InsureDOC POPIA
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA)
The Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA) is the comprehensive data protection legislation that obliges organisations to deal with the processing of personal information by applying specific principles and conditions. POPIA deals with your constitutional right to privacy and the right to access of information. POPIA was signed into law by our President on 1 July 2020 to be effective by 1 July 2021 and much work has taken place behind the scenes in preparation for this deadline.
What does POPIA mean for you as a client?
InsureDOC Insurance Brokers have always been committed to treating client information in an ethical manner and POPIA provides the legal framework and requirements for this treatment. All companies, including InsureDOC, are now obliged by law to deal with client information with far more diligence than ever before. This includes how and why information is collected, how it is processed, shared, stored as well as access to this information.
The meaning of processing your personal information.
To help you understand this notice, we include the explanations of the terms ‘personal information’ and ‘process’ as used in POPIA:
– Personal information and special personal information are any information relating to an identifiable living or juristic person. Some examples are race, gender, marital status, nationality, age, physical or mental health, disability, language, education, identity number, telephone number, email, postal or street address, biometric information and financial, criminal or employment history.
– Process means any operation or activity, whether automated or not, concerning personal information, including: collection, receipt, recording, organisation, collation, storage, updating or modification, retrieval, alteration, consultation, use, dissemination by means of transmission, distribution or making available in any other form, merging, linking, as well as blocking, degradation, erasure or destruction of information. “Processing” will have a similar meaning.
Why we process your personal information
We must process some of your personal information in order to provide you with our products and services, and also, as required by insurance, tax and other legislation. For example: When you buy one of our services or products, we collect your name, contact information and payment information to complete the transaction. Your personal information is also gathered through our website and other channels we use to distribute, communicate and deliver our services.
We use your personal information in order to do the following:
– Identify you
– Process your requests or instructions
– Manage your policy
– follow the laws of South Africa
– Detect and prevent fraud
– Offer other products and services to you
Because of the nature of our business, we sometimes use other parties like our service providers and administrators who in turn process your personal information.
When we process your personal information
In order to provide our products and services to you, we may share your personal information with other insurers, industry bodies, credit agencies and our service providers.
These are some examples of when we will share your personal information:
– When required by any regulatory authority, such as The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA).
– When required by legislation or any legal process.
– To protect and defend our rights and property, including our intellectual property.
– When you have given us direct permission to do so.
We will never sell your personal Information or share it with other parties for their own marketing use, unless you have given us direct permission.
Some information is automatically collected
When you use any of our digital channels like websites and apps, we receive and store information generated by your activities (usage data gathered by cookies) and other information that are automatically collected from your browser or mobile device. Most of this data is generally not personally identifiable. However, some of this data, either alone or when linked with other information, may allow your identity to be discovered. We treat this combined data as personal information and we protect it accordingly.
– Cookies are small text files that are created when you view a website. They gather usage data which includes information about the sites you visited, the number of times you visit, the date, time and length of your visit, which products or services you viewed and which areas of the site you visited. We may assign you one or more unique identifiers to help keep track of your future visits.
– Other information automatically collected may include your IP address, browser type and version, preferred language, geographic location, wireless or Bluetooth technology on your device, operating system and computer platform.
Information collected through online advertising
We use service providers (such as Google) to help us deliver our banner advertisements and other online communications. To understand which types of offers, promotions and advertising are most appealing to our customers, these service providers may collect and use some of your personal information. This information is aggregated and cannot be linked to you.
– Data aggregation is any process in which information is gathered and expressed in a summary form using specific variables such as age, profession, income and interests. These service providers show InsureDOC’s ads on sites on the internet, and they use the information stored in cookies based on your prior visits to InsureDOC’s website.
If you don’t want your personal information to be used in this way, you can opt out of the use of cookies, by visiting any of the following sites:
– Google at http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ads/
– Network Advertising Initiative at http://www.networkadvertising.org/managing/opt_out.asp
How we protect your data
We take every reasonable precaution to protect your personal information (including information about your activities) from theft, unauthorised access and disruption of services. Our security controls are designed to maintain an appropriate level of data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. We regularly test our website, data centres, systems, and other assets for security vulnerabilities.
However, we cannot guarantee the security of any personal information that you willingly disclose online. Please note that we process and collect your personal information when you use our website, contact us electronically or complete a quotation or application form online.
Accessing, changing or removing your personal information
You may ask us to access, change or remove your personal information from our records. If legislation allows, we may charge an administrative fee, but we will always inform you of any cost before performing your request.
The POPIA Act also requires us to include a summary of how we deal with your personal information. The following clause will form part of your respective policy wording/s effective 1 July 2021.
The privacy of your personal information
We care about the privacy, security and online safety of your personal information and we take our responsibility to protect this information very seriously. Below is a summary of how we deal with your personal information.
• Processing your personal information: We have to collect and process some of your personal information in order to provide you with our products and services, and also as required by insurance, tax and other legislation.
• Sharing your personal information: We will share your personal information with other insurers, industry bodies, credit agencies and service providers. This includes information about your insurance, claims and premium payments. We do this to assess claims, prevent fraud and to conduct surveys.
• Accessing your medical information: We may ask you to undergo any necessary medical testing or examinations. We may also ask you to send us any medical information including the results of any blood testing we need to accurately assess our risk or your claims.
• Protecting your personal information: We take every reasonable precaution to protect your personal information (including information about your activities) from theft, unauthorised access and disruption of services.
• Receiving marketing from us: We will not use your personal information to send you any information about products or offers from InsureDOC or InsureDOC’s partners. However, we will still send you communications about this product.
Please contact us if you have any queries about POPIA or the treatment of your personal information.
InsureDOC Management
InsureDOC is an Authorised Financial Service Provider. FSP no. 13595