How I handle what you tell me

Who this covers

This page applies to everyone who interacts with petrusvdmerwe.com or with me professionally, at whatever depth:

• Visitors — anyone reading the site or the articles on it
• Readers — anyone downloading a book or joining the mailing list
• Enquirers — anyone who submits an enquiry or books a call, whether or not it goes further
• Clients — anyone engaging any service: Business Diagnostic, Practitioner, Startup or Turnaround packages, Financial Model and Investor Packages, Market Entry work, Strategic Advisory, or ongoing support including the Monthly Business Clinic

The confidentiality commitments below apply from your first message, not from the moment you pay. An enquiry that never becomes an engagement is treated with exactly the same discretion as a paid one.

The confidentiality commitment

Nothing you tell me about your business is disclosed to any third party. That covers your financial position, your pricing, your customers, your staffing, your plans, your problems, and the simple fact that you are a client at all.

Specifically, I will not:

• Name you, or your business, as a client without your explicit written permission
• Use your situation as an example, anecdote or case study — anonymised or otherwise
• Discuss your business with other clients, including anyone in your market
• Share your information with any partner, associate or referral contact
• Introduce you to anyone, or pass on your details, without asking you first

A mutual confidentiality agreement can be signed before any information is shared. Ask and I'll send one — there's no charge and no reluctance.

The limits

Confidentiality is set aside only where the law requires it: a valid court order, a binding regulatory demand, a legal obligation to report suspected money laundering or terrorist financing, or a credible risk of serious harm to a person. These are narrow, and I would tell you unless legally prohibited from doing so.

Working with businesses like yours

I work across sectors and continents, and I will sometimes advise more than one business in the same industry. That's normal, and it's part of why the advice is useful — pattern recognition comes from volume.

What I won't do is advise direct competitors in the same local market at the same time without telling both and getting agreement from both. If you engage me and a competitor of yours approaches me afterwards, you get told before I take them on, and you can object.

If a conflict emerges mid-engagement that I couldn't reasonably have foreseen, I'll disclose it immediately and either withdraw or continue only with your agreement — refunding any unearned fee if I withdraw.

The ECAHLI separation

I'm the founder of ECAHLI Global Holdings, which develops sustainable economic ecosystems across a number of countries and sectors. It's entirely reasonable for a client to wonder what that means for their information — so here it is plainly.

• ECAHLI never receives your information. No client data, documents, figures or reports are shared with ECAHLI Global Holdings, its country entities, its directors, its advisors or its partners.
• Your information never informs an ECAHLI decision. Nothing you tell me is used to shape where ECAHLI invests, what it builds, or who it works with.
• Advisory clients are not ECAHLI prospects. Engaging me does not put you on any ECAHLI list, and you will not be approached about ECAHLI investment or partnership as a result of becoming a client.
• If ECAHLI ever had a genuine interest touching your business — a project in your market, an overlapping venture — I would disclose it before accepting the engagement, and decline it if that were the honest thing to do.
• Access is limited to me personally. No ECAHLI staff, director or advisor has access to advisory client files.

The reverse also holds: work done for ECAHLI, and information belonging to ECAHLI's own partners and counterparties, is not shared with advisory clients.

Group sessions and shared spaces

The Monthly Business Clinic is a live group session, and it's recorded so clients who miss it can watch later. That makes it different from every other part of the service, and the difference is worth understanding before you join one.

• Other clients are present. Anything you say is heard by them, and appears in the recording.
• Share only what you're comfortable being heard. Bring the question, not necessarily the whole balance sheet.
• Taking the hot seat is always optional. Attending and listening is a perfectly normal way to use the session.
• Recordings go only to clients with active package access, are never published, and are never used in marketing.
• Participants are asked to keep what they hear confidential. I can require that of myself; I can only ask it of others — which is why the point above matters.

If you'd rather raise something privately, say so and we'll deal with it one to one instead. That's always available.

Who owns the work

Deliverables are prepared for your business specifically. You're free to share them with your own advisors, lenders or investors; they aren't intended for resale or redistribution as a product.

What I don't promise

Trust runs both ways, so it's worth being clear about the limits of what you're buying.

• I'm an advisor — not a regulated accountant, lawyer, tax advisor or financial advisor. Where you need one of those, I'll tell you so.
• Analysis and projections rest on the information you provide and on assumptions that are stated openly. They are not guarantees of any outcome.
• Findings may not be what you hoped for. A diagnostic that only confirmed what you already believed would be worth very little.
• No specific financial result, funding outcome or business performance is promised by any service on this site.

Who is responsible for your information

I work as an independent consultant, practising in my own name through petrusvdmerwe.com. There is no agency, no team, and no third party standing behind the service — which means responsibility for your information sits with one identifiable person rather than being diffused through a company.

The data controller is therefore Petrus Van Der Merwe, trading as petrusvdmerwe.com. I work internationally and do not operate from a fixed public office. A correspondence address is available on request — email me and I will provide it.

For any question about this notice, or to exercise any right in Section 14, contact petrus@petrusvdmerwe.com. Enquiries are answered within one working day and formal requests within 30 days.

Where the practice is placed into a registered company in future, this notice will be updated and current clients told directly rather than left to notice the change.

What information is collected

Different stages collect different things. Nothing financial is asked for before you decide to proceed with a paid engagement.

Information saved in your own browser

Longer intake questionnaires save your answers locally on your own device so you can close the page and return to it. That data stays on your computer and is not transmitted anywhere until you press Submit. It clears automatically on submission, and there's a button to clear it manually at any time.

Information about other people

Intake questions are designed to avoid personal data about your staff and customers — they ask for aggregate figures and role descriptions rather than names. If documents you provide happen to contain personal data about others, it is treated under this notice, used only for your analysis, and deleted on the same schedule.

Why it's collected, and the legal basis

Your information is never used to train artificial intelligence models, and is not fed into any third-party AI service in a form that identifies you or your business.

Who else can see it

No one is given access to your information for their own purposes. A small number of service providers process it on my behalf, under contract, solely to make the service work:

No one else. There are no advertising networks, no data brokers, no lead-sharing arrangements, and no affiliate partners receiving your details. If you want the specific named provider behind any category above, ask and I will tell you.

Where your information is held

I work with clients across Africa, Latin America and Europe, and the providers above operate internationally. Your information may therefore be stored or processed outside your own country, including outside the UK and European Economic Area.

Where that happens, transfers are made on the basis of the receiving country having been found to provide adequate protection, or under Standard Contractual Clauses, or on the basis of your explicit consent where neither applies. You can ask me which applies to your engagement.

How long it's kept, and how it's protected

Protection

• Financial documents move through a private, access-controlled folder created for you individually — not as email attachments
• Accounts holding client information use multi-factor authentication
• Access is limited to me. There is no team with standing access to client files.
• Files are deleted on the schedule above rather than accumulating indefinitely

Your rights

Depending on where you live, you have some or all of the following. Where UK or EU data protection law applies, you have all of them.

• Access — ask for a copy of the information I hold about you
• Correction — have anything inaccurate put right
• Deletion — ask me to erase your information
• Restriction — ask me to stop using it while a dispute is resolved
• Portability — receive your information in a machine-readable format
• Objection — object to processing based on legitimate interests
• Withdraw consent — at any time, without affecting anything done beforehand

Email petrus@petrusvdmerwe.com to exercise any of these. There's no charge, and I'll respond within 30 days. If you're unhappy with how I've handled a request, you can complain to the data protection authority in your country — in the UK, that's the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.

Cookies, downloads and emails

Cookies

This site uses only the cookies WordPress requires in order to function. There are no advertising cookies, no third-party trackers, and no cross-site profiling.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. Doing so may affect how parts of the site behave.

Book downloads

Where a download asks for your details, they're used to send you the book and — only if you tick the box — to add you to the mailing list. Downloading a book does not subscribe you to anything by default.

Marketing emails

You'll only receive marketing emails if you asked for them. They're sent no more than monthly, every one carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing is immediate and permanent. Emails about an engagement you've booked — scheduling, deliverables, invoices — are not marketing and are sent regardless, because they're how the work gets delivered.

Children, and changes to this notice

These services are for businesses and are not directed at anyone under 18. I don't knowingly collect information about children. If you believe I have, contact me and it will be deleted.

If this notice changes, the revised version is published here with a new date at the top. Where a change materially affects how your information is handled and you are a current or recent client, I'll email you rather than relying on you to check the page.