Privacy Policy

1. About this policy

EGE Insurance is a licensed insurance brokerage regulated by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA). We have operated from Toronto since 2015, at 200 Yorkland Blvd, Toronto, Ontario M2J 4Y7, by appointment only.

This policy covers egeinsure.ca and its Turkish, Russian and Ukrainian sections, our online quote forms, our live chat, email and telephone contact with an advisor, and the ongoing relationship if we place a policy for you. We follow Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and the applicable provincial privacy laws.

We serve clients in Ontario and across Canada, including visitors, newcomers and international students. This policy is published in English; where a translated version differs, the English version governs.

2. We are a brokerage, not an insurer

This distinction decides who holds your information, so it comes first.

We act for you. We shop the market on your behalf and arrange coverage. The insurance contract itself is between you and the insurer. The insurer underwrites the risk, prices it against its own rate tables, issues the policy and decides claims. We do none of those things.

That means two privacy policies apply once you buy: ours, and the insurer's. Read the insurer's before you apply, because from the moment your application reaches them, their policy governs the information they hold.

The person who contacts you is a licensed advisor employed by EGE Insurance.

3. What personal information means

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual. In this policy it means the details you give us and the details we record about you.

Two things are not personal information for our purposes:

• Business contact information used purely in a business capacity, such as a company name and office phone number.
• Aggregated or de-identified data from which no individual can be identified, such as a count of how many people read a guide. We do not attempt to re-identify de-identified data.

4. What we collect

We collect only what you give us, plus the standard technical information any website receives. We do not buy personal information from data brokers.

Rating information, used to price a quote

Age or date of birth, gender, smoker status, a general health category you select, province, coverage amount, policy term, deductible, and for travel and visitor products your trip dates and destination.

Identity and contact information, so an advisor can reach you

First name, last name, email address and telephone number.

What you tell us in conversation

Live chat transcripts, email correspondence, and the notes an advisor makes about what you need.

Collected automatically by the website

IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed, timestamps, referring page and language preference.

Health-related information is collected only where it genuinely affects eligibility or price, and we treat it as sensitive.

5. How we collect it

• Directly from you: quote forms, contact forms, live chat, email and telephone calls with an advisor.
• Automatically: through our web server logs and the website technologies described in section 12.
• From someone acting for you: occasionally a family member arranges coverage for a parent, grandparent or student. If you provide someone else's information, please make sure they know and agree.

6. How quoting works, and what does not leave this website

Most people assume that asking a broker for quotes broadcasts their details to a dozen insurance companies. That is not how this works. Your information moves in three distinct stages, and it stops at the first one unless you decide otherwise.

7. Why we collect it

• To calculate and present quotes.
• To work out your eligibility and the premium that applies to you.
• To have a licensed advisor contact you and give advice, in the language you prefer.
• To prepare and submit an application to the insurer you select.
• To service the policy afterwards: questions, changes, renewals, refunds and helping you with a claim.
• To meet our record-keeping obligations as a licensed brokerage.
• To improve the website using aggregate statistics that do not identify you.

8. Consent

You consent by giving us your information and asking us to act. Because insurance involves sensitive details, we ask for clear, express consent before submitting an application containing health information to an insurer.

You can withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits and reasonable notice. If you withdraw it we may be unable to complete a quote, submit an application or continue servicing a policy, and we will tell you plainly what the consequence is before you decide.

9. Who we share it with

10. What we do not do with your information

• We do not sell your personal information.
• We do not rent or trade contact lists.
• We do not pass your enquiry to an outside call centre, lead-generation company or another brokerage.
• We do not give your details to anyone for their own advertising or marketing.
• We do not send your information to an insurer before you decide to apply.
• We do not make decisions about you by automated processing alone. A licensed advisor reviews every file.

The people who actually see your enquiry are the licensed advisors and support staff at EGE Insurance. Your quote is prepared here, and the call or email you receive comes from us.

11. Where your information is stored, and transfers outside Canada

Our website is hosted in North America, and our forms, customer records and chat run on Zoho's Canadian infrastructure. Some providers named in section 9, in particular Google, operate globally and may process data outside Canada.

When information is stored or processed in another country it may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of that country under its laws. By using our forms you consent to that transfer. We use contractual protections with our service providers to require a comparable level of protection.

12. Cookies, analytics and website technologies

We use Google Analytics 4 to understand how people find and use the site, for example which guides get read. We have configured it so that the page addresses it records do not carry your quote answers. We have not enabled Google's advertising features, and we do not run advertising retargeting pixels.

These third-party services may set cookies or store data in your browser:

• Google Analytics, for the aggregate statistics above.
• Google reCAPTCHA, on forms, to block automated spam.
• Google Maps and Google Fonts, where a map or typeface loads.
• Zoho, for the live chat window and the forms.
• Our quoting tools, which may keep your quote inputs in your browser so results survive a refresh.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, though the quote tools and chat window may stop working. You can also opt out of Google Analytics using Google's browser opt-out add-on.

13. Marketing and electronic communications

When you ask for a quote or send us a message, you are asking us to reply, and we will. If we later send you commercial email such as a renewal reminder or a rate update, we do so in line with Canada's anti-spam legislation, we identify ourselves, and every message carries an unsubscribe link. Unsubscribing from marketing does not stop the service messages about a policy you hold.

14. How we protect your information

• The whole website is served over an encrypted HTTPS connection.
• Form submissions travel to our systems over encrypted connections, and the credentials that connect the website to those systems are stored outside the public website directory.
• Access to customer records is limited to the licensed advisors and staff who need it to do their work.
• Our forms carry spam and bot protection so automated systems cannot harvest them.
• Safeguards are matched to sensitivity, so health-related information is handled more restrictively than a name and phone number.

No method of transmitting information over the internet is completely secure, so we cannot guarantee absolute security. Please do not email sensitive documents such as passport scans or financial statements. Ask your advisor for a secure method.

15. How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, and as long as insurance and business record-keeping obligations require. A quote enquiry that never becomes a policy is kept for a limited period so an advisor can follow up and so we can answer questions about the quote you were given. Records connected to a policy we placed are kept longer, because insurers and our regulator expect a brokerage to produce them. When information is no longer needed it is deleted or anonymised.

16. Keeping your information accurate

Insurance decisions turn on accurate information, and an error in a date of birth or a health answer can affect a claim. We keep your information as accurate and complete as is necessary for the purposes it is used for. Tell us if anything changes and we will correct it, and where the change matters we will pass the correction to the insurer holding your policy.

17. Your rights: access, correction and more

• Know what personal information we hold about you and how it has been used and disclosed.
• Access a copy of it. We respond within 30 days, and will tell you if we need more time or if a legal exception applies.
• Correct anything inaccurate or incomplete.
• Withdraw consent, subject to legal and contractual restrictions and reasonable notice.
• Ask us to delete information we no longer have a legal or business reason to keep.
• Unsubscribe from commercial messages at any time.

Contact us using the details in section 23. We may need to verify your identity first, so that we do not disclose your information to someone else.

18. If something goes wrong: privacy breaches

If a breach of our safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires, and we keep records of breaches as required. We will tell you what happened, what information was involved, and what you can do about it.

19. Quebec residents

If you live in Quebec, provincial privacy legislation gives you additional rights, including the right to receive your information in a structured, commonly used technological format, and rights concerning decisions based solely on automated processing. As stated in section 10, we do not make insurance decisions about you by automated means alone. Contact us at the address in section 23 to exercise these rights.

20. Complaints

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your personal information, tell us first. We will investigate and respond to you in writing.

If our answer does not satisfy you, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca or 1-800-282-1376. Complaints about our conduct as a licensed brokerage can go to the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario at fsrao.ca.

21. Links to other websites

Our guides link to government pages, insurer websites and other sources so you can check the facts yourself. Once you follow a link away from egeinsure.ca this policy no longer applies, and the other organisation's privacy practices govern.

22. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our services, our providers or the law change. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. If a change materially affects how we handle information you have already given us, we will take reasonable steps to tell you.

How this policy maps to PIPEDA

For readers who want to check this document against Canada's ten fair information principles.