Answer Financial Employee Privacy Statement

EFFECTIVE: 02/15/2023

Your privacy is very important to us. This Employee Privacy Statement (“Privacy Statement”) describes the privacy practices of Answer Financial Inc. ("Answer", “we”, “our”, or “us”) as it relates to the collection, use and sharing of personal information relating to prospective, current, and former employees in the United States.

Use the Table of Contents to link directly to a specific section or scroll down to read the full Privacy Statement.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

We collect personal and other information about you. Personal information is data that identifies, relates to, describes, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked (directly or indirectly) with you. Other information does not and cannot reveal an individual’s identity such as information that has been de-identified or aggregated.

We collect or create personal information about you in the following ways and from these sources:

Information collected directly from you:

We collect personal information from you directly as part of your employment relationship or when you seek employment. This includes personal information provided in resumes and employment applications, information collected in connection with the onboarding process, information collected as part of your employment relationship including payroll information such as social security number, address, and bank information for direct deposits and information relating to subscribing to health and welfare benefits (e.g., short and long-term disability, medical and dental care) including beneficiary and emergency contacts information.

Information collected automatically:

We, our affiliates, and service providers working on our behalf, collect information from you when you use our websites, mobile apps, view our emails or otherwise engage with us through a computer or mobile device (“Sites”). We may monitor the use of our premises, equipment, devices, computers, network, applications, software, and similar assets and resources which may result in the collection of personal information about you. This monitoring may include the use of cameras in and around our premises or electronic monitoring technologies via our networks.

Information collected from third parties:

We collect personal information about you from third parties such as consumer reporting agencies, job websites, application providers, and data providers for employment related purposes, to maintain applicable benefits and for other purposes stated below. We also collect personal information from third parties such as social networking sites or other application providers with whom you have interacted.

Information created about you:

We collect or create information about you based on our interaction with you as a prospective or current employee such as interview notes, performance information, and wage and benefit information.


CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The following are the categories of personal information we have collected and shared for at least the past 12 months, and examples of the personal information that fall into those categories:

Personal information categories Examples
Personal identifiers Name, alias, signature, postal address, email address, unique personal identifier, online identifier, internet protocol (IP) address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number, driver's license number, state identification number, and passport number.
Personal characteristics Age, race, ancestry, national origin, citizenship, religion, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, sex (including gender, gender identity, gender expression), pregnancy or childbirth and related medical conditions, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, genetic information (including familial genetic information), and other description of your physical characteristics (e.g., height).
Biometrics and multimedia information Fingerprint, voiceprint, audio, photo, electronic, visual or other recordings.
Employment information Bank account or credit card number or other payment or financial information, medical information or health insurance information or other similar identifiers. Professional history or employment-related information, and family member information.
Education information Education records directly related to a student maintained by an educational institution or party acting on its behalf, such as grades, transcripts, class lists, student schedules, student identification codes, student financial information.
Geolocation data Physical location, movements tracking information.
Inferences In some cases, we may draw inferences from the personal information collected to create a profile reflecting preferences, characteristics, trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, and aptitudes, which may also be considered to be personal information.
Internet or other electronic network activity information Browsing history, search history, information regarding your interaction with our website, application or advertisement, links you use or web pages you visit while visiting our site or applications, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), cookies, and mobile device information including device identifier or other information.

Our Sites are not intended for children. We do not knowingly collect any information from children under the age of sixteen.


Sensitive Personal Information

Some personal information we collect is defined under the law as sensitive personal information. Sensitive personal information we collect includes Social Security number, driver’s license number, state identification card number, or passport number, account log-in information, financial account numbers, precise geolocation information, racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or union membership, genetic data, biometric information used for identification, personal health information, sexual orientation.

USE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We use personal information collected from or about you (including personal information about your dependents, approved family members, beneficiaries and emergency contacts) for business purposes including to:

  • Process an application for employment including determining eligibility or qualifications for employment, requesting a background check, and submitting a screening assessment,
  • Identify, review and manage candidacy for job opportunities,
  • Provide or administer wages, payments, and benefits,
  • Conduct performance reviews, establish training requirements, and conduct investigations or pursue disciplinary actions or termination,
  • Compile directories and establish contacts in the event of an emergency,
  • Comply with legal requirements, assist in an investigation, comply with requests from regulatory and law enforcement authorities and meet contractual obligations,
  • Communicate with you via email, mail or other methods about the company, benefits, wages, job opportunities, technology or services offered or other information relevant to employment status,
  • Provide you with employment related tools, systems, including providing you with access to systems or applications operated by affiliates, as well as mobile applications for voluntary wellness programs,
  • Analyze, improve or develop our employee-related processes, networks or tools using algorithms, analytics software, research studies, surveys, and other similar methods, including analyzing employment related data to forecast global workforce trends, monitoring employee usage of online tools,
  • Protect the safety and security of our business, services, and Sites including to prevent suspected fraud, threats to our network or other illegal activities, prevent misuse or for any other reason permitted by law,
  • Update or correct our records including combining information we have with information received from other sources, including publicly available databases, and
  • Carry out other activities required in the normal course of our employment relationship with you.

We use sensitive personal information only as reasonably necessary to perform or maintain the services or provide goods you requested, to perform services such as maintaining or servicing accounts, processing payments, to detect security incidents, resist malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal actions and to prosecute those responsible for those actions, to ensure peoples’ physical safety, to verify or maintain the quality or safety of service, improve, upgrade or enhance service, or other reasons that do not require an opt-out of this use.

RETAINING YOUR INFORMATION

We retain personal information in accordance with applicable laws or regulatory requirements and also for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected and to fulfill the business or commercial purposes that are explained in this Privacy Statement.

SHARING YOUR INFORMATION

We do not sell your personal information. We may share information about you with third parties whenever you consent to or direct such sharing. We strive to work with companies that share our commitment to privacy. We may also share information with others in an aggregated or de-identified form that does not reasonably identify you.

We may also share your personal information with third parties for business purposes or as required or permitted by law including with:

  • Affiliates: Personal Information may be shared with the Allstate Corporation and its corporate affiliates (referenced in this Privacy Statement as “affiliates”), for business purposes consistent with the uses described above in the section titled ‘Use of Your Information’.
  • Service providers: We may share personal information with service providers, including our affiliates and their service providers, who perform services on our behalf for business purposes described above in “Use of Your Information” such as payroll support, employment related marketing services, tax and travel management services, health and safety and professional services such as accounting, management consulting, and relocation services. We may also share personal information with marketing companies to market to you or permit online marketing companies to collect information from you directly online on our or our affiliate’s Sites to personalize online marketing campaigns. The Cookies and Other Tracking Technologies section below has more details about these online activities.
  • Benefits providers: We may share your personal information with third parties who provide employee related benefits such as financial investment service providers, and insurance providers, to confirm your eligibility for these benefits.
  • Third parties in connection with a business transaction: Personal information may be disclosed to third parties in connection with a corporate transaction, such as a merger, sale of any or all of our company assets or shares, reorganization, financing, change of control or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by an affiliate or third party, or in the event of a bankruptcy or related or similar proceedings. This may also include sharing personal information with other companies to outsource or make other operational changes to our workforce.
  • Law enforcement, regulators and other parties for legal reasons: Personal information may be disclosed to third parties, as required by law or subpoena, or if we reasonably believe such action is necessary to:
    • comply with the law and the reasonable requests of regulators, court orders, law enforcement or other public authorities, such as a subpoena, government audit or search warrant,
    • comply with a contract or as necessary to establish, exercise or defend against potential, threatened or actual litigation,
    • protect us, your vital interests, or those of another person, and
    • investigate fraud or to protect the security or integrity of our Sites, tools, facilities, or other individuals.

Depending on the circumstances, we may share any of the listed categories of personal information with the above categories of third parties.

COOKIES AND OTHER TRACKING TECHNOLOGIES

Technologies and Information Collected: When you visit our Sites, we and our service providers automatically collect personal and other information about your use of and access to these Sites. We collect this information through a variety of tracking technologies, including cookies, Flash objects, web beacons (also called pixel tags), embedded scripts, location-identifying technologies, and similar technology (collectively, “tracking technologies”).

Information we collect automatically about you may be combined with other information we collect directly. The information collected in this manner includes:

  • The website from where you accessed the Site, where you went to when you left the Site, how frequently you visit the Sites, when and whether you open emails or click the links contained in emails, pages you visit on our Sites, the links you click and ads you view, or your location when you access our Sites,
  • Information about the computer, tablet, smartphone or other device you use, such as your IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, platform type, device type/model/manufacturer, operating system, date and time stamp, a unique ID that allows us to uniquely identify your browser, mobile device or your account (including, e.g., a persistent device identifier or an Ad ID), and other similar information,
  • Analytics information collected by us or via third party analytics tools, to help us measure traffic and usage trends for the Sites and to understand more about the demographics and behaviors of our users, and
  • How often you use a mobile app, from where the app was downloaded, events that occur within the app, aggregated usage, and performance data.

Use of the information: We or our service providers may use the information collected through tracking technologies to improve, enhance and personalize your customer experience, to monitor and improve our Sites and for other internal purposes such as to:

  • Remember information so that you will not have to re-enter it during your visit or the next time you visit the Sites,
  • Evaluate our marketing campaigns and analyze how our applications and websites are used,
  • Identify and contact you across multiple devices,
  • Provide and monitor the effectiveness of our Sites,
  • Perform analytics and detect usage patterns on our Sites,
  • Diagnose or fix technology problems,
  • Detect or prevent fraud or other harmful activities, and
  • Otherwise to plan for and enhance our Sites.

Our service providers include Google. To learn more about Google’s privacy practices, click here. To access and use the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, click here.

Your choices regarding cookies: If you prefer not to accept cookies, most browsers will allow you to change your browser settings to disable existing cookies, automatically request cookies or to notify you when you receive a cookie. However, if you disable, modify, or reject cookies, some parts or functionalities of the Sites may be inaccessible or not function properly. For example, disabling cookies may require you to repeatedly enter information to take advantage of services.

PRIVACY RIGHTS AND CHOICES

Accessing, modifying and deleting your information: General information for all US employees

It is important that the information contained in our records is both accurate and current. If your personal information happens to change, please keep us informed of such changes. Current and former employees may verify or correct personal information by contacting Answer Financial at HumanResources@AnswerFinancial.com.

California Consumer Privacy Act Rights:

California residents have certain rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”) to access, correct and delete personal information, and other rights described below.

 

Right to Know and Access Your Personal Information: You have the right to request the specific pieces of personal information we have collected about you and the right to know:

  • the categories of personal information we’ve collected,
  • the categories of sources from which personal information was collected,
  • the business purpose for collecting the personal information, and
  • the categories of third parties with whom we disclose or share personal information.

Right to Deletion of Personal Information: You have the right to request deletion of personal information collected from you, subject to certain exceptions including that we need the personal information to:

  • Detect security incidents, protect against malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity, or prosecute those responsible for such activities,
  • Comply with a legal obligation, or
  • Otherwise use your personal information, internally, in a lawful manner that is compatible with the context in which you provided the information.

Right to Correct Personal Information: You have the right to request we correct any inaccurate information we have about you. We may request that you provide documentation to support your request and we will correct your information unless we determine that the personal information is more than likely accurate.

Non-Discrimination Rights: We don’t discriminate against you if you exercise any of the privacy rights described in this privacy statement.

Verified Requests: To protect you and your personal information, we will only respond to requests to know, access, delete or correct that we have been able to properly verify through our authentication processes. To verify your identity, you will be asked to provide personal information, such as name, birth date, and/or the last four digits of your Social Security number, which we only use to verify your identity or authority to make the request.

You may also make requests to know, access, review, delete or correct your personal information through an authorized agent if you give the agent signed permission to submit the request. If an authorized agent submits a request on your behalf, we may ask you to verify your identity and confirm that you provided the authorized agent permission to submit the request.

Submitting a Request: : To submit an access, deletion, or correction request,click here to submit an online request or call us at 1-888-982-9111.

Responses to a verified request may take up to 45 calendar days, or longer depending on the nature of the request. If additional time is needed, we will notify you of the additional time. We may only respond to two access requests within a 12-month period. Requests from authorized agents must be submitted via HumanResources@AnswerFinancial.com, and the authorized agent will be required to verify their identity with us.


SOCIAL MEDIA, LINKS, AND EXTERNAL SITES

Links to our affiliates’ or other company’s websites may be provided on our Sites as a convenience to you. If you choose to go to these external websites, you will be subject to the privacy practices of those external websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those websites. We encourage you to be aware when you leave our website to read the privacy policies or statements of every affiliates’ or third party’s website you visit, as those privacy policies or statements may differ from ours. Our Privacy Statement applies solely to the websites where this Privacy Statement appears.

SECURITY

The security of your personal information is important to us. We use a combination of reasonable technical, administrative, and physical safeguards to protect your personal information. However, no website, mobile application, database or system is completely secure or “hacker proof.” So, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. You are also responsible for taking reasonable steps to protect your personal information against unauthorized disclosure or misuse and to follow and implement all policies and practices to protect personal information collected by us.

We limit access to your personal information to those who need it to do their jobs. We comply with all applicable federal and state data security laws.

CONTACT US

If you have questions or concerns about our privacy practices, please contact HumanResources@AnswerFinancial.com.

CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY STATEMENT

We may periodically update or revise this Privacy Statement. The date at the top of this page shows when this Privacy Statement was last revised. We will let you know when we update the Privacy Statement by changing the date or other appropriate means.