4 Reasons Why Your Insurance Agency Needs a Privacy Policy
A privacy policy is one of the most important legal agreements for your insurance agency’s website. There are a number of reasons why your website should have a privacy policy, we’ve identified the top 4 reasons and helped to create a short guide for development.
It’s required by law if you collect personal information.
The most important reason why you need a Privacy Policy is because you actually probably do need it. It’s required by law, more specifically in the state of California. The California Online Privacy Protection Act (CalOPPA) dictates if you collect any personal information from any California-based users, such as email addresses, GPS location, phone numbers, or mailing addresses, you are required to have a legal statement available for users to review that discloses the privacy practices of your insurance agency.
Even though your state may not have a law requiring a privacy policy, it’s still a good idea to have one place on your website – especially if you’re collecting information for lead generation, customer service issues, etc.
It’s required by many third-party services you may use.
If you’re using third-party services such as Google AdWords or Google Analytics, you are required to have a Privacy Policy containing certain disclaimers or information about your use of their services, plugins, and so on.
In your Privacy Policy, you must disclose that Google Analytics stores cookies on a user’s PC, which are then used to collect data about the visitor. It’s good practice to have a section specific only your use of “Cookies.”
To make sure this happens, Google Analytics includes that requirement in its Terms and Conditions. Their legal agreement states that any business signing up and using their Analytics service must have an active Privacy Policy available to users and discloses the business’ use of their service.
Google AdWords is another commonly used tool for paid advertisements and an effective effort in remarketing to visitors. If you use AdWords, Google requires you to update your Privacy Policy to inform users that:
- You use remarketing to advertise your products or services through Google AdWords’ platform
- Google is showing your ad to users on websites that they visit after visiting your website, and
- How a user can opt out of this remarketing campaign
Another example of a third party service that required you to have a Privacy Policy is Twitter through its Lead Generation card. Twitter requires you to enter the URL for your legal statement in order to be able to sign up for their Lead Generation Card service. And according to the Platform Policy of Facebook, “a publicly available and easily accessible privacy policy that explains what data you are collecting and how you will use that data” is required.
Other vendors you use for lead generation, mobile applications, or other services may also require you to have an easily accessible Privacy Policy.
Your clients are interested in their privacy.
Now more than ever, people care about their privacy, especially when it comes to their personal information online. We already have rules and regulations in place from CMS about compliance with PII, and it’s important to continue to protect your client’s and prospect’s information on the world wide web.
A Privacy Policy is not only the legally required document to disclose your practices on protecting personal information, but it’s also a great way to show users that you can be trusted, and that you have procedures in place to handle their personal information with care.
Use this legal requirement statement as a way to showcase how you handle a user’s personal information and provide as much clear, accurate, and thorough information as possible to ensure your users feel safe, comfortable, and informed.
It’s ubiquitous.
Even if you don’t collect any personal information from users for lead generation, email subscriptions, etc. – you should consider creating a Privacy Policy page for good measure. It can be short, sweet, and tell your clients and prospects everything they need to know in just a few sentences.
For example: “We don’t store any of your data, use cookies, or third-party vendors for any tracking purposes.”
And don’t disregard common practices on how to make this kind of legal statement available to users. Users look for links to Privacy Policies in the footer of a website. You should always include visible links to your legal agreements across all pages of your websites – even if it’s a simple landing page.
Here are a few resources to help you generate a Privacy Policy that fits your needs. If you have questions on what you may need to include in your Privacy Policy, feel free to reach out to Agent Pipeline’s Marketing & Innovation team for more information.
Privacy Policy Resources:
- Privacy Policy Generator
- Writing an Effective Website Privacy Statement
- How to Create a Website Privacy Policy
- Sample Privacy Policy from the Better Business Bureau
- Knowing What to Include in Your Privacy Policy
