EasyLPD
Self-assessment

Data retention policy template with retention periods

  • Art. 6 para. 4 FADP
  • Art. 5(1)(e) GDPR
  • About 25 minutes
  • Italiano · Deutsch · Français · English

In brief

Says how long you keep each group of data and how you dispose of it when the period ends. Without written periods data stay for ever, while the law asks you not to keep them longer than necessary.

Who it is for
Internal use: management, the internal contact and heads of department, who apply the periods to their own data.
To decide first
The periods still blank in the table, which comes from your record of processing activities, and within how many days of expiry you dispose of the data.
Afterwards
Have management approve it, enter the periods you decided in the record and set up the deletions in your systems.

What it contains

  1. 1Purpose
  2. 2Scope
  3. 3Principles
  4. 4How a period is set
  5. 5Table of retention periods
  6. 6Sensitive personal data
  7. 7Disposal
  8. 8Suspension of disposal
  9. 9Requests for erasure
  10. 10Responsibilities
  11. 11Monitoring and review

An excerpt

1. Purpose

This policy sets out how long __________ keeps personal data and how it disposes of them when they are no longer needed. It serves to comply with the principle that personal data are kept only for as long as necessary for the purpose for which they were collected.

Under Art. 6 para. 4 FADP, personal data are destroyed or anonymised as soon as they are no longer required for the purpose of the processing.

Under Art. 5(1)(e) GDPR, data are kept in a form which permits identification of data subjects for no longer than is necessary for the purposes of the processing (storage limitation).

2. Scope

The policy applies to all personal data processed by __________, on any medium:

  • IT systems, applications and cloud services;
  • mailboxes and shared folders;
  • computers, telephones and removable media;
  • backups;
  • paper documents and physical archives;
  • data processed on our behalf by suppliers (processors).

The full text is generated on the platform, with your organisation's details already in place.

Related templates

A template is general information, not advice on your case: it must be adapted to your organisation. For a question on your case there is Advisorn's consulting. By Advisorn, updated on 20 October 2026.