Privacy Policy and Notice

What our customers should know about Manulife’s privacy practices

The information we collect and how we collect it

We will use fair and lawful means to collect your personal information. Whenever practical, we will collect 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 the fulfillment of the purposes for which your personal data was obtained.

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.

Being in the financial services industry, we will need to verify your identity or the authority and identity of your representative/s when you or your representatives do business with us. For this purpose, we may require the presentation of supporting documents to verify your identity. In some cases, we may need to ask an independent source to 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 you purchase or the service you avail from us.

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 data 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.

During the effectivity of your contract/policy, you also agree to the following: in case we are unable to comply with relevant customer due diligence (CDD) measures, as required under the Anti-Money Laundering Act, as amended and relevant issuances, due to your fault, we may apply the following: (a) measures to restrict the services available or prohibit any further transactions on the contract/policy until full and proper CDD measures have been successfully conducted; and (b) in case the foregoing is unsuccessful, terminate business relationship, which shall only entitle you to receive the unused portions of premium or withdrawal value, if any, whichever is applicable. You also agree to be bound by obligations set out in relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions relating to the prevention and suppression of proliferation financing of weapons of mass destruction, including the freezing and unfreezing actions as well as prohibitions from conducting transactions with designated persons and entities.

Your consent

By providing us your personal data, including the data of third parties, and any subsequent changes to it, you give us your consent, represent that you have secured the necessary consent of the third parties, and explicitly authorize us to collect, use, process, transfer, disclose, and store the personal data for the purposes mentioned above.

For those acting on behalf of corporations and partnerships, by providing us the personal data of your directors, officers, employees, members, and other individuals, you also represent that you have secured the necessary consent of such parties.

You may withdraw your consent for us to collect, use, store and disclose your personal data, 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. We may also treat your withdrawal of consent as a request to terminate the product or service.

Generally, your personal data 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 ensure that any personal data we collect and keep in your file is accurate, complete, and updated for the identified purposes. We will rely on you to give us accurate information and to update us for any changes.

If your contact information changes, please contact us right away.

You have the right to access and verify your personal data in our records, and to request that it be corrected or updated, with certain exceptions such as where the correction requires an order from a competent court or other government agency. Depending on the particular circumstances of your request, you may verify the accuracy and completeness of your information and request changes, if appropriate. We may require reasonable fees to cover administrative costs to obtain your requested personal data. 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 data from unauthorized use, access, loss, alteration or destruction. We ensure that the appropriate and necessary physical, organizational, and technological safeguards are in place to keep your data safe.

Personal data is protected:

• Physically, by such means as building security measures and physical barriers;
  
• Organizationally, by such means as our policies, practices and access levels;
• Technologically, by such means as authorization, authentication, encryption, infrastructure and network protection, malicious content detection and virus intrusion prevention and other means. For example, we employ encryption technologies and authentication standards to safeguard the transmission of information over the internet.

All employees and agents get information protection and ethics training every year. Our information security team works together to help ensure your personal data is protected by the right safeguards. All of our third party 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 and to have and maintain appropriate security measures in accordance with industry standards. If we receive a request to release your personal data, we will only do so upon satisfactory identification and proof of entitlement of the requestor, or as required or permitted by law.

You should be aware that no method of transmission over the internet or method of electronic storage can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. 

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’ that we think you might have interest in.

We will share your personal information, limited to your name and contact details, with our subsidiaries, affiliates, business partners and select third parties for these purposes, only if permitted by law and with your consent.

If you do not want to receive our marketing or promotions by mail, telephone, printed or electronic means, you may opt-out. Contact us by writing to the address below to remove your name from our mailing, calling or electronic mailing lists.

When you opt-out, you still receive information from us about the products and services that you have with us and general product and service updates or information.

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.