In the course of serving you as a client, PBC may obtain personal information about you. Obtaining this information is important to our ability to deliver the highest level of service to you, but we also recognize that you expect us to treat this information appropriately.
This policy describes the types of personal information we may collect about you, the purposes for which we use the information, the circumstances in which we may share the information and the steps that we take to safeguard the information to protect your privacy. As used throughout this policy, the term “PBC” refers to Prime Business Credit, Inc. and its affiliates.
Security of Information
Safeguarding our customers’ financial information is one of our paramount concerns. We use physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards to protect Customer Information. Our employees may access Customer Information from time to time, but only to the extent necessary to provide you with the requested products and services or to regularly maintain your accounts. Our employees are required to follow a strict code of ethics that requires confidential treatment of Customer Information. Our employees are subject to discipline should they ever breach this code.
THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION
The personal information we collect about you comes primarily from the account applications or other forms and materials you submit to PBC during the course of your relationship with us. We may also collect information about your transactions and experiences with PBC relating to the products and services PBC provides. In addition, depending on the products or services you require, PBC may obtain additional information about you, such as your credit history, from consumer reporting agencies.
Finally, in the provision of financial services to you and subject to strict compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, information may be collected about you indirectly from monitoring or other means (e.g. recording of telephone calls and monitoring e-mails). In these circumstances, the information is not accessed on a continuous or routine basis, but it may be used for compliance or security purposes.
DISCLOSURE AND Use of Information within Prime Business Credit
In order to provide efficient and reliable services and to improve product and service options available to you, we may share your information among our companies. For example, if you maintain an account with one of our companies and open an account with another of our companies, we may share information we already have. Sharing information may save you time opening your new account and reduce the need for redundant information. Sharing information also helps protect your accounts against unauthorized access and usage. When sharing your personal information, we adhere to applicable legal and industry standards regarding the protection of personal information.
DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION TO THIRD PARTIES
PBC does not disclose your personal information to third parties, except as described in this policy. Third party disclosures may include sharing such information with non-affiliated companies that perform support services for your account or facilitate your transactions with PBC, including those that provide professional, legal or accounting advice to PBC. Non-affiliated companies that assist PBC in providing services to you are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information to the extent they receive it and to use your personal information only in the course of providing such services and only for the purposes that PBC dictates.
We may also disclose your personal information to fulfill your instructions, to protect our rights and interests and those of our business partners or pursuant to your express consent, such as recordation of UCC filings and the like; processing your requests for products or services; and the sale of your account to another financial institution. Finally, under limited circumstances, your personal information may be disclosed to third parties as permitted by, or to comply with, applicable laws and regulations; for instance, when responding to a subpoena or similar legal process, to protect against fraud and to otherwise cooperate with law enforcement or regulatory authorities or with organizations such as credit bureaus and similar companies.
You should know that PBC will not sell your personal information.
Accuracy of Information
Keeping your account information current and accurate is important. We offer you several methods of obtaining your account information. You may use whichever method is most convenient for you. These include regular account statements, telephone, online access, and specific written requests. If your account information is incomplete, incorrect, or outdated, please contact us. We will promptly update or correct said information that is brought to our attention.
Cookies
A cookie is a piece of information which a web server may place on your computer when you visit a web site. Cookies are commonly used by web sites to improve the user experience and have not been known to transmit computer viruses or otherwise harm your computer. Many cookies last only through a single session, or visit. Others may have an expiration date, or may remain on your computer until you delete them.
How We Use Cookies
We use cookies for a number of purposes – for example, to maintain continuity during a user session, to gather data about the usage of our web site for research and other purposes, to store your preferences for certain kinds of information and marketing offers, or to store a username or encrypted customer identification number so that you do not have to provide this information every time you return to our site.
Our cookies will track only your activity relating to our online promotions, which may be located at our web site or the web sites of others, and your online activity on our web site. They will not track your other internet activity. Cookies set by us cannot be read by and are not shared with any non-Prime Business Credit, Inc. web site, although we may share some of the cookie information we gather with other Prime Business Credit companies. Our cookies typically do not gather personally identifiable information.
Cookie Filters
You can decide if and how your computer will accept a cookie by configuring your preferences or options in your browser. However, if you choose to reject cookies, you may not be able to use certain of our online services or web site features.
Your browser software may contain a feature which is intended to notify you of the cookie policies of the various web sites you visit. For example, the Microsoft® Internet Explorer 6 browser software contained in Microsoft® Windows® XP contains a version of such a cookie-filtering device, commonly known as P3P. To learn more about P3P and how it may affect your online experience go to www.w3.org/P3P. Prime Business Credit, Inc. has attempted to make www.pbcfin.com compatible with the P3P privacy filtering tool. However, P3P is still an evolving standard and therefore, we are not responsible for any problems you experience when using a P3P filter, or any discrepancies between the machine-coded statement of our privacy policy which are read by the P3P tool and the human readable policy which you see here. This Privacy Notice is the controlling document to which you should refer if you have questions about Prime Business Credit, Inc.’s privacy policies.