Privacy Policy

Your Privacy

Accu-Rate Corporation is committed to keeping all information about you and your foreign exchange transactions confidential. Keeping your personal information private is important to us.

We respect the privacy and confidentiality of our clients' personal information. Regardless if your transactions are of a personal nature or if you are conducting transactions on the behalf your employer or place of business, the measures that are taken to protect your personal information, why we ask for it, how we use it and how we safeguard against its misuse is outlined in this policy. Procedures for inquiring about information that we collect are also outlined within.

Accu-Rate Corporation primarily provides foreign exchange, fund transfer services and facilitation of international payments to its clients. Reference throughout this Policy to "we", "our" and "us" means Accu-Rate Corporation. In addition, reference to "credit bureau" includes credit-reporting agencies.

 

Our Employees and Their Responsibilities

The employees of Accu-Rate are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of all personal information to which they have collected or have access to. Each and everyone of our employees is required to sign a confidentiality agreement as part of their original offer of employment, thus encouraging them to take an active role in the safekeeping of your personal information. Our employees are given information regarding our policies for protecting your personal information.

Accu-Rate Corporation has an appointed Privacy Officer who oversees the administration and development of our privacy policy. Our Privacy Officer is available for correspondence at:

 

What Is Your Personal Information And Why Do We Ask For It?

Your "personal information" is information that specifically identifies you as an individual. This information may be provided to or collected by us, including information that you provide to us or that we collect from another source(s) with your permission, for example: your name and address, telephone number, age, personal financial records and identification numbers including your social insurance number.

As a customer, the better we know you, the better we are able to serve you. We ask you for your personal information for the following purposes: to verify your identity and protect against fraud, to set up and manage the products or services that are available to you, and to comply with federal laws and regulations that pertain to the proceeds of crime, terrorist financing and money laundering acts.

The information that we solicit and make use of, either at the time of your first transaction or subsequent transactions is required to satisfy the legal or regulatory requirements of the federal government and other regulatory authorities including various financial service vendors including Visa, MasterCard and other Point of Sale providers.

Additionally, there are some purposes that are self-evident. For example, if you are applying to be added to our cheque approval list, we will ask for information concerning your credit history to help determine your credit worthiness. Additionally we may refer to your personal information should we need to contact you personally.

As a consumer you have the right not to provide us with some or all of your personal information. However, as we are required by law in most instances to ask for this information, we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone choosing not to provide us with their personal information.

We will make every reasonable effort to ensure you are aware of the purposes previously listed for obtaining your personal information when you request any of our products or services. We assume that purposes that are self-evident should already be clear to our clients, however if you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Under no circumstances will we ever disclose your personal information without your consent, unless we are obligated to do so by federal legislation or court order.

Primarily we ask you for your identification to meet federal government requirements under the "Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act". There are other purposes for which we may ask you for your Identification. For example:

If you are applying to be added to our cheque approval list, we will ask you for your SIN to ensure an accurate match between your personal information and your credit bureau information. Without your SIN, the matching process is less accurate and we may not obtain the correct (or any) credit bureau report for you. In such a case, it would be unlikely that we would be able to grant you cheque approval status without the provision of your SIN.

We will ask for your Identification every time your conduct a foreign exchange transaction in order to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your personal information. Your identification number is used as an internal identification number to identify you. This becomes important for individuals whose name is similar to that of other clients. Using your Identification in this manner also allows us to ensure that changes to your name, address and or phone number are made with ease.

 

Obtaining and Verifying Your Personal Information

We obtain personal information about you primarily from you. In order to verify your address and telephone number we may refer to a local utility such as Bell Canada. We may also obtain financially related information from other sources with your consent. For example, if you wish to negotiate a bank draft with us we will contact the financial institution where the draft was issued to obtain a confirmation of funds.

It is important to understand that we only collect the information we need and only use it for the purposes outlined in this policy.

In order to maintain the integrity of the credit-granting system and the completeness of information held by the credit bureau. We will ask for your authorization to exchange your personal information on an ongoing basis with the credit bureau should you request to be added to our cheque approval list.

 

Requesting Access to Your Personal Information

As a consumer you have the right to review the personal information that we have collected from you or other parties, as well as the information that we may have disclosed to various regulatory bodies or other service providers. You can obtain this information by making a formal request in writing to our Privacy Officer. We will require specific information in order to locate and provide this information to you. A processing fee will be charged for this service. We will inform you of this fee in advance. This fee is non negotiable and will be based on the amount of information requested and the effort involved in locating it.

The following is a list of circumstances where we will not be able to provide some or all of the personal information that you request. This list includes, but is not limited to:

• Information that contains references to other persons
• Information that is subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege
• Information that cannot be disclosed for legal, security or commercial proprietary reasons
• Information that has already been destroyed due to legal requirements, or because we no longer needed it for the purposes set out in this policy,

If for any reason we are unable to provide you with your personal information, we will explain the reason(s) why.

We use the services of Equifax Canada to check and update such information as your personal credit history. Should you wish to verify the personal information that has been provided to them by our organization you may contact them directly.

 

Keeping your Information Up To Date

In order to keep your personal information up to date you are required to notify us if you have moved, changed your phone number or wish to have other changes made to your personal information. Every effort is made to ensure the integrity and accuracy of your personal information at the time of each transaction. Changes to personal information held by organization will only be facilitated upon the presentation of supporting documentation.

 

Who Receives Your Personal Information

In most cases will we never disclose the personal information of our clients without their express written consent. However under the following circumstances it is likely that your information will be disclosed. For example, should you make an application for our cheque approval service, you must give your consent for the exchange of your personal information with Equifax Canada. Other reasons for releasing personal information may include legislative and other legal obligations including court order, or subpoena to testify in court. A record is kept of any information released for the previously mentioned reasons. Records are not retained when your personal information is disclosed to third parties for routine purposes such as regular update reports to Equifax Canada. Under no circumstances do we sell or give lists of our clients to others for their use.

 

Keeping Your Personal Information Safe and Confidential

Your personal information is secure with Accu-Rate Corporation regardless of the format in which it is held. We have security controls in place to protect against unauthorized use, alteration, duplication, destruction, disclosure, loss or theft of, or unauthorized access to your personal information. For example:

We use outside vendors to provide services to you on our behalf, such as fund transfers. These vendors include our banking partners who are given only the information needed to perform those services. Information provided by us to them will be kept strictly confidential and used only for the purposes outlined above.

We ensure the physical, organizational and electronic security of your personal information through the use of secure locks on filing cabinets and doors, restricted access to our information storage areas by authorized persons only, and the use of passwords, firewalls and secure connections for electronically transmitted information. Furthermore our facilities are under video surveillance 24 hrs a day.

We use the professional document destruction services of Shred-It to dispose of your personal information once it is no longer required by law or for the purposes described in this Policy.

 

Retaining Your Personal Information

Your personal information is only kept as long as it as needed. The length of time we retain your personal information depends solely on any legal or regulatory requirements we may have to meet.

 

You Have a Choice to Provide Accu-Rate with your Personal Information

As a consumer you have the right not to provide us with some or all of your personal information. However should you choose not to do so we may not be able to provide you with the service requested.

For more information regarding the treatment of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer:

Privacy Officer
Accu-Rate Corporation
2573 Carling Avenue
Ottawa, Ontario  Canada
K2B 7H7

Call: 1 800 434 – 8208
Email: privacy-vieprivee@accu-rate.ca

If you wish to make a formal complaint about our privacy practices, please do so in writing to our Privacy Officer. Our Privacy Officer will acknowledge receipt of your complaint; ensure that it is investigated promptly and that you are provided with a formal decision and reasons in writing.

If you are not satisfied by the response issued by our Privacy Officer, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at:

Privacy Commissioner of Canada
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, Ontario  Canada
K1A 1H3

Call: (613) 995 – 8210
Call Toll-Free: 1 800 282 – 1376
Visit: www.privcom.gc.ca

This Privacy Policy is made under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. It is subject to change without notice.