Montana Private Policy
TO ALL MONTANA POLICYHOLDERS OF THE FARMERS ALLIANCE COMPANIES
Your Privacy is Our Concern
When you apply to any of the Farmers Alliance Companies for any type of insurance, you disclose information about yourself to us. The collection, use and disclosure of such information is regulated by law. The Farmers Alliance Companies, their agents, affiliates and subsidiaries maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with state and federal regulations to guard your personal information. We also limit employee access to personally identifiable information to those with a business reason for knowing such information. The Farmers Alliance Companies also instruct their employees so that they will understand the importance of the confidentiality of personal information, and take appropriate measures to enforce employee privacy responsibilities.
What kind of information do we collect about you and from whom?
The Farmers Alliance Companies obtain most of their information directly from you. The application you complete, as well as any additional information you provide, generally gives us most of the information we need to know. Sometimes we may contact you be phone or mail to obtain additional information. We may use information about you from your other transactions with us, our affiliates, or others.
Depending on the nature of your insurance transaction, we may need additional information about you or other individuals proposed for coverage. For auto insurance, we may need information from your motor vehicle records. For property coverages, we may send someone to inspect your property and verify information about its value and condition. A photo of any property to be insured might be taken. We may review insurance claims information and other loss information reports, and we may also obtain medical or financial information to adjust some claims.
We may obtain the additional information we need from third parties, such as other insurance companies, government agencies, information clearinghouses, courts and other public records. We may receive consumer credit information from a consumer reporting agency. A report from a consumer reporting agency may contain information as to creditworthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, hobbies, occupation, personal characteristics or mode of living. An investigative consumer report, containing the same type of information, may also be obtained from such an agency that will gather information through personal interviews with your neighbors, friends, associates, acquaintances, or others who may have knowledge concerning those items of information. If we order an investigative consumer credit report, we will notify you as required by state laws and the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Under the FCRA, you have the right to ask to be personally interviewed if we order an investigative consumer report. Upon request, we will tell you how to get a copy of the report. The agency that prepares a consumer report for us may retain that report and disclose it to other persons as permitted by law.
What do we do with the information collected about you?
Information that has been collected about you may be retained in both our records and in your agent’s files. We review it in evaluating your request for insurance coverage and in determining your rates. We will also refer to and use information in our policy records for purposes related to issuing and servicing insurance policies and settling claims. We may use information about you in our files for insurance marketing purposes or to help you with your overall insurance programs.
If coverage is declined or the charge for coverage is increased because of information contained in a consumer report we obtain, we will tell you as required by state law and the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. We also will give you the name and address of the consumer reporting agency making the report.
We may retain information about our former customers and would disclose that information to affiliates as described in this notice.
To whom do we disclose information about you?
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our customers or former customers, except as permitted by law. That may mean that we will make disclosures of non-public personal information without your consent in the following situations:
To underwrite insurance at your request or for reinsurance purposes, or for any of the following purposes as they relate to your insurance: account administration, reporting, investigating, or preventing fraud or material misrepresentation, processing premium payments, processing insurance claims, administering insurance benefits (including utilization review activities), participating in research projects, or as otherwise required or specifically permitted by Federal or State law.
How can you find out about information we have about you?
You have the right to know what kind of information we keep in our files about you, to have reasonable access to it and to receive a copy. Contact us at the website or address provided at the end of this notice if you have questions about what information we may have on file. Tell us what information you would like to receive. Provide your complete name, address, date of birth, type of policy held or applied for and all policy numbers issued to you by us. Certain types of information generally collected when evaluating claims or possible lawsuits, need not be disclosed to you.
Within thirty business days of receipt of your request, we will inform you in writing of the nature and substance of locatable, retrievable and available recorded personal information about you in our files. You may review this information in person or receive a copy at a reasonable charge.
We will also identify the person or organizations to whom we have disclosed this information within the past two (2) years. In addition, you will be given the name and address of any consumer credit reporting agency that prepared a report about you so that you can contact them for a copy of that report if you wish.
After you have reviewed that personal information about you in our file, you can contact us if you believe it should be corrected, amended or deleted. Tell us what you think is wrong and why. We will consider your request and within thirty business days either change our files, or tell you that we did not and the reason(s) why. If we do not make changes, you will have the right to insert in our file a concise statement containing what you believe to be the correct, relevant or fair information and explaining why you believe the information on file to be improper. We will notify persons designated by you to whom we have previously disclosed the information of the change or your statement. Subsequent disclosures we make also will include your statement.
How to Contact us:
Farmers Alliance Companies
1122 N. Main, P.O. Box 1401
McPherson, KS 67460
www.fami.com