Beneficial Life shall refer to Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Inc. or BenLife, its directors, officers, employees, insurance agents, insurance brokers, reinsurers, consultants, legal advisers, contractors, suppliers, service providers, other representatives, and subsidiaries or affiliates.

Our Privacy Commitment: Privacy is important to us.

We at BenLife value and respect your and each and every individual’s right to privacy. We are committed in safeguarding your privacy and the security of your personal information as a data subject under the Act.

Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Inc. has developed a Privacy Policy that aims to ensure that we adopt and observe privacy practices and standards in accordance with the Act, its implementing rules and regulations, and issuances of the National Privacy Commission.

Data Collection

What personal information do we collect?

The types of personal data that we collect depend on the product or service that you avail or intend to avail from us, including but not limited to

• Full name, gender, place and date of birth; age
• Contact details, address (residential/permanent);
• Education, profession, employment details or business information
• Specimen signatures;
• Government ID details
• Financial information
• Payment details, including credit card and banking information
• Health information
• Images (videos and/or photos) collected via CCTV and other similar devices when you visit our premises and/or using our other facilities

Where we get these information?

There are several ways we collect information:

1. Information that you personally give us.

Most of the personal information we have are those that you have given us yourself. You provide us personal information when you:

• purchase any of our life insurance products or avail of our insurance services by filling out Application Forms and other similar or related documents through any of our available channels (our branches, or through our licensed insurance agents, insurance brokers);
• get in touch with us to ask about our insurance products and services, file a complaint, or request for service;
• take part in our research and surveys;
• become our Agent, Partner, Vendor, Contractor or Supplier; and/or
• apply for a job with us.

2. Information we collect during our relationship with you

• when you use our network, facilities and services – any of our other products, services, and channels;
• when you pay your premiums or purchase add-on products and services;
• when you file an insurance claim
• when you use our apps, websites, and channels;

3. Information we collect from other sources

We also collect information from commercially or publicly available sources like published directories and public documents. We may also obtain your personal information from third parties and from other sources which you have given separate consent for the disclosure of such information relating to you and where otherwise lawfully permitted.

Data Use

Why we use your personal information?

We do so only for the following purposes:

1. To fulfil our contractual obligation with you, and create and nurture our relationship so that we can continuously provide you with our services. For example, when you purchase any of our life insurance products, we collect personal information about you that will allow us to validate your identity and credit history for purposes of insurance risk assessment, billing and collection of payments for the life insurance products, and provision of the insurance services that you avail from us.
2. To improve our products and services. We collect, use, process, and analyze how you use our life insurance products and services so that we can understand how to improve them for your benefit.
3. To understand your needs and preferences so that we can serve you better. Maintaining a record of the type of life insurance products and services that you avail from us allows us to gain a better insight of the kinds of offers that would be relevant to your preferences. From time to time, we may send you product recommendations and special offers that we think will interest you.
4. To continuously improve our business and operations. For example, we analyze customer usage of our network and facilities to help us manage your account, provide customer care activities, monitor the quality and security of the network, train our staff, and plan for future growth.
5. To meet and comply with legal and regulatory requirements. We perform such other processing or disclosure that may be required under pertinent laws, rules, or regulations.

Will we use your personal data for customer profiling and direct marketing?

With your consent, we may use your personal data to let you know about our other life insurance products and services that we believe may be of interest to you via marketing activities using various platforms such as traditional mail, telephone, SMS, email, or any other electronic means or may be through third party channels such as social media   and other partners. We may use automated tools in the future for profiling and data analytics to help us determine most suitable product to offer to you.

Data Sharing

When we disclose personal information?

There are a variety of circumstances where we may need to disclose or share some of the personal information that you have provided to us. In these cases, we ensure that your personal information is disclosed on a confidential basis, and always subject to the applicable rules and regulations of the Data Privacy Act, its implementing rules and regulations, and issuances of the National Privacy Commission.

We will never share or disclose your personal information to third parties outside of BenLife except in special circumstances where you may have given your specific consent for, and as noted in this policy.

In some instances, we may be required to disclose your personal information to our licensed insurance agents, reinsurers, partners and other third party agencies as part of our regular business operations and for the provision of our products and services. This means that we might share your information with:

• Our company, organization, or agencies including their sub-contractors or prospective business partners that act as our service providers, contractors, professional advisers who help us provide our products and services. For example: our  reinsurers for reinsurance, couriers for policy delivery, etc.;

• Government to comply with legal and regulatory mandates. We submit required information to government agencies like AMLC, Insurance Commission (IC), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), etc.

• Other companies whom you have also given consent to share your information.

Data Retention

How long do we keep your personal data?

Your personal information shall be retained for as long as the purpose for which it was collected, and such other purposes that you may have consented from time to time, remain in effect, but no longer than the period required by law or regulatory issuance, or five (5) years from the termination of your insurance policy, or your last transaction/engagement with BenLife, whichever comes later.

How we protect your personal information?

The integrity, confidentiality and security of your personal information are important to us. That’s why we strictly enforce our Privacy Policy within BenLife and has implemented technical, organizational and physical security measures that are designed to protect your personal information from destruction, unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, fraudulent misuse and/or any other unlawful processing, as well as other natural and human dangers.

We also put in effect safeguards such as:

• We keep and protect your personal information using a secured server behind a firewall, encryption and security controls;

• We keep your personal information only for as long as necessary for the fulfillment of the purposes for which the information was obtained or for the establishment, exercise or defense of legal claims, or for legitimate business purposes, or as provided by law;
• We restrict access to your personal information only to qualified and authorized personnel who handle your personal information with strict confidentiality.

• We undergo regular audit and rigorous testing of our infrastructure’s security protocols to ensure your personal data is always protected;

• We promptly notify you and the National Privacy Commission, when sensitive personal information, under the circumstances are reasonably believed to, may have been acquired by an unauthorized person;

• We let you update your information securely to keep our records accurate.

BenLife will not collect, use, or disclose your personal information for any purpose other than those identified in this Privacy Notice, your insurance application forms, Service Agreement or our Terms of Service, and any other purpose that you may have given your consent for.

Data Disposal

What happens when we no longer need your information?

After expiry of the retention period, we will securely destroy your personal information by shredding the physical records, and deletion and/or purging of electronic data, in accordance with our Data Retention and Disposal Policy to ensure that that there will be no further processing, unauthorized access or disclosure of your personal information to any other party.

Your Rights as a Data Subject

What your choices are:

You are afforded the following rights as a data subject in relation to your personal data under the Data Privacy Act:

1. Right to Information

You have the right to be informed about the collection, processing, and disposal of your personal data.

2. Right to Object

You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data by explicitly withdrawing your consent previously provided upon data collection.

3. Right to Access

Upon demand, you have the right to reasonable access to the contents of your personal data.

4. Right to Rectification

You have the right to dispute the inaccuracy or error in the personal data and have it immediately and accordingly corrected, unless the request is vexatious or otherwise unreasonable.

5. Right to Erasure or Blocking

Based on reasonable grounds, you have the right to suspend, withdraw or order the blocking, removal or destruction of your personal data from BenLife’s system.

6. Right to Damages

Subject to the results of verification of investigation, you may be indemnified for any damages sustained due to unauthorized use of your personal data.

7. Right to Data Portability

You have the right to request from BenLife a copy of your personal data that is processed by electronic means in a structured or commonly used format.

8. Right to File a Complaint

If you feel that your personal data has been misused, maliciously disclosed, or improperly disposed of, or that any of your data privacy rights have been violated, you have the right to file a complaint with our Data Privacy and Protection Officer at dpo@benlife.com.ph and/or with the National Privacy Commission.

How to Exercise Your Rights as a Data Subject

We would like to ensure that we have your consent to continue to collect, use, and disclose your personal information for the purposes that we have identified. At the same time, we want you to know that you do have choices and can exercise your rights as a Data Subject as follows:

If you wish to have access to your personal information in our records; or you think that such personal information we have of you is incomplete, not up-to-date, or otherwise inaccurate, or would like to withdraw your consent and/or edit your consent preferences at any time, or object or order the blocking of your personal information, you may do so by simply accomplishing the DPO Contact Form and submit the same via:

email to: dpo@benlife.com
mail to:   Office of the Data Privacy and Protection Officer
                 Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Inc.
                 7/F Beneficial Life Building
                 166 Salcedo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City

We may request for supporting documents or proof before we effect any requested changes to your personal information.

How to Lodge a Complaint/Seek for Indemnification

If you feel that your rights as a Data Subject has been violated, and/or would like to seek indemnification for damages or injury you have sustained due to due to inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, false and unlawfully obtained or unauthorized use of your personal information, you may file a Complaint with the Company’s Data Privacy Protection Officer by accomplishing completely the DPO Contact Form and submit the same via:

email to: dpo@benlife.com
mail to:   Office of the Data Privacy and Protection Officer
                 Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Inc.
                 7/F Beneficial Life Building
                 166 Salcedo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City

Third Party Links

We include or offer third party products or services on our website such as links to websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, as well as 3rd party websites publishing press releases or information about BENLIFE. These third party sites have separate and independent privacy policies. We therefore have no responsibility or liability for the content and activities of these linked sites. Nonetheless, we seek to protect the integrity of our site and welcome any feedback about these sites.

Disclosure of Information to Outside Parties

For greater clarity, unless you provide specific consent, we will not:

• Share your personal information with our business partners and third-party service providers; or
• Use your personal information to enable third-party targeted advertisements.
• This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect our rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Use of cookies

A cookie is a small text file, often containing a unique identifier, stored by your web browser when you visit a website. Websites use cookies to help provide certain functions, and to personalize your web experience by remembering things like your language preferences or items in your shopping cart.

BenLife uses cookies to understand how you interact with our websites, communications, services and selected third party websites primarily with the aim of improving your user experience.

The following is a summary of how BenLife uses cookies:

• BenLife uses cookies that are essential for navigating and enabling certain functioning of BenLife websites. For example, these types of cookies assist BenLife in authenticating you and your device or allows BenLife to administer secure websites for security purposes. If you choose to disable these cookies, specific features of the BenLife websites, such as accessing or making a purchase, may not be available.

• BenLife uses cookies to understand how customers use BenLife websites and services in order to improve performance. Performance cookies generate aggregated, de-identified information which provide insights into trends and usage patterns that may be used for business analysis, website and service improvements, and for determining performance metrics. For example, these types of cookies help track the number of visitors to our websites.

• BenLife uses cookies to remember your selections while visiting a BenLife website. These types of cookies allow BenLife to recognize your device so that you do not have to provide the same information repeatedly. For example, we may use cookies to remember your language preferences or province selected.

• BenLife uses cookies to personalize your experience while visiting a BenLife website. These cookies may be used to deliver BenLife content to you that is customized to your interests based on an inference from your browsing patterns on our websites or from your customer relationship with us. For example, a relevant Offer about a product or service may be displayed to you based on the existing products and services you currently have with BenLife.

• BenLife uses cookies to deliver tailored BenLife advertising to you. We may work with advertising agencies to place cookies to help deliver ads on third party websites where we purchase advertising. These types of third party cookies enable us to understand what BenLife ads you see and interact with, both on our website and on third party websites. This helps us to measure the success of our advertising campaigns. For example, when you click on a BenLife ad on a third-party website, cookies are used to track the effectiveness of the advertising campaign. As part of this process, we do not disclose your personal information to the third-party website.

     In addition to cookies, BenLife also uses pixel tags which are small transparent images embedded in a web page or an email. We use pixel tags in connection with cookies to help operate our website and emails. For example, BenLife may include pixel tags in email messages or newsletters in order to determine whether or not they are opened or acted on. Third parties may also use pixel tags to help compile aggregated statistics and determine the effectiveness of BenLife promotional campaigns.

Changes to our Privacy Notice

What happens when there are changes in our Privacy Policy?

From time to time, we may update our Privacy Policy and practices to comply with changes in the laws, rules, and regulations, to comply with government and regulatory requirements, to adapt to new technologies and protocols, to align with industry practices, or for other legitimate purposes.

You will always be provided notice if these changes are significant and, if we are required by law, we will ensure to obtain your updated consent.

Updates will be posted on this website.

Contact Us

For any queries, clarifications about our Privacy Policy, or concerns regarding your personal information in our custody, please contact our Data Privacy and Protection Officer at:

Data Privacy and Protection Officer
Beneficial Life Insurance Company, Inc.
7/F Beneficial Life Building,
166 Salcedo St., Legaspi Village, Makati City
Philippines
E-mail: dpo@benlife.com.ph
Contact No.: 8818 8671 loc. 8780

Last updated: October 17, 2022