Certas home and auto privacy policy
Certas Home and Auto Privacy Policy
Date of last update: May 10, 2021
This privacy policy strictly applies to the management and protection of personal information collected for Certas Home and Auto Insurance Company for home, auto and commercial insurance products.
Here are some definitions of terms used in this privacy policy:
- "affiliated General Insurance Companies” means the other Desjardins General Insurance Group Inc.’s subsidiaries:
- Desjardins General Insurance Inc. in Quebec
- Certas Direct Insurance Company in Alberta and Ontario
- The Personal General Insurance Inc. in Quebec
- The Personal Insurance Company in all Canadian provinces and territories
- “Certas Home and Auto Insurance Company (“CHA”)” means an underwriting company distributing property and casualty insurance products in Ontario, Alberta and New Brunswick. CHA includes its Desjardins Agents. CHA is part of the Desjardins Group. To know more about the Desjardins Group, please visit the Desjardins website.
- “Desjardins Agent” means any agent authorized to sell Certas Home and Auto Insurance Company (CHA)’s products, whether through an independent exclusive agency or through any other sales channels.
- "personal Information” means any information about an identifiable individual or any facts which, on their own or combined with other data, can identify an individual.
- "we” means Certas Home and Auto Insurance Company.
- "you" means any individuals about whom we collect personal information in order to carry out the business of insurance. It includes our insureds and any other persons to be insured under your policy, former insureds, applicants, claimants and individuals involved in a claim.
- We do not sell your personal information.
- If we are required to send your personal information to a third party, we will use contractual or other means to provide a comparable level of protection by the third party.
- We afford our prospective and former customers the same protections as existing customers with respect to the use of personal information.
- We are responsible for all personal information under our control and we have designated a person, who is accountable for our compliance with this privacy policy. This person has delegated other individuals within the company to act on their behalf and assist them in their role.
We will protect your personal information against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification, with appropriate safeguards. We regularly review our policies and practices, monitor our computer networks and test the strength of our security.
We collect information from sources that include but not limited to:
- Your applications and other forms related to our products and your conversations with Desjardins Agents.
- When you visit our websites, apps, social media sites and apps, and when you interact with our online advertisements.
- Your transactions or experiences with us, such as payments, underwriting and claims.
- Our affiliated General Insurance Companies, to obtain limited personal information.
- Desjardins Agent partners, to fulfill legal obligations for risk and fraud management and to offer you insurance and financial products.
- Third parties that provide us with driving records and claim histories, consumer reporting agencies providing credit information (when necessary and with your specific consent), fraud prevention organizations, other insurance companies and the police.
We use your personal information to:
- Enhance your customer experience.
- Assess your application for insurance, which includes verifying information such as prior claims, convictions and annual kilometres.
- Manage risk.
- Communicate with you concerning our products and services, your mortgage company, your lienholder, your lessor or our reinsurers.
- Underwrite and service your insurance policies.
- Process claims involving you.
- Prevent, detect and prosecute fraud.
- Analyze business results and for statistical purposes.
- Obtain your feedback about our organization, products and services.
- Promote and offer you other insurance and financial services products that may suit your needs.
- Update the information we have about you.
- Act as required or authorized by law
If we intend to use or disclose your personal information for a different purpose than those stated above, we will obtain your consent first, unless the new purpose is required or allowed by law.
We share personal information about you with you, our affiliated General Insurance Companies, Desjardins Agent partners, Desjardins Group and third parties, as detailed below.
We share personal information about you with third parties for our everyday business purposes as set out above and as permitted or required by law. For example, we share information about you with companies including those that handle your claim and that perform marketing or other services for us.
We share limited personal information, such as your name, address, telephone number and date of birth, with our affiliated general insurance companies to make it faster to identify you and to provide you with products and services that suit your needs. We share further personal information with Desjardins Agent partners about your interactions with us in order to offer you insurance and financial products that suit your needs.
We share personal information as required to fulfill our legal obligations for risk and fraud management and to analyze and verify information provided against existing information. For example, we share personal information with fraud prevention organizations, the police, consumer reporting agencies, other property and casualty insurers, public and private sector claims and fraud information databases and Desjardins Group, including Desjardins Agent partners.
We may store and/or share personal information about you with those performing services for us located outside of Canada. In this event, we ensure that appropriate contractual or other means are in place to protect your personal information with a comparable level of protection. Your personal information is, however, subject to the laws of that jurisdiction and therefore may be accessible by the authorities of that jurisdiction.
We are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of your email address and not using it inappropriately. Email addresses collected are used for the purpose of sending information about our products and services, or to communicate with you about your insurance (such as insurance operations and transactions completed on our website), or to make you any offer you may be interested in. They may be shared in an encrypted fashion with third-party ad servers in order to allow for the identification of similar or customized audiences and also for the purpose of providing you with advertisements that are suitable for you according to your interests and profile. This sharing in an encrypted fashion does not allow the third-party ad servers to identify the email addresses. Third-party ad servers include advertising networks, publishers and social media platforms. You may disable customized advertising functions by adjusting your settings on the websites of the third-party ad servers.
You have the right to be removed from our mailing list at any time by contacting us or by using the unsubscription hyperlink at the bottom of our electronic communications.
We use advertising tags to help us improve our advertising inventory and placements.
These tags use certain features built into your mobile devices, more precisely the motion and orientation sensors (accelerometer/gyroscope).
Although no personal information is collected by these tags, you can block their activation by going to your browser settings to disable the motion and orientation sensors. Depending on the operating system installed on your mobile device, please note that these motion and orientation sensors may already be disabled by default.
When you provide your personal information to get a quote or to purchase our insurance, you give us your consent to collect, use and disclose your personal information for the purposes previously stated and in accordance with our privacy policy.
You may withdraw your consent at any time, with reasonable notice, subject to legal or contractual obligations which must be fulfilled by us. Withdrawal of consent may prevent us from providing you with the requested insurance products or services including processing an application for insurance and processing a claim.
As stated previously, your information can be used for marketing purposes. If you would rather not receive marketing information from us, please contact your Desjardins Agent.
- If you have any questions about our privacy policies and practices
- If you would like access to or correct the personal information about you held by us
- If you have any concerns or other inquiries
Please speak with your Desjardins Agent.
We have established an internal complaint review process and will investigate all complaints regarding privacy. If you believe that we are not complying with this privacy policy, please contact:
Privacy Office
Certas Home & Auto Insurance Company
333 First Commerce Drive
Aurora, ON L4G 8A4
If your complaint cannot be resolved through our internal complaint review process, or if you prefer, you have the right to file a complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or with your applicable provincial Privacy Commissioner.
We use common tracking technologies like browser cookies, analytical tools (like Google Analytics, Omniture or DoubleClick), beacons or other technologies to customize our websites, mobile apps and social media. Therefore, when you visit our website and social media or use our mobile apps, non-personally identifiable demographic information (such as age, sex and city/province location) may be collected about the user.
We use cookies for the following purposes:
- Provide a secure browsing experience and verify your information
- Remember your settings and preferences
- Compile statistics
- Analyze our performance
- Provide advertising that’s relevant to you
Our advertising partners and other third parties may also use cookies or web beacons when you click ads or links to their websites or services on our websites. Our privacy policy does not apply to third-party websites or third-party advertisers.
You can disable the personalization features on our sites by blocking cookies in your browser. See the procedure for enabling and disabling cookies.
Blocking cookies may prevent pages on our site from displaying correctly and some features may not be available. You must allow cookies to use our online services like My Account. If your browser is set up to block cookies, you can change its settings by following the procedure for enabling and disabling cookies.
You can refuse that your information be used for interest-based advertising by turning off personalized ads and by installing add-ons or extensions that prevent the sharing of information with Google Analytics and Double Click. We also use Facebook’s custom audience feature to create interest-based advertising for our clients. You can opt out of seeing these ads by following the procedure to opt out of Facebook’s Custom Audiences.
Please note that these operations do not prevent the collection of your navigation data. To achieve this, you can refuse cookies by following the procedure in the previous section.
Even if you opt out of interest-based advertising, you may still see Desjardins ads. The ads you see will not be customized to your needs and may appear more frequently.
To learn more, you can consult our practices regarding the use of technology.
Desjardins Insurance refers to Certas Home and Auto Insurance Company, underwriter of automobile and property insurance or Desjardins Financial Security Life Assurance Company, underwriter of life insurance and living benefits products.
We may amend this privacy policy from time to time. You can determine when this privacy policy was last modified by consulting the date of the “Last update” set out at the beginning of this policy. Your continuing relationship with us shall be deemed as acceptance of an agreement to any such modifications.