How Planiva protects your data

Planiva now has a clearer Privacy & Security model for saved planning data.

The default path is now stronger than it was before, without asking every user to take on the operational burden of managing a separate passphrase from day one.

Standard Protected Mode is the recommended default in Planiva.

Saved scenario contents are protected with strong, recoverable encryption. That means the service can remain practical to use for the things people expect from a planning tool.

For most people, that balance is the right one. You want practical day-to-day protection without turning a planning tool into something fragile or easy to lock yourself out of.

Enhanced Privacy is optional.

If you enable it, you create a privacy passphrase and receive a recovery key. Planiva can then protect saved data using that user-controlled material, so opening protected saved data requires unlock in the browser session.

This is for users who want a stronger control model and are comfortable with the extra responsibility that comes with it.

If you lose both your privacy passphrase and recovery key, Planiva may not be able to recover protected saved data.

It is important not to overstate what a privacy feature can do.

This update improves protection of saved planning data, but it does not turn every part of the product into a zero-knowledge system.

Planiva is aiming for a more truthful and practical privacy model, not marketing theatre.

This release also makes the privacy position clearer. Planiva does not sell your personal financial data.

Detailed planning inputs such as pension values, savings, income, spending assumptions, tax details and estate-planning information are not used to create commercial datasets for sale or third-party sharing.

Planiva may still use privacy-safe operational information to run, protect and improve the service, such as feature usage, save and load activity, export usage, error categories and broad usage counts.

Planiva’s primary application and database infrastructure is currently hosted in European data centres.

That will matter to some users, especially those who want a clearer understanding of where their financial planning records are likely to live operationally. As with most modern software products, some supporting providers may still process limited categories of data outside the UK or EEA where appropriate safeguards apply.

Financial planning often involves some of the most sensitive household information people store in software.

Privacy and usability are often in tension. If you make the system too weak, it is hard to trust. If you make it too rigid, it becomes easy to lose access to important information.

The goal of this release is to improve that balance.

You do not need to do anything to benefit from the new default protection model. Standard Protected Mode is already the recommended default for saved planning data.

If you want stronger control over selected saved data, you can review Enhanced Privacy in Privacy & Security and decide whether the extra responsibility is right for you.