This Joint Privacy Notice is intended to fulfill our obligation to meet mandated disclosure requirements. It is for your information only, and we hope that you find it to be informative and helpful. It does not require any response from you. You may wish to print this Joint Privacy Notice and file it with your other important insurance papers.
When you see the words we, us, or our within this Joint Privacy Notice, you should understand that these words include South Carolina Farm Bureau Insurance Company, South Carolina Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company, and Palmetto Casualty Insurance Company.
Our Commitment to Safeguarding Your Privacy
This Joint Privacy Notice is being provided to you to inform you of our practices and procedures regarding the sharing of nonpublic personal information. Nonpublic personal information is information that identifies you, your family, or your household that we may obtain directly from you, that we may obtain as a result of our business dealings with you, or that we may obtain from any other source.
Except as stated within this Joint Privacy Notice, we do not engage in the practice of disclosing your nonpublic personal information to nonaffiliated third parties other than as necessary to provide quality insurance and financial services to our customers. For instance, we do not engage in "list-selling," and we do not market your personal information to publishing houses, retailers, or coupon companies. Because we do not disclose your personal information to nonaffiliated third parties other than as required or permitted by Federal and State law, you do not need to respond to this Joint Privacy Notice or to take any opt-out action as a result of it.
While you are a policyholder, we will provide you with a copy of our current Joint Privacy Notice at least annually as part of a regular mailing, such as within a billing or a renewal notice or with a policy, and at any time that you request it in writing. Further, because Federal and State laws, regulations, and business practices can change at any time, we may revise this Joint Privacy Notice accordingly. If we materially change our policy or procedures, then we will notify you of such changes. The policy contained within this Notice supercedes all previous notices or statements with respect to the subject matter described herein. You can always review a copy of our most current Joint Privacy Notice at www.scfbins.com. The effective date of this Joint Privacy Notice is printed above under the document title, and this Joint Privacy Notice replaces all prior Notices. Once you cease to be a policyholder, we will continue to protect your private information as described within the Joint Privacy Notice. However, we will stop sending you annual privacy notices. The examples detailed within this Joint Privacy Notice are only meant to help you understand our practices and procedures, and they should not be taken as a complete and exclusive inventory of specific information that we collect, utilize, maintain, or share. In some situations we may not collect or share some of the information described below. The information that we collect and the extent to which we use it varies and will depend upon the product or the service involved.
Information We May Collect and Use
During the course of reviewing your application for insurance coverage and deciding whether or not to underwrite the insurance policy for which you have applied, and, if we issue a policy to you, then during the course of providing services to you as required by the policy, we collect and evaluate information from the following sources:
- Information that we receive from you on applications or other forms;
- Information that we collect through our websites when you visit our websites and your browser interacts with us;
- Information that we obtain to verify representations made by you;
- Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others;
- Information that we receive from consumer reporting agencies; and
- Information that we receive from local, state, or Federal governmental agencies.
It is important for us to collect and use this information to properly identify you; to provide, administer, and perform services on your behalf; to improve our products and services; and to comply with certain State and Federal requirements. We could not provide optimum service to you without collecting and using this information.
Additional Information We May Collect and Use When You Access Our Internet Homepage
- Information that we collect from digital-identifiers, commonly known as "cookies," when you access www.scfbins.com. A cookie is only a small piece of electronic information that is saved upon your computer to remind our website about you the next time that you visit it. Use of cookies is a standard practice among website sponsors. Because the same information does not have to be collected from you each time that you visit, the cookie enhances your online transactions with us, and it makes it easier for you to navigate through our website. The cookie contains no confidential information. Although your computer's browser was most likely initially set-up to accept cookies, you control your computer's cookie files, and you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. If you are interested in disabling your computer's cookies function, then please refer to your browser's Help Menu or your printed computer manual for computer-specific instructions.
- Information that we collect from prior-site tracking when you access www.scfbins.com. Prior-site tracking allows us to identify the prior website address that you visited before you reached our website. This allows us to determine how our visitors find us. Use of prior-site tracking is a standard practice among website sponsors.
- We use Google Analytics and other analytic tools, including common tracking technologies, for operational purposes, to analyze site usage and to assist in marketing our products and services to online users. We may work with advertising partners to serve our advertisements to online users who may be interested in our products and services based upon their online behaviors and to track our advertising performance. You can learn more or opt-out of interest-based advertising by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance.
- Electronic-specific information that we receive from you, such as your password when you register. This electronic-specific information is only used to verify your identity and to provide you access to your personal information. We do not send or support the delivery of unsolicited bulk electronic mail, commonly known as "spam."
Once again, it is important for us to collect and use this information to properly identify you; to provide, administer, and perform services on your behalf; to improve our products and services; and to comply with certain State and Federal requirements. We could not provide optimum service to you without collecting and using this information.
Information We May Disclose
We regard all of your personal information as confidential. Therefore, we do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone except as permitted by law. In the course of conducting our business dealings, we may disclose certain information that we have about you to other parties. These disclosures are only made in accordance with applicable laws and may include disclosures to reinsurers, administrators, service providers, consultants, law enforcement officials, and regulatory or governmental authorities. Further, certain disclosures of information will be made to your Farm Bureau Insurance agent and any Farm Bureau Insurance personnel authorized to have access to your personal information for the purpose of administering your business and providing services to you.
We may also disclose all of the information we collect, as described above, to companies that perform services on our behalf or to other financial institutions with which we have joint marketing agreements. Service providers, for example, may assist us in processing your transactions, mailing policyholder correspondence, or destroying out-dated documents. Joint marketers are business entities, including other financial institutions, such as the Farm Bureau Bank FSB or Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance Company, with which we jointly offer financial products or services. These service providers and joint marketers allow us to more efficiently and more effectively provide insurance services to you or to better meet your financial service needs. The categories of information that we may disclose to service providers or joint marketers include:
- Information that we receive from you on applications or other forms, such as your name, address, Social Security number, or Farm Bureau membership number;
- Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others, such as your policy coverage, premium, loss history, and payment history; and
- Information that we receive from consumer reporting agencies, such as your creditworthiness and credit history.
These entities with which we share personal information are required by contract to maintain the confidentiality of that information and to only use that information to perform the tasks for which we provided it. We do not authorize these entities to use or disclose your personal information for any purpose other than for the express purpose of performing work on our behalf, as detailed within our agreements with them, or as required or permitted by law.
How We Maintain the Confidentiality and Security of Your Information
We carefully restrict access to nonpublic personal information to our employees, our independent contractor insurance producers, our service providers, our joint marketers, and our affiliates and subsidiaries. The right of our employees, our independent contractor insurance producers, our service providers, our joint marketers, and our affiliates and subsidiaries to further disclose and use the information is limited by our employee handbook, agents' manuals, applicable law, and nondisclosure agreements where appropriate. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with Federal and State law to guard your nonpublic personal information. In situations where State of South Carolina privacy law is more protective of your nonpublic personal information, we will protect your information in accordance with State of South Carolina law.
Using the Worldwide Web
You have reached this Joint Privacy Notice electronically through your use of the worldwide web. If you have reached this site by a link from another website, or if you link to another website from this site, then you should understand that those sites are not bound by the terms of this Joint Privacy Notice. Once you select a link that takes you to any website, you are subject to the privacy policies - or to the lack of privacy and security policies - of the website that you have chosen. We are not responsible for the collection, use, or security of information by those companies or organizations. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy policies of any website reached through a link from our website or from which you have reached our website.
Conclusion
If you have any questions or comments concerning this Joint Privacy Notice or our privacy standards and procedures, or if you would like a printed copy of this Joint Privacy Notice in brochure format, then please write to us at Corporate Services Department, Post Office Box 2124, West Columbia, South Carolina 29171-2124. Our functional regulator is the State of South Carolina Department of Insurance. If we cannot resolve your concerns or answer your questions, then feel free to contact our regulator.