How and why we collect personal information

How and why we collect personal information

 

We collect your personal information for the purposes of conducting our business and providing you with insurance products and services.

We collect a broad range of personal information, which may differ depending on which of our products and services you choose. The type of personal information we generally collect and store may include but is not limited to, your name, address, date of birth, gender, contact details, including phone fax and email and insurance history.

Whenever possible, we collect personal information directly from you. Collection occurs when you first apply or request a product or service from us, however during the course of our relationship with you we may continue to collect more personal information. We may collect it in various ways, such as over the phone, meeting with you in person, over the internet (if you transact with us online), or when you fill in one of our forms.

If we request personal information from you and you do not provide it, we may not be able to provide you with the product or service you request, such as offering you insurance or processing a claim under an insurance policy.

There may be occasions where we collect personal information about you from someone else (“a third party”). While we will normally try to collect the information directly from you, there may be some circumstances where this is impractical or you have consented to us collecting it from someone else. Irrespective of the source of the information, we will respect and try to protect the privacy of personal information.

Examples of where we may receive personal information about you from a third party and why this would happen include, but are not limited to, obtaining personal information from:

• your agent, where you have appointed an agent to act on your behalf in dealings with us;
• a veterinary practitioner, in the course of assessing your claim under a policy of insurance or determining your eligibility for an insurance product;
• other insurance companies, if we need to confirm your insurance history during the course of reviewing an application for insurance or assessing a claim under a policy of insurance; or
• the Insurance Claims Register, (which holds details of previous claims made by you) when confirmation of your claims history is needed such as during the course of reviewing an application for insurance or checking the accuracy of information provided where we have reason to.

We also sometimes collect information about people who are not our customers as part of providing a product or service. For example, where we process a claim on an insurance policy.