What our customers should know about Manulife’s privacy practices

The information we collect

We will use fair and lawful means to get your personal information. Whenever practical, we will get information directly from you or your authorized representative(s) through completed applications, forms, and other means of correspondence such as telephone, mail, internet, and through your business dealings with us. We will only collect information if it is necessary and relevant for our purposes.

If you are not comfortable with having your telephone calls recorded, you may communicate with us in writing instead. If you choose to do so, any response to you will be in writing as well.

In some cases, we may need to ask an independent source to verify or provide additional information about you. We will do this only with your consent. Independent sources could be your employer or doctor, other financial institutions and credit reporting agencies, and healthcare providers or facilities, among others.

What we need to know and why

The type of information we will collect will depend on the product or service you get.

Generally, we collect and maintain your personal information to:

• Confirm your identity;
• Evaluate your financial needs;
• Determine your eligibility and suitability to our products and services;
• Underwrite and approve your application;
• Properly administer our products and services, including the generation of billing notices, assessment of claims, and reinsuring your policy, if necessary;
• Comply with reportorial and regulatory requirements of local and foreign regulatory authorities, including local and foreign tax authorities and stock exchanges;
• Comply with legal, regulatory, or contractual obligations of any Manulife entity within the Manulife Financial Group on information sharing, tax reporting or otherwise;
• Prevent money laundering or terrorist financing activities;
• Comply with Manulife’s internal purposes such as governance, management of risks, and reporting;
• Adhere to reasonable purposes that are relevant or related to your insurance/financial products and services;
• Enrich our understanding of your current and future needs so that we can promote Manulife products and services effectively and in relation, measure your satisfaction;
• Provide incidental services such as business processes improvements or system upgrades, which include data analytics and automated data processing;
• Decide on any insurance or related claim, including enforcing or defending the rights of Manulife; and
• Strengthen risk assessment and prevent fraud by uploading your personal and medical information to the Medical Information Database pursuant to Insurance Commission Circular No. 2016-54 among others.

We will keep your personal information in our records only for as long as it is needed to fulfill the identified purposes, or as required or permitted by law. Personal information that is no longer required will be destroyed or erased with appropriate security safeguards.

Your consent

By providing your personal information and any subsequent changes to it, you are giving us your consent and explicitly authorizing us to collect, use, process, transfer, disclose, and store it for the purposes mentioned above.

For those representing and acting in behalf of corporations and partnerships, we trust that you have secured the necessary consent to disclose the personal and sensitive information of your directors, officers, employees, members, and other individuals.

You may withhold or withdraw your consent for us to collect, use, and disclose your personal information, provided there are no legal or contractual reasons preventing you from doing so. However, doing so may prevent us from providing you with the basic functions we need to service your policy. It may prevent us from keeping your coverage in force, or properly evaluating and processing any claims.

Generally, your personal information will only be provided for the abovementioned purposes. It will be accessed by those who have a need and the right to it, including Manulife Philippines, our directors, employees, agents, and representatives, including our entity shareholders, business partners, affiliates, and our subsidiaries, any member of the Manulife Financial Group (including those located overseas), advisors, industry associations and databases, local and foreign authorities having jurisdiction over companies within the Manulife Financial Group (including tax authorities and stock exchanges), external auditors/counsels, and our third party service providers (whether within or outside the Philippines), and others authorized by law.

Service providers

We may use service providers for various services such as printing, mail distribution, information technology, data storage, administration, marketing (including market research and promotional services), paramedical, investigation, and reinsurance. Our service providers are required to protect your personal information in a manner that is consistent with our privacy policies, principles, and practices.

Accessing and amending your information

We will ensure that any personal information we collect and keep is accurate, complete, and updated. We will rely on you to update us on any changes to it.

You have the right to access and verify your personal information in our records, and to request that it be corrected or updated. Depending on the circumstances, we may not be able to give you access to information you need. There may be charges to obtain your requested personal information. Please be assured that we will let you know when this happens.

We are committed to protecting your information

We are committed to protecting your personal information from unauthorized use, access, loss, alteration or destruction. We ensure that the appropriate and necessary physical, organizational, and technological safeguards are in place. We endeavor to protect the personal data we receive, gather and store, by such means as password protection, encryption, firewalls and other means. 

All of our employees, representatives, agents, and service providers who act on our behalf or with whom we share your information, are required to abide by our privacy policies, principles, and practices. Our third party service providers are required to have and maintain appropriate security measures in accordance with industry standards. If we receive a request to release your personal information, we will only do so upon satisfactory identification and proof of entitlement of the requestor, or as required or permitted by law.

Transmissions over the internet are never entirely secure and we cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via email while it is in transit over the internet. Any such transmission of information by you over the internet is at your own risk.

Your Privacy Rights

As a Customer, you have the following rights:

• Right to be informed when your personal data have been or will be processed, and whether the processing is partly or wholly automatic;
• Right to object to the processing of your personal data;
• Right to reasonable access, upon written request, to the contents of your personal data that were processed;
• Right to correct erroneous data;
• Right to suspend, withdraw, or order the blocking, removal, or destruction of your personal data, subject to the right of Manulife to continue processing your personal information for legal or regulatory purposes;
• Right to obtain a copy of data in an electronic or structured format under certain circumstances;
• Right to be indemnified for damages sustained due to a violation of your rights as a customer; and
• Right to file a complaint.

You may know more about your privacy rights as a customer by contacting the National Privacy Commission through their website at www.privacy.gov.ph.

Special offers and marketing promotions... it's your choice

From time to time, we may offer you our financial products and services, or those of our subsidiaries’, affiliates’, business partners’, and select third parties’.
 
We will share personal information, limited to your name and contact details, with them for these purposes, only if permitted by law and with your consent.

Who we are

In this Statement of Privacy Principles and Practices, “we,” “us,” and “our” mean The Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. (Phils.), Inc. (Manulife Philippines), Manulife Financial Plans and Manulife China Bank Life Assurance Corporation (MCBL). “You” and “your” mean individuals whose personal information we are collecting, using, processing, sharing, transferring or disclosing.