Privacy Policy

Insurance Applicants and Insureds

We collect information about you so that we can underwrite and process insurance transactions, administer or service your policy, and operate our business. We collect personal information that we receive from you and we receive from others. Our goal is to limit the collection and retention of your personal information to what is necessary for those purposes. Please click here for further information about personal information we collect about current, former, and prospective insureds

Claimants and Beneficiaries

If you are a claimant or beneficiary making a claim under a policy, we will collect information necessary to process your claim, including your contact information along with claim details. Please click here for further information about what personal information we may collect about claimants and beneficiaries

Applicants for Employment and Employees

If you are an applicant for employment, we will collect information necessary to process your application. If you are an employee, we will collect information necessary to administer your employment benefits and manage your employment with the Company. Please click here for further information about personal information we collect from employment applicants and employees

Independent Agents

We collect personal information from the agent/producer or the delegated agency licensing contact to process requested agency appointments.  We collect general demographic information, name, address, gender, age, Social Security Number, birth date, National Producer Number, business email, and business address, phone, and fax numbers. Additional information is obtained through the Producer Database (PDB) from National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR), each state’s licensing division website and printed license information.  This includes, but may not be limited to license information, license numbers, authorized lines, license status, continuing education, affiliations/associations with agencies and/or carriers, appointment information (company appointments, effective date, termination date, termination reasons, and regulatory actions (if taken)).

Insurance Applicants and Insureds

We may use your personal information to consider your application for an insurance policy and related services or products or for other business purposes as allowed by law. We may use it to communicate with you, your representatives, and others to underwrite, assess and evaluate risk. We may further use your personal information to prevent and detect fraud, unauthorized transactions, or other financial crimes and to comply with applicable laws and regulations such as those relating to money laundering, sanctions and anti-terrorism or to satisfy other legal or regulatory requirements. We may also use personal information to collect and process your premium and other payments.

We may use your personal information to communicate with you, verify your identity, respond to your inquiries or complaints, and provide you with requested information or services. We may use personal information to send you important information and alerts about changes to our policies, information about our other products and services or for administrative purposes. We may also use your personal information for internal business operations such as auditing, finance and accounting, billing and collections, data management and security, and records management or other business purposes as allowed by law. Personal information may be used to respond to law enforcement requests, subpoenas and court orders, and to respond to requests from government authorities and regulators and to comply with applicable laws. We may also use your personal information if we believe it necessary to establish and protect our legal rights, protect our operations, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliate companies, you or others.

Claimants and Beneficiaries

If you are a claimant or beneficiary, we may use your personal to administer, investigate, litigate and/or potentially settle your claim. We may use your personal information to communicate with you, your representatives, and others to process your claim. We may further use your personal information to report, prevent and detect fraud, unauthorized transactions, or other financial crimes and to comply with applicable laws and regulations such as those relating to money laundering, sanctions and anti-terrorism or to satisfy other legal or regulatory requirements. Personal information may be used to respond to law enforcement requests, subpoenas and court orders, and to respond to requests from government authorities and regulators and to comply with applicable laws. We may also use your personal information if we believe it necessary to establish and protect our legal rights, protect our operations, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliate companies, you or others.

Applicants for Employment / Employees

If you are an applicant for employment or an employee, we may use your personal information to perform our legal and contractual obligations as an employer, to develop our business, and to improve the performance of the Company.  Our use of your personal information includes determining the terms of your employment; confirming your legal right to work in the United States; confirming your residence; payroll processing; salary and benefits administration, including enrollment in various benefit plans;  attendance monitoring, including vacation, absence and sick/leave administration;  determining performance requirements; conducting regular performance reviews and assessments; managing performance records; assessment of qualifications and competencies; conducting  the recruitment process, including interviews and testing; managing employee travel and expense report administration; processing termination; assuring network and information security; monitoring your use of company information systems; preventing fraudulent or criminal activities; investigating employment complaints; administering employee discipline; investigating and administering workers’ compensation claims; conducting data analytics studies; and other uses in accordance with Company policies and the law.

Independent Agents

If you are an agent or seeking an agency appointment, we may use your personal information to process your application, verify your identity, respond to your inquiries, and provide you with information about our company. We may use personal information to send you important information and alerts about changes to our policies, information about our other products and services or for administrative purposes. We may also use your personal information for internal business operations such as auditing, finance and accounting, billing and collections, data management and security, and records management or other business purposes as allowed by law. Personal information may be used to respond to law enforcement requests, subpoenas and court orders, and to respond to requests from government authorities and regulators and to comply with applicable laws. We may also use your personal information if we believe it necessary to establish and protect our legal rights, protect our operations, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of our affiliate companies, you or others.

 

We consider your personal information to be confidential and so we limit our sharing outside of Great West Casualty Company and affiliates of Old Republic International Corporation. In the course of conducting our business, there are circumstances in which we may disclose your personal information to others. We share your personal information only with your authorization or as otherwise permitted or required by law. When personal information is shared with another party to perform services on our behalf, we expect such party to maintain the confidentiality of your personal information, to use the information only for the limited purpose for which it was shared and to abide by all applicable federal and state privacy laws.

We share your personal data with third-party service providers who process data on behalf of GWCC. Your personal data is safeguarded by data processing agreements, committing such service providers to process your personal data for specified Company business purposes and in accordance with our instructions, to comply with relevant federal and state law and regulation, and to apply appropriate security measures to protect your personal information. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes or to sell your personal information.

We will share your personal information with other entities in the Old Republic International group of companies as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance

Sharing of our personal information may include:

Insurance Applicants and Prospective Insureds

• Old Republic affiliates and/or subsidiaries in relation to a requested service or product or for usual business operations.
• Insurance agents/brokers, reinsurers/other insurers, third-party administrators to underwrite, assess and evaluate risk and for administrative purposes.
• Other business partners or service providers for marketing, operational, and/or administrative purposes.
• Regulators, government authorities, or law enforcement to comply with applicable law, regulation, inquiry, investigation, subpoena, summons, or legal process.
• Credit reporting agencies, insurance-support organizations, or other organizations to prevent or detect fraud.
• Other third parties in any actual or proposed sale, merger, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other transaction related to any part or portion of our business.
• Other third parties or service providers in accordance with law and regulation as necessary

Claimants and Beneficiaries

• Third-party administrators, agents/brokers, investigators, adjusters, attorneys, claims management vendors, insureds, and other service providers for claims management.
• Regulators, government authorities or law enforcement to comply with applicable law, regulation, inquiry, investigation, subpoena, summons, or legal process.
• Participants in a legal process including lawyers, witnesses, investigators, and others we believe necessary or appropriate in the administration of a legal matter.
• Other third parties in any actual or proposed sale, merger, joint venture, assignment, transfer or other transaction related to any part or portion of our business
• Other third parties or service providers in accordance with law and regulation as necessary.

Applicants for Employment / Employees

• Governmental authorities, institutions or agencies
• Third party benefit administrators, payroll processors, or other service providers for employment and benefits administration
• Attorneys or investigators if necessary
• Workers’ compensation claims administrators and insurers
• Other third parties or service providers in accordance with law and regulation as necessary

Independent Agents

• State licensing bureaus
• Background check vendors
• Licensing/appointment compliance vendors
• National Insurance Producer Registry (NIPR)
• Producer Data Base (PDB)
• State Based Systems (SBS)
• National Association of Insurance Commissioner (NAIC)
• Sircon Corporation
• Old Republic International affiliates

You may also provide information through your use of technology when you access and interact with our website or mobile application(s) (“sites”) through your computer, tablet or mobile device. We may collect information you provide to us through forms on our sites such as applications and log in pages. In addition, we may also collect information about your visits so that you may access certain services and so that we may better understand the interests of those that visit our sites. If applicable, when you use our mobile applications or visit our sites from a mobile device, like a smartphone, we may also collect additional information from your device, including your location, device identifier, and information about your mobile network. We may use a variety of tracking technologies to collect information, including without limitation the following:

• Browser Log Data 
  We may use technologies that automatically collect information when you visit our sites, view our advertisements, or use our products or services ("Browser Log Data"). This browser log data may include information such as your IP address (or other unique device identifier, including one that we may assign); certain details about your browser, operating system, and hardware; your location, if available; the URL that referred you to our sites; your activities on our site, including your preferences; and other logging information, such as the date and time of your visit. We also use web server logs to collect and store information about site usage. We may use this information for fraud detection and prevention, security, and to ensure our sites are function properly.

• Web Cookies
  When you visit our sites, we may use tracking technology such as cookies to automatically record details about your visit. Cookies are small text files stored by your internet browser on your computer's hard drive that allow sites to remember information about users. A cookie, by itself, does not tell us your email address or who you are. It cannot be used to collect data from your hard drive or personal information about you. We may use cookies and other device identifiers to collect information (such as browser type, time spent on the site and pages visited) and to support certain features of our site. For example, we may use these technologies and information collected for security purposes, to facilitate navigation, to display information more effectively, and to personalize your experience with the site. If you do not wish to receive cookies your browser, or other software (including Adobe Flash)‎ can be set to reject cookies or to alert you when a cookie is placed on your device. To do this, follow the instructions provided in your browser or other software, usually found within the “help”, “tools” or “edit” settings. Please note that if you disable cookies on your browser, you may not be able to access certain features or content on our sites.

• Beacons
  A Beacon is a small graphic image or other web programming code (also known as “1x1 GIFs” or “clear GIFs”) that may be included in our site’s pages and messages. Beacons may be invisible to you, but any electronic image or other web programming code inserted into a page or e-mail can act as a Beacon. Beacons or similar technologies may be used for a number of purposes, including, without limitation, to count visitors to the sites, to monitor how users navigate the sites, to count how many e-mails that were sent were actually opened or to count how many particular articles or links were actually viewed.

• Embedded Scripts
  An embedded script is programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with the sites, such as the links you click on. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your computer, tablet or phone from our web server or a third party service provider, and is active only while you are connected to the sites, and is deactivated or deleted thereafter.

• Browser Fingerprinting
  Browser fingerprinting is the process of collection and analysis of information from your computer, tablet or phone, such as, without limitation, your operating system, plug-ins, system fonts and other data, for purposes of identification.

• ETag, or Entity Tag.
  ETag is a feature of the cache in browsers. It is an opaque identifier assigned by a web server to a specific version of a resource found at a URL. If the resource content at that URL ever changes, a new and different ETag is assigned. Used in this manner, ETags are a form of device identifier. ETag tracking may generate unique tracking values even where the consumer blocks HTTP, Flash, and/or HTML5 cookies.

• Recognition Technologies.
  Recognition technologies are technologies, including application of statistical probability to data sets, which attempt to recognize or make assumptions about users and devices (e.g., that a user of multiple devices in the same user).

• Location-identifying Technologies.
  The sites may use GPS (global positioning systems) software and other location-based technologies such as iBeacons to locate you so we may verify your location, deliver you relevant content based on your location, as well as allow you to share your location to other users as part of the services we provide via the sites. In addition to traditional GPS location-based services, others we work with may install low power Bluetooth, wifi, radio transmitters, or other devices in physical locations, which emit a signal that your smart phone can detect to pinpoint your location or otherwise interact with the sites. In addition, you may be able to send your location information via the sites to other users. You should consider the pros and cons involved in disclosing your location information to us and to other people. Where a user of the sites requests that their location information be revealed to other persons, the user will be provided options for managing sharing services, which may be through third party services such as through Twitter and Facebook. We are not responsible for the acts, omissions or policies of such third parties.

Great West may have official pages on social media websites such as Facebook^®, Google+, Instagram^®, Twitter^®, Linkedin^®, and YouTube that enable customers to discuss their experiences with its products and services. When you interact with us on social media websites we may collect information such as your feedback, preferences, user ID and/or user name associated with that social media service, and any information or content you have permitted the social media service to share with us, such as your profile picture, email address or friends list, and any information you have made public with that social media service. We recommend that you never include sensitive personal, financial or other confidential information when posting or commenting online. Any posts you make on our official social media pages (including posts that contain pictures, comments, suggestions, opinions, complaints or personal information), are available to others who use those pages and are subject to the terms of use and privacy policies of those sites. Please refer to the policies of those companies to understand your rights and obligations regarding your posts.

We may use third-party analytics services, like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, to collect, monitor and analyze visitor data (such as Browser Log Data, cookies and other tracking data), and trends for marketing optimization and to increase the functionality of our website and mobile applications. These services may track details about your online activities over time and across different websites. These services may also allow us and others to provide you with targeted advertisements or other content that you may be interested in based on your online activities.

The Google Analytics service tracks and reports website traffic and provides us insight into behavior information relating to visitor age, gender and interests.  Google Analytics Demographics and Interest Reporting give us insight into behavior to help us understand browsing behavior and give you a better experience when you visit our website. You can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads using the Ads Settings.

These third-party services have their own privacy policies addressing how they use such information. If you want to prevent your data from being used by Google Analytics, you may wish to take advantage of Google Analytics' currently available opt-outs currently available opt-outs for the web.  We use Google Tag Manager to capture certain non-individually identifiable customer traffic data, including: time spent on page, pdf file downloads, video activity (plays, pauses, percent of video watched, etc.), scroll depth (how far down a webpage a user scrolls), and social actions taken on a website (shares and outbound links to social channels).

If you would like to learn more about targeted ads that may be based on your online activities, and the choices that you may exercise for certain sites and advertisers, you may wish to visit the Network Advertising Initiative at www.networkadvertising.org or the Digital Advertising Alliance at www.digitaladvertisingalliance.org.

“Do not track” is a technology that enables users to opt-out of tracking by websites they do not visit. We do not disclose personal information to third parties for their own marketing purposes. Additionally, we do not collect personal information from your online activities over time and across other websites or online services and we do not allow third parties to use these technologies on our sites. Because we do not use these technologies, we currently do not monitor, respond or take any action to web browser “do not track” signals or other similar mechanisms.

The security of your personal information is important to us, and we strive to implement and maintain reasonable, commercially acceptable, security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the information we store, to protect it from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure. We restrict access to personal information about you to who need to know the information in order to provide products and services to you. Unfortunately, no data transmission over the internet or electronic database can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure, please immediately notify us in accordance with the “contact us” section below.

You are also responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect your personal information against unauthorized disclosure or misuse. We recommend you utilize the latest, updated version of your web browser. It is important that you create a strong password and protect against unauthorized access to your user name, password and your computer. You should not share your user name and password and be sure to log out and close your browser when you have completed your session

Our website or mobile application(s) may contain links to other websites or internet resources that are not operated by us. We have no control over, and assume no responsibility for the content, privacy policies or practices of any third-party websites or services. If you click on a third-party link, you will be directed to that third-party's website. We strongly advise you to review the privacy policy and terms of use of every website you visit.

Only persons that are the age of majority in your jurisdiction or older have permission to access our website or mobile applications. Our website and mobile applications are not designed for, or target to, children under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect, use, or disseminate personal information from children. If you are a parent or guardian and you learn that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will promptly delete it. If we become aware that we have collected personal information from a child without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to remove that information from our servers as quickly as possible.  If you believe that we might have any personal information from or about a child, contact us at 1-800-497-1854 or send your written request to us at Great West Casualty Company, ATTN Privacy Officer, 1100 West 29^th Street, South Sioux City, NE  68776 or via email at gw-privacy@gwccnet.com