Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

(Updated November 3, 2022)

We respect your privacy concerns and offer this Privacy Policy for your assurance:

Bestquotetravelinsurance.ca is an online service operated by BestQuote Travel Insurance Agency — a business unit of Select First Financial Services Inc. ("BestQuote", "Select First", "we", "our", or “us”). This privacy policy describes how and why BestQuote collects, uses, retains and discloses information from our customers or potential customers, and complies with the requirements under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) of Canada and also the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union (EU). By "customer" we mean any website visitor that comes to our website; any person that has been referred to our website; anyone who has purchased a policy through the site or by phone; anyone for whom we have come into contact with any personally identifiable information for any reason.

All customers' information is regarded as confidential and is safeguarded. This privacy policy describes your options for accessing, limiting the use and disclosure of, and resolving disputes regarding your personal information.

Consent for Information We Collect

In certain circumstances, we may need your consent to process certain categories of information about you. We believe in the value of transparency and ask you for consent when you enter our website when you complete a request for a quote, and when you are completing a purchase transaction. You do not have to give your consent, and you may withdraw your consent at any time. However, if you do not provide your consent, or you withdraw your consent, this may affect our ability to provide the insurance coverage that you would like the benefit of and may prevent us from assisting you further.

We gather and store data about online usage on a collective basis, such as the number of visitors that visit our website and the pages that they view, not what pages were viewed by each individual. To do this, we use log files and tracking technologies, including hashed identifiers derived from email addresses for the purposes of cross-device tracking for targeted advertising. As is true of most websites, we gather certain types of information automatically. This information includes the internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, policy wordings, etc.), operating system, date/time stamp, and referring IP address of our visitors through a site-reporting tool that runs on our servers and uses 'cookies.' Cookies are small bits of information stored on your computer's hard drive. The only personal information cookies can contain, is that which the website visitor supplies and cookies cannot read data from your computer's hard drive. Website visitors can set their internet browsers to block the use of cookies, but if you choose to do so, some areas of our website may not function as designed. This information is used to aid site administration, to gather demographic information about our website user base as a whole, and improve user experience.

Specifically, we use Google Analytics to track website visits and to optimize our advertising on Google Ads. We also use Facebook Pixel and AdRoll to track our users' website usage to improve user experience on our site and to optimize any advertising on Facebook. If you would like to opt-out of this tracking activity, please click here to disable Google Analytics tracking and click here to disable Facebook tracking while you visit our site. To learn more about how your information is collected stored and used by Google Analytics, and Facebook, please visit their privacy policies here: Google Privacy Policy and Facebook Privacy Policy . The AdRoll Privacy Policy has a great wealth of information regarding opting out of targeted advertising while using this site, or other sites, and is a very transparent online advertising service that uses industry best practices to protect website user information, so we ask you to view their privacy policy in conjunction with our own (although, we no longer use AdRoll services). 

We also use Jivochat.com for our customer chat window, which also requires the use of cookies to function properly. Our site also uses its own 'cookies' to save your quote information, so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit our site, to let us know if you have answered a medical questionnaire, completed one of the steps in the 'checkout' process when purchasing a policy, to identify you as a client of one of our contracted brokers/affiliates, or to let us know that you've already consented to the use of cookies!  

BestQuote may ask you to provide your personal data if you would like to take advantage of its products or services. For example, to obtain an instant quote of the insurance policies that we are licensed to distribute to Canadians and visitors to Canada, we ask you to provide an email address so that we can email you with a link back to your quote for future reference purposes and for us, to make it easier for you to communicate directly with us about those policy options. If you want to opt-out of receiving relevant email correspondence, you are not required to provide your email address. We will also ask to collect your personal information, such as your name and address, when you are choosing to obtain coverage. The way insurance works means that your information may be shared with, and used by, a number of third parties in the insurance sector, for example, insurers, agents or brokers, reinsurers, loss adjusters, sub-contractors, regulators, law enforcement agencies, fraud and crime prevention and detection agencies and compulsory insurance databases. We will only disclose your personal information in connection with the insurance cover that we provide and to the extent required or permitted by law.

Our Legal Obligations 

For UK or EU residents:

The General Data Protection Regulations https://ico.org.uk/

We process your personal information because it is necessary for the performance of our contract with you — your insurance policy. We also process personal information for certain legitimate business purposes which, in addition to those mentioned above, include some or all of the following:

• Where the processing enables us to enhance, modify, personalize or otherwise improve our services and communications for the benefit of you, our customers
• Managing insurance premiums
• Managing insurance claims
• To identify and prevent fraud
• To enhance the security of our network and information systems
• To better understand how people interact with our websites
• To determine the effectiveness of promotional campaigns and advertising

Whenever we process data for these purposes, we will ensure that we always keep your personal data rights in high regard and take account of these rights. You have the right to object to this processing if you wish to do so, please email us at [email protected]. Please bear in mind that if you object, this may affect our ability to carry out tasks above for your benefit.

Bestquotetravelinsurance.ca may be required by law to disclose customer's personal information, but unless mandated to do so, bestquotetravelinsurance.ca will never disclose any customer's personal information with any other outside person, company association or organization except as outlined below in order to perform the natural course of our business — collecting a customer's personal information and relaying that information to an insurance company of their choice in order to obtain insurance coverage.

Suppliers and service providers such as data processors or website service providers are only given customers' personal information necessary to perform their services. These organizations and their employees are also required to follow our privacy policy in relation to customers' personal information. They are contractually bound to only use customers' personal information in order to supply their services or products to us.

In the event that you have been referred to our site by an Affiliate that has signed a Referral Arrangement Agreement before making the referral to you, that Affiliate will be able to confirm only the email address you use on our site for quoting purposes. We have allowed licensed financial advisors to become Affiliates to refer their clients to our site in order to help them with their travel insurance, and it is necessary to properly track who has made the referral for the purposes of calculating and paying any referral fees when appropriate.

Collection of Personal Information 

When practical, we will collect the required information directly from you or from your authorized representative(s). In general, we will use only fair and lawful means to collect data from you that will be used to resolve questions/inquiries, provide accurate quotes and to have policies issued to you. Specifically, we collect, track and use the following information:

For inquiries and questions, we will collect your name, email address and any comments/questions. For a quote, we will collect date(s) of birth for each traveller, dates of travel, destination, trip type, province of residence, coverage limits, the trip deposit date and email address. For purchasing a policy, we will also collect the name(s) of travellers, mailing address, telephone number(s), tour operator and credit card information. Credit card information is encrypted and stored on our servers only temporarily until processed (when you are purchasing a policy administered by an insurance company directly or a third-party administrator) over a secure payment connection provided by the insurance company/administrator. When Select First Financial Services Inc. and/or BestQuote Travel Insurance Agency act as the policy administrator (clearly identified at the top of the policy wording and in the name of the policy), we use a secure third party encrypted web service to safeguard credit card information and avoid storage issues. We do treat your personal information with the highest regard and have developed a secure web environment to safeguard your information. Please view our Security Statement for details.

Please note that our website contains links to other websites for your convenience. When 'clicking' away from our site, BestQuote is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of any other websites that are linked to or from our site. If you have navigated away from our site, please view the privacy policy of the site you are visiting to ensure your privacy is being safeguarded in an appropriate manner.  

Your Consent

This privacy policy forms part of our Terms of Use, which outlines proper conduct for visitors to our website. Our Terms of Use is a contract of service agreement, whereby any personal information provided to us is regarded as an act of consent, agreeing to the Terms of Use contained on our website. If you do not agree to the Terms of Use herein contained, please do not provide us with any personal information.

We collect, store, use and share the information you provide us with your full consent to do so for the purposes herein described. Your full consent is expressed verbally or electronically by you in the course of using our website or by your authorized representative(s), such as your licensed insurance agent, travel agent or financial services advisor. If you choose to do so, you may contact us to be provided with various consent options on what type of information we can use for which purposes (emails, reminder notices, renewal notices, etc.) with an 'opt out' option for each.

Uses of Personal Information 

In addition to those uses described above, Customers' personal information may be collected, stored and used for the following purposes: 

• To determine insurance premiums;
• To understand customer needs and assess the suitability of insurance products offered;
• To assess customer insurability;
• To administer all transactions such as quote requests, payments and policy delivery;
• To provide you with assistance and customer service;
• To identify and mitigate potential risks or losses including fraud;
• To conduct customer research;
• To meet our legal and regulatory obligations. 

Limited Disclosure of Personal Information 

We only disclose customer's personal information to our licensed representatives, employees, directors and officers; and to our partnered travel insurance suppliers and service providers. We do not sell, share, trade or provide any of your personal information to others for any purpose. 

Safeguarding Information 

We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to protect the customer information we collect.

Unauthorized access or use of personal information is prevented through the technological use of dual verification passwords, encryption, firewalls and anti-virus software. Personal information provided to our website is encrypted using extended validation Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. To support this technology, your internet browser must be SSL-capable. If safeguarding your information is a high concern, please verify that your internet browser is SSL-capable. An SSL-capable browser will activate SSL encryption automatically whenever you begin the application process on our website. 

Please view our complete Security Statement for additional details. 

Retention of Information

We only keep customer information in our records for as long as it is needed for the identified purposes. Information that is no longer required will be destroyed, erased or made anonymous.

Individual Access 

You are entitled to access the personal information which we have gathered about you. You may request corrections or deletions of that information. To do so, please direct your request to [email protected] or send us a written request to: