Lowest Rates Insurance Services (“LRIS” or “we”) respects your privacy and will strive to protect the confidentiality of your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains our personal information processing practices, including how and why we collect your personal information, how we use it, and how we safeguard it. It also explains your rights related to your personal information.
We are responsible for personal information under our control. At all times, we aim to comply with applicable personal privacy laws in Canada, which differ depending on your jurisdiction. Our employees receive training regarding the importance of personal privacy and we have appointed a Privacy Officer to oversee our personal information-handling practices.
You can reach our Privacy Officer at:
- Email: [email protected]
- Mail: 1910 Yonge Street, Suite 401, Toronto, ON, Canada, M4S 3B2
- Phone: 1-855-487-6911
LRIS is part of a large insurance and financial company. Other entities within the LRIS's group of companies are (collectively referred to our “affiliates”):
- LowestRates.ca
- Scoop Insurance Brokers Ltd.
- Scoop Insurance Brokers Inc.
- Scoop Financial Ltd.
What is personal information?
Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual.
What personal information does LRIS collect?
The types of personal information that LRIS collects depends on your use of our products and services, and how you interact with us. The personal information we collect may include the following:
- Your name, age and date of birth, gender, marital status, contact information, including your phone number, email address, home address, and occupational status.
- Vehicle information, driver's licence number, and driving, driver's licence, and auto insurance history for licensed drivers in the household.
- Your home insurance history, and a list of other residents in your household.
- Information that we generate about you, such as a unique customer identification number, and information about your transactions with us.
- Information you provide via social media features, which may include your name, social media handle, email address.
- Cookies and tracking information, such as Internet Protocol (“IP”) address and other technical data that may uniquely identify your device, system or browser, as described in more detail below.
- Any other personal information for which we may obtain your consent from time to time.
How does LRIS collect personal information?
We collect personal information for specific, limited purposes as described in this Privacy Policy, or as otherwise disclosed at the time of collection.
We collect personal information if you: visit our website, request or retrieve an insurance quote, request assistance from one of our customer service representatives, provide personal information to us through our website forms or other communication channels, interact with our emails, and interact with our public forums and social media features. With notification, we may record or otherwise monitor your telephone calls with our customer service representatives for quality assurance purposes.
In most cases, we collect personal information from you directly. With your consent, we may also collect personal information indirectly; for example, we may obtain financial information such as banking details and credit history to assess credit risk, advertising and sales data to prepare royalty reports, and other information to help us evaluate your services. If you have interacted with any of our affiliates, we may also collect your personal information from those affiliates for the purposes of providing a personalized and streamlined customer service experience.
Minors
If you are under 18, be sure to obtain your parent or guardian's permission before you share any personal information with us. We encourage parents to get involved with their children's online usage and to be aware of the activities in which they are participating.
What we collect from you when you use our online websites:
As is true of most websites, LRIS gathers certain information automatically through cookies. An internet cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your internet browser and that can collect and store information. We use cookies to better understand how you use our websites, to make sure our ads and dynamic content are served correctly, and to improve the performance of our websites. For example, a cookie may recall a set of preferences you have set for our website. Storing cookies on your web browser allows us to present you with custom web pages and other content that are tuned with your preferences. These activities are invisible to you, and are generally intended to improve your internet browsing experience.
Information collected by cookies may include internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyze trends in the aggregate and administer the site.
Opting out of cookies
Some cookies are necessary to make our website work and cannot be disabled. Others are optional and you can disable them through your browser settings. You should know, however, that if you opt-out of optional cookies, some features of the site will no longer be available.
How does LRIS use personal information?
We use your personal information to carry out our business and meet our legal and regulatory requirements. In particular, we process personal information for the following purposes:
- Client onboarding:
- Verifying your identity and assessing your request for insurance quotes;
- Client relationship management:
- Communicating with you in relation to the services you request from us, addressing customer-service related matters, and otherwise developing and maintaining the customer relationship;
- Communicating with you in relation to the services you request from us, addressing customer-service related matters, and otherwise developing and maintaining the customer relationship;
- Improving our customer service experience and promoting quality assurance;
- Service execution:
- Generating the risk profile used to determine the rates returned from our partner insurers;
- Obtaining quotes from insurance companies and brokers for the insurance products you express an interest in;
- Assessing payment options and applicable discounts on policy quotes;
- Ensuring proper execution of our services, for example by properly identifying you before providing access to your accounts;
- Improving the performance and security of our platforms;
- Facilitating our social media and public engagements features;
- Business development:
- Evaluating whether and how LRIS and its affiliates may offer products or services that are of interest to you;
- With your consent, communicating with you about new services or offerings from LRIS and any of affiliates that may be of interest to you;
- Creating audiences for various digital platforms for targeted marketing purposes;
- Administering contests and promotions;
- Sharing client testimonials, with consent;
- Engaging in targeting marketing/advertising initiatives and managing and displaying advertising on our website and third party websites;
- Completing market research for advertising and marketing purposes;
- Legal and regulatory compliance, risk management, crime prevention, detection and investigation, and receiving and handling requests and complaints;
- Supporting, enhancing and maintaining LRIS's technology and marketing activities:
- Improving our services and the use of our technology and platforms, including testing and upgrading systems and processes, and analyzing the results of marketing activities to determine the effectiveness of our campaigns;
- Other purposes:
- Your personal information may be used for other purposes for which we will obtain consent from time to time;
- If you sign up for our newsletter or other email services, or submit one of our website forms, you will have the option to opt-in to advertising that is tailored to your interests. In that case, we will use your personal information for advertising purposes, as described in more detail below;
- Other purposes permitted or required by law
If you ultimately decide to purchase a policy from an insurance company, that company will use your personal information for the purpose of fulfilling the requested insurance transaction and for future contact in accordance with the terms and conditions of its own privacy policy.
Advertising
We partner with third parties to manage our advertising on other sites, including ads pertaining to our clients' products. Our third-party partners may use cookies or similar technologies.
We may place other links on our sites that originate from outside advertisers. If you click these links, the advertisers may assign a cookie. We do not control these cookies, nor are we responsible for any marketing or other use of your personal information by these advertisers.
Our online usage and affiliate tracking include Google Analytics and Google Campaign Manager 360. These technologies may record information such as how often you visit our website, which pages and features you frequent, and aggregated use and performance data. Refer to their privacy policies for information on their use of personal information.
How does LRIS share your personal information?
LRIS is not an insurance company, broker, or agent. We work with insurance brokers and companies to provide you an insurance quote upon request.
We disclose your personal information to insurance brokers and companies that underwrite insurance policies in order to determine your risk profile and obtain insurance quotes, as requested by you. This will be clearly indicated, and it is part of the quoting process. Any personal information that we provide to these third parties will be treated in accordance with the terms of their own privacy policies. LRIS is not responsible for how the third party insurance companies and brokers handle your personal information.
As mentioned above, LRIS is part of a large insurance and financial company. LRIS may disclose your personal information to our affiliates for internal audit, management, billing, administrative, and other purposes identified above, in order to ensure a consistently high standard across our group, and to provide products and services to you. With your consent, we may also share your personal information with our affiliates for marketing and promotional purposes. Our affiliates may process this personal information on our behalf, or for their own purposes as described in their privacy notices.
We transfer your personal information to third party service providers who assist us in delivering our services and carrying out our business objectives. Through our contracts with them, our service providers are authorized to use your personal information only as necessary to provide their services to us; they are prohibited from using your personal information for any other purposes. Accountability for any personal information that is transferred to third party services providers remains with us.
Our service providers may be located in jurisdictions outside of Canada and will be subject to the laws of their respective jurisdictions. In certain situations, LRIS and our third party service providers may be required to disclose personal information in response to lawful requests by public authorities, including to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.
If LRIS is considering a business transaction, such as a merger, acquisition by another company, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your personal information is likely to be among the assets disclosed during the negotiation and upon completion of the transaction. Any such disclosure and subsequent notification would be conducted in accordance with applicable privacy laws.
At all times, we only share personal information that is reasonably necessary for the purpose intended. For example, when obtaining insurance quotes, LRIS will only disclose the personal information that third party insurance companies require in order to provide an accurate quote. Certain information, such as your name, age, gender, marital status, contact information and insurance history, will be disclosed to insurance companies to obtain either home or auto insurance quotes; however, additional information may also be disclosed for the purpose of obtaining auto insurance quotes, such as your occupational status, driver's licence history, at-fault accident and ticket history, and vehicle information.
Be aware that our websites may contain links to other websites provided and maintained exclusively by third parties not subject to this Privacy Policy.
Managing Your Preferences:
Opting out
You have a say in how we process your personal information. Generally, by requesting our services and providing us with your personal information, we will process your personal information for the purposes identified or described in this Privacy Policy on the basis of implied consent. Additionally, we may identify additional purposes at the time of collection, and obtain your consent at that time. If you wish to withdraw consent for some or all of our processing of your personal information as described in this Privacy Policy or as otherwise identified, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information provided at the top of this Privacy Policy.
If you have subscribed to receive the LRIS email newsletter or other electronic marketing communications and wish to unsubscribe, you may opt-out at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of any email or marketing offer you receive or by contacting our Privacy Officer. Please allow a reasonable time (approximately 10 business days) for the processing of your request. Note that you will still receive transactional messages from us, including information about your account and responses to your inquiries.
Surveys
Occasionally, we ask our customers to complete market research surveys. Completing these surveys is optional. Survey results are aggregated and shared with our advertisers, sponsors and affiliates in a manner that does not disclose personal information. Other than as permitted or required by law, purposes for the collection, use or disclosure of personal information, which are not set out in this Privacy Policy, will be set out at the time of collection. You will be given a reasonable opportunity to opt-out of any additional purposes no later than the time of collection.
Where we process and store your personal information?
Your personal information may be processed and stored outside of the province in which you reside and/or outside of Canada by us or our third-party service providers for the purposes set out in this Privacy Policy and as permitted by law. Your personal information will be subject to the laws of the jurisdiction where it is processed and stored. This means that, in certain circumstances, foreign courts, law enforcement agencies or regulatory agencies may be entitled to access your personal information.
How long do we keep your information?
We will only retain personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected or to comply with legal and regulatory requirements. To help us do this, we apply criteria to determine the appropriate retention periods for your personal information depending on its purpose. At the end of the retention period, your information is securely deleted.
How does LRIS safeguard personal information?
We maintain personal information in a combination of paper and electronic files. All employees accessing personal information in the performance of their duties must do so in accordance with our policies and processes respecting the confidentiality of personal information. Your personal information will only be accessed by employees and service providers who require the information to perform their duties.
In compliance with statutory requirements, we employ adequate technical, administrative and physical security measures to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, collection, use, loss, destruction, alteration, and disclosure. These measures are tailored to the sensitivity of the personal information in question.
Customer rights
In addition to the right to provide and withdraw your consent for our processing of your personal information and to “unsubscribe” from electronic marketing communications, described above, you have various other rights relating to the personal information that we collect, use and disclose about you. Some of these rights may be subject to specific requirements or limitations under applicable law. To exercise any of your rights, please contact our Privacy Officer using the information provided at the top of this Privacy Policy.
Access
If you have questions about the personal information that we collect, use, and disclose about you, or if you wish to request access to the personal information we hold about you, please send a written request to our Privacy Officer. In your request, please provide sufficient detail to enable us to identify any records in our custody or control that contain the information that you wish to access. We will make such personal information available to you to the extent permitted and required by law. This information will be provided to you in a form that is generally understandable, and will include an explanation of any abbreviations or codes. Prior to fulfilling an access request, we may require certain additional information from you for the purpose of verifying your identity.
We aim to respond to all access requests within thirty (30) days. We will advise you in writing if we cannot respond to your request within this time limit, and will provide a new date by which we will respond.
In certain circumstances, we may charge a fee for fulfilling an access request. In such cases, we will provide you with a fee estimate prior to processing a request, and may require that you pay a deposit before we proceed. Upon receipt of the fee estimate, you are able to withdraw your request, if you wish.
Correction
You may also request correction of the personal information that LRIS holds about you if you are able to demonstrate that the information is inaccurate or incomplete. Correction requests must be made in writing to our Privacy Officer. Prior to fulfilling a correction request, we may require certain additional information from you for the purpose of verifying your identity.
We aim to respond to all correction requests within thirty (30) days. We will advise you in writing if we cannot respond to your request within this time limit, and will provide a new date by which we will respond.
If a correction is warranted, and where appropriate or required by law, we will transmit the amended information to third parties having access to your personal information. If we determine that a correction is not warranted or required, we will annotate the personal information to indicate the amendment that was requested but not made.
Complaints
We are committed to providing excellent customer service. If you have a concern or complaint regarding our compliance with this Privacy Policy or applicable privacy laws, please contact our Privacy Officer using the contact information provided at the top of this Privacy Policy, as we are also committed to working with you to achieve a resolution as quickly as possible. In most cases, complaints are resolved simply by discussing it with us.
Notification of changes:
We review and update this Policy regularly to ensure it reflects legislative changes and our ongoing commitment to the protection of your personal information. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email (using the email address associated with your account) or by means of a notice on this website prior to the change becoming effective.
We encourage you to periodically review this Privacy Policy to stay current on how we are protecting your personal information.
Last updated, July 3rd, 2024.