Privacy Notice

We, at guard.me International Insurance Solutions Limited (“guardme.eu”), have made our Privacy Notice as clear and transparent as possible to help you understand how we collect and use your information.

Collecting personal information from our policyholders and their beneficiaries under the policies is essential to our ability to offer our customers high-quality insurance products and services. We take great care to keep all personal information collected accurate, confidential, and secure. Our Privacy Notice sets out our compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations of the EU (GDPR) and explains your rights as a customer of ours. We set high standards for collecting, using, disclosing, and storing personal information and are fully committed to protecting the confidentiality and security of the information that you provide to us

We may collect information from our customers which is personal information of other people, for example, beneficiaries on the policies or their family members who may be included on the customer policy. If you, as a customer, give us information about another person, it is your responsibility to ensure and confirm that:

- you have told the individual who we are and how we use personal information, as set out in this privacy notice; and
- you have permission from the individual to provide that personal information to us and for us to use it, as set out in this Privacy Notice.

Our Data Protection Officer is Seamus Hughes and can be contacted at adminint@guard.me.

Should you wish to be provided with a hard copy of this Privacy Statement, or if you have any questions or queries about this notice, please email adminint@guard.me.

COOKIES

The website of guard.me uses cookies, details of which, including the company policies concerning the use of same, can be found in our Cookie Policy on the website.

PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED & PROCESSED

The Company is committed to protecting your privacy. When your policy and/or service is purchased, you give consent for your personal data to be collected and processed by us in accordance with this Privacy/Data Protection Notice.

The types of information you give to guard.me may include:

Identity Data such as first name, surname, gender, date of birth, residential address;

Contact Data such as address, e-mail address, telephone number;

Regulatory Data such as may be required from time to time to satisfy regulatory requirements to ‘know your customer’ or with respect to financial crime legislation;

Benefits Data such as intended travel dates or specific optional benefits to be applied to customers or their beneficiaries.

This information may also be shared with third parties, such as insurance companies, providers of benefits under the policy of insurance or with service providers to guard.me.

We collect and process your personal data in line with applicable privacy and data protection legislation. We take great care to keep your personal information accurate, confidential, and secure.

We collect, use, or disclose your personal information only with your permission, which you may withdraw at any time, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice.

We collect only the information we need for the purposes we have identified to you. Our files are kept for the purpose of providing and servicing insurance products and services that we believe are right for you.

We will not sell your personal information.

SPECIAL CATEGORY DATA

guard.me also processes special category data. This includes, as set out above, special category data received by guard.me where data subjects contact, or request information from, guard.me, and special category data received by guard.me indirectly. Such special category data may include personal data relating to racial or ethnic origin; genetic data; biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person; data concerning health; and data concerning a natural person's sex life or sexual orientation.

CHILDREN’S DATA

Children are not eligible to use our website services and we ask that minors (under the age of 13) do not submit any personal information to us. Our Services do not address anyone under the age of 13. We do not knowingly collect personal identifiable information from children under 13 through our website. If you are a minor, you can use these services only if used together with your parents or guardians, and you should avoid providing personal information.

Should we discover that a child under 13 has provided us with personal information, without their parent or guardians verifiable consent, we will immediately delete this from our servers. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your child has provided us with personal information, please contact us so that we will be able to take necessary actions.

If guard.me decides to begin collecting personal information from children, it will notify parents that it is being requested, disclose the reasons for collecting it, and disclose our intended use for it. guard.me will seek parental verifiable consent before collecting any personally identifiable information. If guard.me does collect information on behalf of their child 13 and under, parents may request information on the type of data being collected, view their child's information and, if they choose, prohibit governments from making further use of their child's information.

USES & DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We want to ensure we are processing all the data we collect, lawfully, fair, and in a way that is transparent. We will ensure we maintain a register of systems which will be reviewed annually. We will ensure individuals have the right to access their personal data and any such requests made to guard.me shall be addressed within a timely manner.

Why we collect your information

Generally, we need to collect personal information to: 

• determine your eligibility
• continue to offer you the full range of products and services that we believe meet your changing needs and to service such products and services
• meet regulatory or contractual requirements relating to the services and products provided to you

We endeavour to help you understand why we need the information by identifying the purpose in clear understandable language.

Wherever we collect or use this information, we do so for a valid legal reason. This is for at least one of the following purposes:

• To arrange, underwrite or manage our products
• To meet responsibilities; we must comply with our regulators, tax officials, law enforcement, or otherwise meet our legal responsibilities
• To operate and improve our products and services and keep people informed about our products and services or for any other purposes we identify as relevant to further our business interests but never at the expense of your privacy rights. (we refer to these activities as our legitimate interests)
• Where we have obtained appropriate consent to collect or use your personal information for a particular purpose

We pass personal information to:

Data Processors:Companies that act as service providers under contract with us and only process your personal information as instructed by us. Your personal information is transferred securely and is not used by other parties for any other reason. Our Data Processors are:

Travel Healthcare Insurance Solutions Inc (a Canadian company in the same group as guard.me)

Eisner Amper Ireland

Your Product Provider(s): White Horse Insurance DAC, an insurance company incorporated in the Republic of Ireland. Regulators: Regulatory bodies and agencies or as needed to comply with regulations and laws.

Other Companies: Third parties, including other companies within the guard.me International where we have a lawful basis to do so.

• Loomis
• Canada Post
•  ICent
• TrueNorth: We can only collect and use sensitive personal information in limited circumstances, where we’ve obtained your explicit consent, where we need this information to arrange, underwrite or manage our products or to handle claims, or where we have another legal basis for doing so as explained in this Privacy Notice. If we are collecting data for a statutory requirement, or to fulfil a contract of insurance, and you cannot provide this data, the consequences of this could mean the contract cannot be completed.

THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

 Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers, and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

AUTOMATED DECISION MAKING

 We need your personal information when you apply to us to decide if we can offer a policy, claim and/or other services and offerings and, if so on what terms. Currently, this process is manual and therefore we do not use any automated decision-making tools.

HOW LONG WE KEEP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We keep your personal information for only as long as it is necessary for the purposes for which it was obtained, including updating the product or service or as required by law.

HOW WE PROTECT & STORE YOUR INFORMATION

Access to your personal information is restricted to those employees of , agents of and authorized service providers to, guard.me who require it to do their jobs.

We have developed and are continuing to improve security procedures to safeguard and protect personal information against loss, theft, unauthorized disclosure, copying, and unauthorized use or modification, or deletion.

We maintain appropriate safeguards and security procedures that reflect the types of documents, including electronic or paper records.

We have instituted organizational measures including access restrictions and limiting access on a "need-to-know" basis, as well as technological measures such as the use of passwords and encryption.

While we endeavour to protect all information, the most special category information, such as medical information, receives the highest level of protection.

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. We take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Notice and applicable legislative bodies.

We always take steps to ensure that any transfer of information internationally is carefully managed to protect your privacy rights:

• Transfers within guard.me International Insurance will be covered by an agreement entered into by members of guard.me International Insurance company which contractually oblige each member to ensure that your personal information receives an adequate and consistent level of protection wherever it is transferred within guard.me International Insurance
• Where we transfer your data to a non-guard.me International Insurance Company or other companies providing us with a service we will obtain contractual commitments and assurances from them to protect your personal information. Some of these assurances are well recognized certification schemes such as standard contractual clauses and the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield for the protection of personal information transferred from within the EU to the United States of America
• We will only transfer personal information to the countries which are recognized as providing an adequate level of protection or where we can be satisfied that alternative arrangements are in place to protect your privacy rights
• Any requests for information we receive from law enforcement or regulators will be carefully validated before personal information is disclosed
• Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to our site; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorized access.

YOUR RIGHTS

 You have legal rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal information.

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have the following rights:

• Right of access – you have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you.
• Right of rectification – you have a right to correct data that we hold about you that is inaccurate or incomplete.
• Right to be forgotten – in certain circumstances you can ask for the data we hold about you to be erased from our records.
• Right to restriction of processing – where certain conditions apply to have a right to restrict the processing.
• Right of portability – you have the right to have the data we hold about you transferred to another organisation.
• Right to object – you have the right to object to certain types of processing such as direct marketing.
• Right to object to automated processing, including profiling
• Right to judicial review – in the event that People refuses your request under rights of access, we will provide you with a reason as to why.

All of the above requests will be forwarded on should there be a third party involved as we have indicated in the processing of your personal data.

If you would like to know more about the legal reasons or legitimate interests that apply to a particular way in which we use personal information you can contact us at any time.