Privacy Policy | Assurant

1. Introduction

At Assurant, we are committed to protecting your personal information and acting in accordance with the Privacy Act 2000, including the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs). This Privacy Policy sets out the minimum standards for how we deal with personal information collected, used, stored, and disclosed by Assurant to maintain individual privacy, including maintaining confidentiality and ensuring security.

In this Privacy Policy, “we, our, us or Assurant” means Virginia Surety Company, Inc., NZ Company No. 920655, Protecta Insurance New Zealand Limited, NZ Company No. 312700, and The Warranty Group Australasia Pty Ltd, NZ Company No. 2367681.

Our overall approach for complying with applicable privacy requirements includes:

Respecting and maintaining our customers’ privacy.
Embracing Privacy by Design by building privacy protections into our products and services from the outset.
Complying with all relevant privacy and data protection requirements and obligations.
Complying with our approach to the management of personal information as explained in this policy.
Ensuring appropriate resources are allocated to privacy, including technology systems and services, and our overall framework.
Training our employees.

2. What is Personal Information?

Personal information is information or an opinion about an identifiable, living individual, or a person reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not. This includes information that identifies you directly or indirectly, either on its own or when combined with other information.

3. Collecting Personal Information

3.1. The types of personal information we may collect
We will ensure that the collection of any personal information is lawful, fair, and not unreasonably intrusive. Collection of your personal information will be limited to what is necessary in the circumstances to provide you with relevant products and services. When you deal with us, we may collect personal information about or relating to you such as:

Your name, contact details, gender, date of birth, address, phone number and email address.
Other information including financial information (such as bank account of payment details), employment and income information, and government identifiers (such as driver licence or passport details.
Insurance, warranty, trade in and claims information, including policy details, claims history, risk information and supporting documents.
Product or device information, such as serial numbers or IMEI numbers.
Health or medical information, where reasonably necessary to manage claims and as permitted under the Privacy Act, and
Details about your interactions with us, like phone calls and emails, as well as information about your use of our website or applications using cookies or other digital tracking technology.

We understand some information is more sensitive, so we will be clear about why we are collecting it, what we intend to use it for, who we intend to share it with, and how we will protect it.

The types of personal information we collect will depend on your relationship with us, such as whether you are a customer including policyholder, website user, job applicant, employee, claimant or another third party (such as an existing or potential business partner).

We may also, in appropriate cases and to the extent permitted by law, control, process and use certain sensitive personal information (e.g., when undertaking ‘Know Your Customer’ or Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing (AML/CTF) checks, we may collect information about any offences that you or your employees, directors, officers or representatives have committed).

If you wish to remain anonymous or to use a pseudonym when dealing with us, we may only be able to provide you with limited information or services. However, in many cases it will not be possible for us to assist you with your specific needs if you wish to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym.

3.2. Who we collect this information from

We collect personal information directly from You in several ways, including when you:

Apply for, register, purchase or hold a product or service
Make a claim or request support
Participate in a trade in or related programme
Contact us by phone, email, online or in writing
Interact with our websites or digital services
Become of our representatives or business partners
Are employed by us or apply for a role with us, and
Visit our premises and are recorded through surveillance devices such as security cameras or CCTV installed at our offices.

We may also collect personal information about you from third parties when it is not reasonable or practical to collect it directly from you, when you have authorised us to do so, or where permitted by law to provide products or services, assess or settle claims, manage risk, investigate potential fraud or misconduct, or to meet our legal and regulatory obligations.

This may include personal information collected from:

Other companies within Assurant
Policy holders where you are an insured person on an insurance policy but not the policy holder
Retailers, dealers, distributors or other business partners
Insurers, reinsurers or insurance industry databases
Claims managers, repairers, assessors, investigators or loss adjusters
Financial institutions or payment service providers
The recruitment agency involved in your application or employment process with us
Persons or organisations legally acting on your behalf, such as your next of kin, nominated representative, legal guardian, or other person acting under a power of attorney
Persons or organisations assisting or representing us, or representatives of those persons or organisations such as recruitment or vetting agencies, and
Government agencies, regulators or public registers.

Where we collect personal information about You from a third party and do not collect it directly from you, we will take reasonable steps to notify you of that collection as soon as reasonably practicable, unless an exception under the Privacy Act 2020 applies. Some examples of when your personal information may be indirectly collected include:

Collection of contact details and identification information from authorized representatives to contact you, establish, administer and service our products and services, including acting on instructions given on your behalf
Collection of policy, underwriting, claims and benefit information from insurance partners to support the underwriting, administration, management and reporting of Assurant-distributed products and services
Employment history, qualifications, referee or background information from recruiters, referees or background checking providers to assess applications for employment or engagement and manage onboarding
Complaint details and supporting information from dispute resolution bodies to investigate, respond to and resolve complaints or disputes
Information required or authorized by law from government agencies to meet legal and regulatory obligations.

Notification may be provided through this privacy policy, website notices, contractual documentation, or direct communications, depending on the circumstances.

If you provide personal information about another person, you confirm that you are authorised to do so and that the individual has been made aware of this Privacy Policy.

3.3. Why we collect and use your personal information

We collect, hold, use, and disclose your personal information for our business and related activities, including to:

Provide, administer and manage insurance products, warranties, service contracts and trade in programmes
Assess, manage, investigate and settle claims
Verify identity and prevent, detect or investigate fraud, misconduct or unlawful activity
Communicate with you about products, services, claims or programme participation
Manage and respond to enquiries, complaints and disputes, and report to dispute resolution bodies
Manage, train and develop our employees and representatives
Manage a business or professional relationship we may with you
Consider your employment application if you apply for a job with us
Conduct analysis, quality assurance, and business improvement activities, and
Comply with legal, regulatory, reporting and audit obligations.

We may also use personal information for related purposes that you would reasonably expect in the circumstances.

Where permitted by law, we may send you information about products or services that may be relevant to you. You can opt out of marketing communications at any time.

3.4. What happens if you do not give us consent to collect your personal information?

If you do not provide us with consent to our reasonable requests for your personal information necessary for the purpose for which it is being sought, we may no longer be able to provide our services to you, such as to assess your application for insurance cover, assessment or processing an insurance your claim, paying invoices or consideration of your application for employment.

4. Storing and Disclosing Your Personal Information

We do our best to ensure that personal information we hold is accurate, complete, up to date and relevant. You are encouraged to notify us if your details change or if you believe information we hold about you is incorrect.

We will only disclose your personal information to a third party, if permitted by applicable privacy and data protection laws, or if required by law. For example, we may share your personal information with the following parties:

Other related entities in the Assurant group for reasonable business purposes, including those located in Australia, India, United States of America, United Kingdom and the Philippines
Our consultants, agents, contractors and service providers, auditors or external advisers
Service providers and specialist advisers we engage to provide us with services such as infrastructure and software, administrative, financial, insurance or research services, some of whom may contact you on our behalf
Other insurers, licensees, insurance investigators and claims or insurance reference services, brokers, repairers, loss assessors, credit providers and credit bureau services
Retailers, dealers or business partners involved in providing products or services
Reinsurers
Regulators, government agencies, statutory authorities or law enforcement bodies
Courts, tribunals, and other dispute resolution bodies during a dispute or litigation
Professional advisers such as legal, accounting or audit providers
To an authorised representative or person acting on your behalf to whom you have provided your consent (either expressly or impliedly), including but not limited to other financial services providers that we may need to deal with on your behalf
Other financial services institutions to detect, investigate or prevent actual or potential financial crimes including fraud in connection with the products or services we provide to you, and
In any other way you may also agree and consent to.

Personal information held and stored by our business partners, service providers and other third parties we engage to provide and support the products and services we offer, will be done so in accordance with their individual privacy policies.

In using and storing your personal information, we may disclose your personal information to others including outside the country of collection for reasons related to the primary purpose for which it was collected. Secondly, some of the entities that we share information with may be located in, or have operations in, other countries. This means that your information might end up stored or accessed in overseas countries, including countries within the European Union, India, Japan, Philippines, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

When we pass on, transfer or share your personal information in this way, we take steps to ensure it is treated in the same way that we would treat it, and that an adequate level of protection is in place in accordance with relevant privacy and data protection laws. We may also disclose personal information to any person authorised by you, or to others you have nominated in connection with an insurance policy you hold with us. When you acquire an insurance policy with us, you authorise us to share personal information with any co-insureds to confirm, for example, full disclosure has been made to us or to ensure that the policy owner is aware of the details of all benefits and services claimed on the policy.

To comply with a legal and regulatory obligation, or to the extent that we have a legitimate purpose (such as to manage our business operations or to conduct data analytics to improve our services), we may also share with others and disclose information from which personal information has been removed (including aggregated, anonymous or pseudonymized information) so that no privacy is affected.

We may also use third party providers to perform services for us, on your behalf, or to manage some of our processes and services. To enable those services and processes to be performed, we may need to provide those third parties with your personal information. We may also engage, or be engaged by, third parties including government agencies, in circumstances which require us to provide your personal information to them, or to another party, to meet our contractual, legal or regulatory obligations. You authorise us to disclose your personal information to those third parties where needed or required for those purposes.

There may be times when we must pass on personal information for legal or safety reasons or other special circumstances, such as complying with a legal or regulatory obligation that we have or in your best interest.

We do not sell personal information.

We retain your personal information for as long as it is required for the purposes for which the information was collected and may be lawfully used. We have regular data retention management and purging practices in place to ensure information is securely deleted or anonymized when no longer required. However, we may be required to keep some of your personal information for specified periods of time under applicable laws or regulations such as financial reporting and employment legislation, or due to legal or contractual obligations

5. Protecting Your Personal Information

We use a combination of physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards, including technical measures to safeguard the personal information we store, as part of our business systems and processes. We take steps to protect your personal information from misuse, interference or loss and unauthorised access, modification and disclosure with appropriate safeguards and security measures. This includes in storage and when we transfer or share it, such as across borders, to ensure compliance with international data protection standards.

All our staff are trained to understand privacy and data protection requirements. We also conduct Privacy Impact Assessments on new systems and processes, to ensure we are adhering to privacy requirements and putting the right protection in place when making changes. We have teams and programmes in place to check our protections are working and remain up to date, including our protections to prevent and detect cyber threats. We are regularly audited to provide an independent assessment of our protection measures and help us to continue to maintain standards of personal information management and protection.

While we take steps to protect your personal information when you send it to us, you should keep in mind that no internet transmission is ever completely secure or error-free. If you provide any personal information to us via our online services (including email or a web-based service through a portal), or if we provide information to you or others by these means, the privacy, security and integrity of any data transfer over the internet cannot be guaranteed. When you share information with us (such as over the internet, or sending us an email), it is at your own risk as factors beyond our control include the security of the device and/or program you use to communicate with us, and steps you take to protect your login details and password. If you believe that there has been unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, please contact us (see below).

Our website may contain links or references to other websites or social media platforms, not subject to this Privacy Policy. You should check their own privacy policies before providing your personal information.

5.1. Websites, cookies and digital interactions

When you visit our websites, we may collect information from you about how you use our sites to assist us in improving our website. Each time you visit our websites, we may collect information about your visit which may include the following:

The date and time of visits
The pages viewed and your browsing behaviour
How you navigate through the site and interact with pages (including fields completed in firms and applications completed)
General location information, and
Information about the device used to visit our website (including tablet or mobile devices such as device IDs.

We use website analytics measurement software to collect visitor information when you use our websites, mobile or tablet applications so that we can better understand how to improve our products and services for you. One of the primary methods used by this tool is the placement of cookies.

Cookies are small information files that an end user's web browser places on their computer or in memory when a website is visited. Cookies help us determine the type of browser and settings you are using, where you have been on the websites, when you return to the website, where you came from, and to ensure your information is secure. The purpose of this information is to provide you with more relevant and effective experience on our websites, including presenting web pages according to your needs or preferences. Cookies also give you access to certain pages of the websites without having to log in each time you visit.

For information on disabling these cookies, please go to the privacy settings section within your browser. If you choose to disable cookie acceptance in your browser, you may not be able to access some parts of our websites, particularly the secure parts of the website. We therefore recommend you enable cookie acceptance to benefit from all the services on the website.

We also use other external companies for the following purposes:

For web hosting services for this website
To gather non-personal information (using cookies) in order to evaluate the website’s effectiveness, for example online marketing activities, and
To track the traffic and usage on the website.

6. Your Right to Access and/or Request Correction of Your Personal Information

You have the right to request confirmation of whether we hold any of your personal information, and if so, request access to or a copy of that information. You may also request that your personal information be corrected if you think it is wrong, incomplete or out of date.

We will disclose your requested personal information to you where it can be readily retrieved, unless there is a lawful reason for not doing so, including where such a disclosure would breach someone else’s rights to privacy and/or the law.

To request access to and/or correct your personal information, please contact us at the details below.

Assurant New Zealand
Level 7, 110 Symonds Street,
Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Phone: 0800 443 881
Email: nz.contact@assurant.com

We will respond to your request for access to personal information we hold about you within the timeframes required by applicable laws and/or as soon as we reasonably can, including notifying you if we are unable to provide access (such as when we no longer hold the information) or if we are permitted by applicable laws to refuse access. Generally, we do not impose a charge for requests for access, but where permitted to do so by applicable law, we may charge you a reasonable fee for the retrieval costs associated with providing you with access.

7. Contacting Us Regarding this Policy or To Make a Complaint

You may wish to contact us to seek more information about this Policy, to request a printed copy of this Policy, to access or correct your personal information, opt out of receiving direct marketing material, or make a privacy related complaint.

We take privacy-related complaints very seriously and consider all complaints carefully as part of our commitment to being open, honest, and fair in dealing with your concerns. We will establish in consultation with you a reasonable process, including time frames provided by applicable laws, for seeking to resolve your complaint.

If you feel your complaint has not been satisfactorily addressed in the first instance, or that it is taking too long to resolve, you can ask for your concerns to be escalated to our Privacy Officer by email to privacy.ANZ@assurant.com.
You may also escalate your complaint to the Assurant Global Privacy Office. Please write to us at 260 Interstate North Circle SE, Atlanta, Georgia 30339, USA or send an email to theprivacyoffice@assurant.com.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at www.privacy.org.nz.

8. Updating Our Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy when our information handling practices change, or to account for new laws and technology. We will post the updated policy on our website and encourage you to check our website from time to time to view our current policy or contact us for a printed copy.

This Privacy Policy was last updated May 2026.