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Higginbotham Privacy Policy

The Higginbotham privacy policy was last updated September 2021. 

We firmly believe in data security and protecting the privacy and confidentiality of all visitors and customers to our website. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, store and disclose your information.

Please read the policy and contact us if you have any questions.

Purpose of This Notice

Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), in addition to other federal, state and local regulation, generally prohibits any financial institution, directly or through its affiliates, from sharing non-public information about you with a non-affiliated third party unless the institution provides you with a notice of its privacy policy and practices, such as the type of information that it collects about you and the categories of personal information or entities to whom it may be disclosed. In compliance with these regulations, we are providing you with this document, which notifies you of the privacy policies and practices of our company.

Scope of the Privacy Policy  

This privacy policy applies to all information Higginbotham may collect about you, including but not limited to use of www.higginbotham.net and/or higginbotham.com, any other website of Higginbotham where a link to this notice is provided and our affiliate or branch offices. 

This policy applies to the information collected from, but not limited to: 

  • On the website, www.higginbotham.net and/or higginbotham.com, and all associated websites linked to www.higginbotham.net and/or higginbotham.com by Higginbotham where this privacy policy is linked  (collectively, the “website”)
  • In e-mails, texts, online forms and other electronic messages between you and Higginbotham
  • From third party vendors and public data sources
  • Offline, via phone calls, in-person meetings or through any other means
  • Information shared with Higginbotham necessary to provide services
  • Information entered to create an account

Why do we collect your information and data? 

At Higginbotham, we strive to offer you outstanding service. We use data gathered from our Website, in person and electronic communications to continue offering outstanding service. 

Starting this year, we intend to use visitor and client data for the following purposes: 

  • Provide support and services for operating our Website
  • Analyze and improve our business offerings and customer service
  • Personalize content and experiences
  • Advertise, market, and promote our services and those of others
  • Secure and protect our business
  • Defend our legal rights
  • Produce internal audits and reports, or for corporate governance and internal operations
  • Comply with legal obligations
  • Create new products and/or services

Information You Provide

If you provide us with personal information about other people, you represent that you have the authority to provide this information on their behalf. In these instances, you further represent that the individuals to whom this information relates have been informed of and understand the reason(s) for obtaining the information, the manner in which this information will be used and disclosed, and have consented to such use and disclosure.

Our privacy policies and practices

Information We Collect

We collect non-public personal information about you from the following sources: 

  • Information we receive from you on applications or other forms
  • Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates and others
  • Information we receive from a consumer-reporting agency
  • Information we receive from you through our “contact us” form 
  • Information you give us in person, over the phone and via email

Cookies and Their Use on This Website 

A cookie is a message given to a web browser by a web server. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from that server. Cookie files define you as a user, not as an identifiable person.

We use cookies and other methods to help recognize our clients and visitors in hopes of serving a better online experience. We also use them to analyze our site traffic and personalize ads and content to fit your interests.

To learn more about our cookies and other identification methods, including how to disable them, you can view our Cookie Policy. Starting October 1, 2021, we may use this information to create ads we think are relevant to your interests, based on the kinds of content you access in our Services. You can object.

By tapping “accept” or by continuing to use this website, you consent to Higginbotham’s and third parties’ use of these methods. As a reminder, you can change your tracking preferences by visiting our Cookie Policy.

Information We May Disclose to Third Parties 

We may disclose the following kinds of information about you in order for us to do business:

  • Information we receive from you on applications or other forms, such as your name, address, Social Security number, assets, income and beneficiaries
  • Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others, such as your insurance coverage, premiums and payment history
  • Information we receive from a consumer reporting agency, such as your creditworthiness and credit history
  • Information we receive related to providing employee benefits and/or HR services
  • Anonymized, aggregated data sets of the above information

Third Parties to Whom We May Disclose Information 

We may disclose your Personal Information to a third party for a business purpose. Our third-party affiliates, service providers, and successors to whom we disclose your Personal Information are required by law and/or contractual requirements to keep your Personal Information confidential and secure. These third parties may not use or disclose it except: 1) as reasonably necessary to perform the contract; 2) to provide services to you on our behalf, or on behalf of your employer or association, group of benefit program sponsor; 3) to comply with applicable law or regulation; or 4) as permitted by applicable law.

We may disclose non-public personal information about you to the following types of third parties:

  • Insurance entities, such as insurance carriers, intermediaries, risk management assessors, claims adjusters, service providers, insurance agencies and brokers, and wholesale brokers.
  • Financial service providers, such as mortgage bankers, premium-finance companies and securities broker-dealers.
  • Third-party vendors we may use to assist in providing services to you, including but not limited to those providing enrollment solutions, claims analytics, third party administration, benchmarking, human resources, employee benefits, etc.
  • Data-analysis software companies, including but not limited to Salesforce and Google Analytics.

Links to Other Websites 

This Website contains links to other websites. The operators of those websites may collect information about you through cookies or other technologies. If you click a link to another website, you will leave the Higginbotham Website, and this privacy policy will not apply to your use of and activity on that external website.

If you provide personal information through any other website, your transaction will occur on that website (not the Higginbotham Website), and the personal information you provide will be collected and controlled by the privacy policy of that website operator. Links on the Higginbotham Website to other websites are provided only as a convenience, and the inclusion of such links does not imply vetting or endorsement of the linked website.

We encourage you to read the legal notice posted on those websites, including their privacy policies. We have no responsibility or liability for your access or use of, and the data collection and use practices of, other websites.

Please be aware that Higginbotham is not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites, even though Higginbotham’s name or logo may appear on those sites.

Children’s Privacy 

Higginbotham’s Website is not directed to or intended for children. Through its Website, Higginbotham does not knowingly collect or post information from children under the age of 13 in compliance with laws protecting the privacy of children. Visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website to learn more about the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Service Providers and Joint Marketers

We may disclose all of the information we collect, as described above under the caption “Information we collect,” to companies that perform marketing services on our behalf, or to other insurance entities or financial institutions with whom we have joint marketing agreements.

California Residents’ Right to Opt-out of Third-party Disclosures 

Please review the “Privacy Notice for California Residents”, below, for more information.

Our Practices Regarding Information Confidentiality and Security 

At all times, we use our best and diligent efforts to restrict access to non-public personal information about you to those employees or third parties who need to know that information in order to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with applicable federal and state laws and regulations to guard your non-public personal information.

Reservation of the Right to Change Our Privacy Policy 

We reserve the right to amend or replace this policy without notice. By visiting our website or using our services, you agree to accept all terms and conditions outlined in this privacy policy.

Higginbotham Privacy Notice for California Residents

Effective Date: January 1, 2020
Last Reviewed on: September 21, 2021

This Privacy Notice for California Residents supplements the information contained in Higginbotham’s Privacy Policy located at https://www.higginbotham.net/privacy-policy and/or higginbotham.com/privacy-policy and applies solely to all visitors, users and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers” or “you”). We adopt this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this Notice.

This Notice does not apply to employment-related Personal Information collected from California-based employees, job applicants, contractors, or similar individuals (see California Employee Privacy Notice).

Where noted in this Notice, the CCPA temporarily exempts Personal Information reflecting a written or verbal business-to-business communication (“B2B Personal Information”) from some of its requirements.

If you are an employee of a commercial client of Higginbotham, we may collect Personal Information in performance of our contract with your employer. In that instance, we are acting as a “Service Provider” to your employer.  As such, we are obligated to collect and process that Personal Information in order to achieve the purpose of that contract such as providing Employee Benefits and your employer which remains responsible for the handling of your Personal Information.  You should therefore review your employer’s Privacy Notice to learn how your Personal Information is handled.

When we act as a Service Provider to a Client, if you or your authorized agent, as discussed further below, want to exercise any of your rights afforded under the CCPA, you need to contact your employer to make your request.  We do not have any obligation to respond to your requests under these circumstances.  If you are unclear whether or not we are acting as a Service Provider to a Client, you may contact us through one of the provided methods below.

Information We Collect

Higginbotham is an insurance brokerage, placing insurance policies, providing risk management, employee benefits and related services to our clients.  In conducting our business, we collect information that identifies, relates to, describes, references, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with a particular consumer, household, or device (“Personal Information”). Personal Information does not include:

  • Publicly available information from government records
  • Deidentified or aggregated consumer information
  • Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like:
    • Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data
    • Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

In particular, we have collected the following categories of Personal Information (PI) from our consumers within the last twelve (12) months:

  • Identifiers
  • Personal information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute
  • Protected classification characteristics under California or federal law
  • Criminal and motor vehicle records
  • Commercial information
  • Internet or other similar network activity
  • Geolocation data
  • Professional or employment related information
  • Non-public education information (per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act
  • Inferences drawn from other personal information
  • Children’s data

Categories of Sources of Personal Information

We obtain the categories of Personal Information listed above from the following categories of sources:

  • Directly from you. For example, from the insurance applications you submit to us or requests for information you submit through our website.
  • Indirectly from you. For example, from observing your actions on our website.
  • From third parties acting on your behalf such as a financial advisor, business manager, insurance carriers or your employer who has hired us to provide insurance services on its behalf and for its employees. In the latter instance, Higginbotham is considered a “Service Provider.”

Sharing Personal Information

We may disclose your Personal Information to a third party for a business purpose. Our third-party affiliates, service providers, and successors to whom we disclose your Personal Information are required by law and/or contractual requirements to keep your Personal Information confidential and secure. These third parties may not use or disclose it except: 1) as reasonably necessary to perform the contract; 2) to provide services to you on our behalf, or on behalf of your employer or association, group of benefit program sponsor; 3) to comply with applicable law or regulation; or 4) as permitted by applicable law.

We may disclose non-public personal information about you to the following types of third parties:

  • Insurance entities, such as insurance carriers, intermediaries, risk management assessors, claims adjusters, service providers, insurance agencies and brokers, and wholesale brokers.
  • Financial service providers, such as mortgage bankers, premium-finance companies and securities broker-dealers.
  • Third-party vendors we may use to assist in providing services to you, including but not limited to those providing enrollment solutions, claims analytics, third party administration, benchmarking, human resources, employee benefits, etc.
  • Data-analysis software companies, including but not limited to Salesforce and Google Analytics.

Sales of Personal Information 

Higginbotham does not sell Personal Information to third parties.  In the preceding twelve (12) months, Higginbotham has not sold any Personal Information.  Commencing this year, Higginbotham may engage a third-party vendor to provide analytics from the aggregated data collected from our clients and from Cookies. The disclosure of this information to third party vendors may be considered a “sale” under the CCPA.

The aggregated and anonymized data may be used to:

  • Provide support and services for operating our Website
  • Analyze and improve our business offerings and customer service
  • Personalize content and experiences
  • Advertise, market, and promote our services and those of others
  • Secure and protect our business
  • Defend our legal rights
  • Produce internal audits and reports, or for corporate governance and internal operations
  • Comply with legal obligations
  • Create new products and/or services

Your Rights and Choices 

The CCPA provides consumers (California residents) with specific rights regarding their Personal Information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Access to Specific Information and Data Portability Rights 

You have the right to request that we disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your Personal Information over the past 12 months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Access, Data Portability and Deletion Rights), we will disclose to you:

  • The categories of Personal Information we collected about you
  • The categories of sources for the Personal Information we collected about you
  • Our business or commercial purpose for collecting or selling that Personal Information
  • The categories of third parties with whom we share that Personal Information
  • The specific pieces of Personal Information we collected about you (also called a data portability request)
  • If we disclosed your Personal Information for a business purpose, a list disclosing:
    • Disclosures for a business purpose, identifying the Personal Information categories that each category of recipient obtained

We do not provide these access and data portability rights for B2B Personal Information.

Deletion Request Rights 

You have the right to request that we delete any of your Personal Information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request (see Exercising Access, Data Portability and Deletion Rights), we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your Personal Information from our records, unless an exception applies.

We may deny your deletion request if retaining the information is necessary for us or our service provider(s) to:

  1. Complete the insurance transaction for which we collected the Personal Information, provide the service that you requested, and take actions reasonably anticipated within the context of our ongoing business relationship with you. As an insurance brokerage, we are required by law to maintain the information and documentation you provided to us to procure your insurance policies for a minimum of 5 years. Therefore, in most cases, we will not delete your Personal Information.
  2. Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities.
  3. Debug products to identify and repair errors that impair existing intended functionality.
  4. Comply with the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Cal. Penal Code § 1546 et. seq.).
  5. Enable solely internal uses that are reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on your relationship with us.
  6. Comply with a legal obligation.
  7. Make other internal and lawful uses of that information that are compatible with the context in which you provided it.

We do not provide these deletion rights for B2B Personal Information.

Exercising Access, Data Portability and Deletion Rights 

To exercise the access, data portability, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

Only you, or someone legally authorized to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your Personal Information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. To designate an authorized agent, we must receive a verifiable written authorization from you designating your agent.

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access or data portability twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

  • Provide sufficient information that allows us to reasonably verify you are the person about whom we collected Personal Information or an authorized representative, which may include:
  • Confirm some of the Personal Information we have collected from you, excluding sensitive Personal Information such as driver’s license number or social security number.
  • Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate and respond to it.

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with Personal Information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the Personal Information relates to you.

Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use Personal Information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Response Timing and Format 

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within forty-five (45) days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing.  We will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option.

Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding receipt of the verifiable consumer request. The response we provide will also explain the reasons we cannot comply with a request, if applicable. For data portability requests, we will select a format to provide your Personal Information that is readily useable and should allow you to transmit the information from one entity to another entity without hindrance.

We do not charge a fee to process or respond to your verifiable consumer request unless it is excessive, repetitive, or manifestly unfounded. If we determine that the request warrants a fee, we will tell you why we made that decision and provide you with a cost estimate before completing your request.

Non-discrimination

We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

  • Deny you goods or services.
  • Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
  • Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
  • Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

However, we may offer you certain financial incentives permitted by the CCPA that can result in different prices, rates or quality levels. Any CCPA-permitted financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to your Personal Information’s value and contain written terms that describe the program’s material aspects. Participation in a financial incentive program requires your prior opt in consent, which you may revoke at any time.  We do not presently offer any financial incentives with respect to the CCPA.

Right to Opt-out

You have the right to opt-out of the sale of any of your Personal Information to third parties by Higginbotham. To exercise this right, click on the link provided here or go to the home page of our website and click on the opt out icon.

Changes To Our Privacy Policy

We reserve the right to amend this privacy notice at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this privacy notice, we will post the updated notice on the website and update the notice’s effective date. Your continued use of our website and services following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.