if the visitor has restarted their browser. If this cookie does not exist when HubSpot manages cookies, it is considered a new session. It contains the value "1" when present.
Retention Period: This cookie expires at the end of the session.

PostHog Analytics (ph_phc_*)

Type: Non-essential, third-party, persistent.
Description: This cookie is set by PostHog, a third-party analytics company we use to better understand how users are using our website and products. It stores a "distinct ID" that we use to identify you as well as a session ID.
Retention Period: This cookie has a retention period of 7 days.

We regularly audit our cookie usage to ensure that we have a full list and share accurate information with you in this policy. However, it is possible we may have missed one from our list above. If you happen to find another that is being set on our site, please let us know.

6. MANAGING YOUR COOKIES

With your consent, we store non-essential cookies on your device. You can change your cookie preference at any time through the settings on your browser. This enables you to remove stored cookies by deleting them from your browser history (cache) when you leave our website. You can find more information about cookies, including how to control the use of these through your browser settings, at www.allaboutcookies.org or www.aboutcookies.org. We may revise our cookie policy at any time by amending this page. Please check it from time to time and take notice of any changes we have made.

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