The Empire Life Insurance Company and Empire Life Investments Inc. (“Empire Life”), are committed to respecting your privacy and protecting your personal information. Here’s an overview of our personal information practices. Please read our Privacy Notice for full details or click on any link below for more information on a specific topic.
Collection of personal information
We collect your personal information when you:
- submit a product application or a form,
- apply for a job or
- apply to distribute our products.
We may also collect your personal information over the phone or through an on-line chat with our customer service representatives.
Generally, we obtain your express consent before we collect your personal information. Whenever possible we will collect personal information directly from you but may also collect it from third parties. We only collect the personal information we need.
Sharing your personal information
Generally, we obtain your express consent before we disclose your personal information and we may do so:
- to help us assess an application we receive for a product or service and manage your products or the services that we offer to you
- to individuals or other entities you have permitted us to disclose your personal information to
- where required by law (e.g., CRA, law enforcement)
You have the right:
- to request information about our privacy practices, and
- to request access to your personal information and have it updated or corrected if needed.
If you have a question, concern or would like access to your personal information, please contact us.
Use of your personal information
We will tell you why we need your personal information. Some of the uses of your personal information include:
- to identify and verify you
- to approve and manage your products or services
- for quality assurance/process improvement
- to meet our legal obligations
- to present you with product or service offers
- to process a claim
- to review a job application
Our websites and web portals use cookies to enable them to properly function. We may also use cookies (or other technology) to understand how visitors use our website. These cookies don’t collect personal information.
Protection and retention of your personal information
We’re committed to protecting your personal information with administrative, technological and physical safeguards.
We’ll retain your personal information:
- for as long as required for the purposes we collect it, and
- in compliance with our legal obligations
Privacy Notice
An important part of any relationship is trust. At Empire Life we work hard to earn and maintain your trust through our commitment to fairness, integrity, and respect in all our dealings with you. This includes our handling of your personal information and respecting your privacy rights. This privacy notice represents our commitment to transparency regarding our practices related to the management of personal information.
Who this privacy notice applies to
This privacy notice applies to:
- our customers, former customers and individuals who apply for our products or use our services
- life insureds, policy beneficiaries and group plan members
- advisors who sell our products or provide service to our customers
- individuals who contact us, for example, by phone, email, website, web portal or postal mail
- individuals who apply for a job posting
- individuals who visit our website
Note: If you apply for a job at Empire Life through our website, your information will be collected by ADP, Inc., our human resources management system provider, on our behalf. For more information on ADP’s privacy practices, please visit ADP’s Privacy Statement.
What is personal information?
Personal information means any factual or subjective information concerning an identifiable individual. We obtain consent before or at the time we collect personal information (with limited legal exceptions).
Collection of personal information
Depending on your relationship with us, we may collect personal information such as the examples listed below:
Financial information—which may include banking information, tax information, income, current employer or net worth.
Contact and demographic information—which may include your name, address, telephone number, email address, date of birth, marital status or language preference.
Medical information—which may include a list of medical professionals who provide services, medical history of you or your family (excluding genetic testing) or the results of laboratory tests.
Lifestyle information—which may include smoking status, alcohol consumption, driving history or travel plans.
Whenever possible we’ll collect personal information directly from you or from someone you’ve authorized. We may also collect information about you from others such as your advisor or group plan administrator, and depending on the product,
If you apply for a life insurance policy, we may also collect information from (i) MIB Group, Inc. (MIB), a cooperative data exchange between its members that the life and health insurance companies, (ii) Health-care providers such as doctors, hospitals, clinics or other health-care professionals that provide services to you, or (iii) policy beneficiaries, claimants or estate executor in the event of death.
If you are purchasing an investment product, we may collect information from your beneficiary or the executor of your estate in the event of your death.
If you are a group plan member, we may collect information from paramedical benefits providers and organizations that assist us in providing you with services such as travel health benefits and prescription coverage.
We will also collect personal Information we are required to collect by law.
As this is not an exhaustive list of who we may collect information about you from, please speak with your advisor or contact us to discuss any questions you may have about who may share information about you with Empire Life.
Use of personal information
We obtain consent (with limited legal exceptions) to use personal information before or at the time we collect it and before we use personal information for a new purpose. Depending on our relationship with you and the products you apply for or purchase, we may use your personal information to:
- verify your identity and assess your application for a product or service
- inform you about the features of your current products and present you with new offerings that may be of interest to you
- administer your policy and provide you with customer service, including paying claims and processing transactions
- help us improve our services and develop programs for our customers
We may also use, or provide to third parties, personal information that has been de-identified or aggregated :
- to build and improve our products, services, websites or web portals
- for statistical analysis
- for study and research purposes
We will not:
- use your social insurance number for any purpose other than tax reporting without your consent
Sharing of personal information
Retention and protection of personal information
We’ll keep your personal information for as long as required for the purposes we collected if for and as required to meet legal requirements.
We protect personal information using a wide variety of security measures designed to secure your personal information and strictly control who can access it. We use various administrative, technological, and physical safeguards to protect your personal information, such as passwords and limiting access to only authorized individuals who need access to perform their job. Security safeguards also include steps to ensure that all third parties with whom we contract and who may be required to handle personal information have implemented comparable security measures. We also regularly provide our employees with privacy training.
Data analytics
To develop new and innovative products, to improve our existing offerings and to be an organization that is simple, fast and easy to deal with, we may use your personal information to conduct analytic studies or develop artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning models. Generally, we use de-identified personal information to conduct our studies or develop new models, but if we require identifiable personal information, we’ll first obtain your consent.
Automated decision-making
Automated decision-making is the process of rendering a decision by automated means without any human involvement which may include the use of artificial intelligence or machine learning.
If Empire Life uses your personal information for automated decision-making, we will:
- ensure it is lawful, fair and transparent, and
- inform you before or at the time the decision is rendered.
You’ll have the right to request the:
- personal information used to render the decision;
- the principal factors that led to the decision (with some exceptions); and
- personal information used to render the decision be corrected, if it was inaccurate.
You’ll also have the right to ask questions regarding any automated decision made by Empire Life impacting you.
Cookies
Our website uses:
Session cookies to enable our website to remember your journey through our website. If we didn’t use a session cookie, the website would think you were a new visitor every time you moved to another page (i.e., you couldn’t go back to the page you were just on). This type of cookie is temporary and is deleted when you close your browser. Session cookies contain session information only.
Persistent cookies to function as your identification card - recording your preferences. This type of cookie persists after you close your browser and has an expiration date.
Performance cookies to improve our website’s performance by, for example, counting page visits, examining how much time a user has spent on a website and/or analyzing loading speeds. They also enable our website to collect analytics data and perform other functions that provide a good user experience.
Our cookies do not collect personal information
Your privacy rights
You have certain rights you may exercise after we collect your personal information to:
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Withdraw your consent |
At any time, with reasonable notice, you may withdraw your consent to allow Empire Life to collect, use and disclose your personal information for any purpose, subject to legal and/or contractual restrictions. When you request to withdraw your consent, we’ll notify you at that time of any implications of such a withdrawal, which may include termination of a policy, termination of benefits or inability to process a claim. Your withdrawal of consent is not retroactive. |
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Request information about data processing |
Upon request, we’ll provide you with:
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Request access to your personal information and have it corrected if necessary |
You can request access to personal information we hold about you. There may be a small charge for doing so. To make a request, please send your written request to: Chief Privacy Officer The Empire Life Insurance Company 259 King Street East Kingston, ON K7L 3A8 Fax: 1 800 920-5868 Email: [email protected] We’ll make every effort to respond to your request within 30 days. If we are unable to respond within 30 days, we’ll let you know and explain why additional time is required. If you’re registered for our customer portal, you have the right to access and correct your personal information and privacy preferences at any time which may be done by you (self service option) or by contacting customer service. |
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File a complaint |
If you have a question or concern with how we handle your personal information, we want to know. Please contact us. |
If you would like to know more about our privacy policies or ask questions about accessing your personal information, please contact us either by phone or in writing at:
Empire Life
259 King Street East
Kingston, Ontario
Canada K7L 3A8
Telephone: 1-877-548-1881 (North America)
Telephone: 1-613-548-1881 (All others)
Email: [email protected]
Please include your name, address, and/or email address when you contact us.