Last Updated: July 25, 2024   (View the prior version of our Privacy Statement here)

In consideration of Branch Financial, Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Branch,” “we,” “us” or “our”) providing you (which term, as used herein, includes you personally and, if you are using this website on behalf of the company or organization on whose behalf we grant you access, such company and organization) access to our Internet website, http://www.ourbranch.com, (the “Site”) and the information, documents, reports, data, features, functionalities and software that may be offered to you through or in connection with your use of and/or access to the Site and the other materials on the Site (collectively, and as such may be revised from time to time by us, the “Content”), you hereby agree to the following provisions of this privacy statement (the “Privacy Statement”).

Branch offers a service whereby users can get quotes for certain insurance coverage and purchase policies pursuant to those quotes. In order to provide the service to you, you must provide certain personal data. This privacy statement explains which data we collect and how we process and use such data.

Your continued use of the Site and/or our products and services constitutes your consent to this Privacy Statement and our processing and sharing of your personal data as described here. 

Personal data we collect

Branch collects personal data, through our interactions with you and from various outside third party sources for business purposes. You provide some of this data directly, and we get some of it by collecting data about your interactions, use, and experiences with our products. The data we collect depends on the context of your interactions with Branch and the choices you make, including how you contact us and the products and features you use. The data we may also obtain about you from third parties includes data from insurance support organizations that assemble or collect information about individuals for the purpose of providing it to insurance companies. This type of information may include, but is not limited to, your driving record, claims history, and credit information. Insurance support organizations may keep information they give us. These firms may share that information with other persons as permitted by law.

Branch may collect, via its Community Drive program, information about your driving style and habits, such as location, speed, acceleration, braking, and cornering; and combine this with weather, traffic, time of day, and other contextual data. Such use is based upon you giving explicit consent to this profiling when registering to use the Community Drive program.

You have choices when it comes to the technology you use and the data you share. When we ask you to provide personal data, you can decline. Many of our products require some personal data to provide you with a product or a service. If you choose not to provide data necessary to provide you with a product or feature, you cannot use that product or feature. Likewise, where we need to collect personal data by law or to enter into or carry out a contract with you, and you do not provide the data, we will not be able to enter into the contract.

How we use personal data

We use personal data for the following reasons:

• To respond to your requests and communicate with you. We use data to provide you with a quote, bind your policy, and manage your relationship with us. This includes communication about our terms and policies. We use data to respond to your questions. These may be customer service questions or questions about product education and training.
• To provide services and products. We use data to provide you with our and our partner’s services and products, which includes but is not limited to offering financial products, running prediction models, analyzing our performance and conducting research. We also use data to collect payments and respond to related inquiries. 
• To improve and support our services. We use data to customize your experience with us. We may also use data to analyze how our services are used. For example, while you use Branch websites and mobile applications, Branch may capture and record data input, scrolling, mouse movements, screen data and appearance, device inputs, browser specifications, application data, session data, event data, and client-side error events and messages.   We may view this information on an individual-session basis through logs and visually recreated user sessions.
• To conduct marketing activities. We use information to let you know about new services and products. These might be our or our offers or products, or third-party offers or products we think you might find interesting. We may do this by phone, online, or by email. We may use information to conduct surveys or run sweepstakes or other contests.
• To protect our company and constituents. We use information to protect our company and customers, and users. This includes complying with our legal obligations. We use information to identify fraud and secure our systems and services.

When we process personal data about you, we do so with your consent and/or as necessary to provide the products you use, operate our business, meet our contractual and legal obligations, protect the security of our systems and our customers, fulfill other legitimate interests of Branch, or as otherwise allowed or required by law.

How we share personal data

We disclose personal data as follows:

• Consent. We share your personal data with your consent or as necessary to complete any transaction or provide any product you have requested or authorized. For example, we share your content with third parties when you tell us to do so, such as when you request an insurance quote.
• Insurance Carriers, Partners, Agencies and insurance related services. Upon your request for a quote, we may share your data with our partnering insurance carriers. We may share your data with Agents that service your account; consultants who perform business, or insurance functions for us; with independent claims adjusters, auto appraisers, investigators, and attorney’s who need such data to settle your claim; to businesses that provided underwriting and actuarial support; to consumer reporting agencies that provided us with necessary underwriting information; to medical care institutions or medical professionals to verify coverage or conduct and audit of services; to insurance rating organizations or state regulatory agencies who are involved with the regulation or insurance pricing and products; 

If you are requesting a policy with our partner insurance carrier - Assurity Group, Inc. (“Assurity”), please note Assurity’s privacy policy and terms of use apply once you begin the process to procure an Assurity product. Additionally, upon receipt of personal data, Assurity may contact you directly.

• Service Providers. We also share personal data with vendors working on our behalf for the purposes described in this statement. For example, companies we’ve hired to improve and develop products and improve user experience, provide customer service support or assist in protecting and securing our systems. These service providers may analyze and store data, including your interactions with the Site. We may also share data with payment processing or fraud detection services. In all of these cases, third-party service providers must abide by appropriate data privacy and security requirements. 
• Affiliates and Corporate Mergers. We may share all categories of information with other companies under our common ownership or control. These companies use your personal data as described in this Privacy Notice. This includes current and future companies. All categories of your personal data may be disclosed or transferred to relevant third parties in the event of, or as part of the due diligence for, any proposed or actual reorganization, sale, merger, consolidation, joint venture, assignment, transfer, or other disposition of all or part of our business, assets, or stock (including in connection with any bankruptcy or similar proceeding).
• Marketing Partners. We may share your contact information with sponsors of events, webinars, or sweepstakes for which you register or other parties with whom we may engage in joint marketing activities.
• Payment or Financial Institutions. When you provide payment data to make a purchase, we will share payment data with banks and other entities that process payment transactions or provide other financial services, and for fraud prevention and credit risk reduction

Law, Public or Government Authorities. We may share all categories of personal data to comply with our legal obligations, regulations, or contracts or to respond to a court order, administrative, or judicial processes, such as a subpoena, government audit, or search warrant where we are legally required to do so. We may also share your data with organizations involved in collecting data to help in the detection or insurance fraud or criminal activity in connection with insurance transactions and with lien holders, mortgagees or other parties who have a legal interest in your policy and to authorized individuals as ordered by court documents. We also may share your data when there are threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of our policies or other agreements, or to protect the legal rights of third parties, including our employees, users, or the public.

Information for Internet Users

Branch uses internet cookies and related technology for security, to manage our site and to provide more relevant products. Cookies are small text files placed on your device to store data that can be recalled by a web server in the domain that placed the cookie. This data often consists of a string of numbers and letters that uniquely identifies your computer, but it can contain other information as well. Some cookies are placed by third parties acting on our behalf. We may use cookies and similar technologies to store and honor your preferences and settings, enable you to sign-in, provide interest-based advertising, combat fraud, and analyze how our products perform. Examples of information we may collect include: previous URL you visited, transaction information you submit, and clicks on our website.

How to access and control your personal data

You can control your personal data that Branch has obtained, and exercise your data protection rights. To exercise any of the rights below contact Branch via email at notice@ourbranch.com. If you do not agree with this Privacy Statement, you should cease use of the Site and our Services and contact us via email at notice@ourbranch.com. 

Your Privacy Rights

Under certain privacy laws, depending on your jurisdiction, you may have additional rights related to your personal data. Those rights are described in more detail below. To exercise any of these rights, please send an email to notice@ourbranch.com.

• You can request to access and review personal data.
• You can request to know the following:
• How we collect and use your personal data and why;
• The categories of personal data we have collected and the categories of recipients of your personal data;
• How we received your personal data and its source;
• Our business purpose for using your personal data; and
• How long we use or store your personal data or the manner in which we determine relevant retention periods.
• You have a right to correct inaccurate personal data about you.
• In certain situations, you can request that we erase/delete or stop using your personal data.
• In certain situations you can object to or restrict our use of your personal data.
• You have the right to ask us to export your personal data to another third party of your choosing or provide you with a  copy of your personal data.
• Where we rely on your consent to process your personal data, you can withdraw consent you may have already provided at any time. This will not affect the lawfulness of the processing prior to the withdrawal of your consent. You have the right not to be discriminated against for exercising a privacy right.
• If you are unsatisfied with our response to your complaint, you have a right to raise questions or complaints with your local data protection authority at any time.

Notice of Right to Opt-out of Sale/Sharing. Privacy Laws in certain jurisdictions require that we tell you if we sell personal data  to a third party for monetary or (in California) other valuable consideration. We do not sell or share your Personal Data for monetary or other valuable consideration. We also do not sell personal data of minors under the age of 16 for monetary or other valuable consideration. We may share information with third parties in order to provide cross-contextual behavioral advertising. This sharing provides you with more tailored and personalized content and ads. Some browsers also allow you to tell websites not to share your information for cross-contextual behavioral advertising. We will respond to these signals in a frictionless manner. If you configure this setting on your browser, certain features on our Site may not work and you will receive less targeted advertising. To learn how to configure this setting, view  here. Additionally, the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising provides consumers with the ability to manage certain choices online  here  and provides a tool for managing mobile choices here. Selections are browser and device-specific.

How it works. If you wish to exercise these rights, please contact us by sending an email to notice@ourbranch.com. We will respond promptly to address your request. For security purposes and as required by law, if you make a request to exercise the rights referenced above, we will require you to provide certain information for identity verification purposes. If you have a policy with us or an application submitted to us, we may verify your information. If you do not have a policy or an application with us, we may require you to provide additional information from which we can confirm your identity. Where permitted by law you may authorize an agent to make a request to us on your behalf, and we will verify the identity of your agent or authorized legal representative by either seeking confirmation from you or documents that establish the agent’s authorization to act on your behalf.

Exceptions. In some cases, we may not be able to complete your request because an exception exists under applicable law. For example, we may need to keep some information to provide the Services.

Changes to this Privacy Statement

We may change this Privacy Statement at any time. Please take a look at the at the top of this page to see the date of the last revision. Any changes will become effective when we post the revised Privacy Statement on our Site. Your use of the Site, our services, or our products following these changes means that you accept the revised Privacy Statement.