Essent Group Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiaries, including Essent Guaranty, Inc. and CUW Solutions, LLC, but excluding Essent Title Holdings, Inc., and its subsidiaries (collectively referred to as “Essent,” “we,” or “us”) has prepared this Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) to explain how we collect, use, and protect information we obtain via this website, any site that we control and that links to this Policy, or our mobile applications (collectively, the “Site”) or through our other interactions with you directly, including if you interact with Essent in a commercial context, or indirectly, such as through your financial institution (collectively, “Interactions”).
Information We Collect
When you visit our Site or through Interactions with you, we may collect the following categories of personal information:
- Identifiers, such as your name, username, home or other physical address, email address, and/or telephone or facsimile number.
- Sensitive personal information, including Social Security number, driver’s license number, or other government identification number.
- Demographic information, such as your gender, age, and date of birth, some of which may be protected characteristics under anti-discrimination laws.
- Financial information, such as credit history, income and assets, location, character and value of property and bank account details, if applicable.
- Commercial information, such as the products or services you purchase, obtain, or consider.
- Internet and other electronic network activity information, such as information about how you interact with the Site, log file information, and information collected through cookies, web beacons and other technologies on the Site. Please see the “Third-Party Information Collection” section below for more information. We do not respond to web browser “Do Not Track” signals.
- Visual images and audio recordings for quality assurance purposes if you contact us by telephone.
- Professional or employment-related information, such as the name of your employer, professional contact information, and/or job title.
- Education information, such as colleges or universities attended, and degrees earned.
- Information you provide to us in connection with requests for promotional consideration, educational offerings, or credit counseling.
We collect personal information from the following categories of sources:
- Directly from you, when you provide it to us, such as by contacting us by telephone, or that we collect automatically when you visit the Site.
- Our customers.
- Our partners and vendors, including consumer reporting agencies and other third-party information sources.
- Analytics partners who provide cookies, pixels, or similar tools on our Site.
- Publicly available sources, such as government records posted online.
We may combine such information with information we already have about you.
The table below describes the categories of personal information that Essent has collected and the categories of third parties to whom we have disclosed personal information for a business purpose for each of those categories of personal information over the preceding 12 months.
|
Types of Personal Information |
Categories |
How We Obtained this Information |
With Whom this Information is Disclosed |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Real Name |
Name |
Information you provided; or Information provided by other parties |
When applicable, we may disclose this information to affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties and vendors to complete the requested transaction and/or carry out institutional risk controls, including updating our models. We may also disclose this information to our affiliates for advertising or other business purposes |
|
Alias |
|||
|
Unique Personal Identifier |
|||
|
Postal Address |
Address |
||
|
Commercial Information |
|||
|
|
Contact Information |
||
|
Phone Number |
|||
|
Gender |
Demographic Information |
||
|
Age |
|||
|
Date of Birth |
|||
|
SSN |
Government Issued Identification |
||
|
Passport Number |
|||
|
Tax ID |
|||
|
Driver’s License Number |
|||
|
Professional or Employment information |
Background Information |
||
|
Education Information |
|||
|
Account Name |
Loan Number/Account Number |
||
|
Payment History |
Personal Financial Information |
||
|
Credit History |
|||
|
Credit Score |
|||
|
Financial Account Balances |
|||
|
Online Identifier (IP Address) |
Internet or Other Electronic Network Activity Information |
Information we collected by automated means |
When applicable, this information may be disclosed to analytics companies and/or application providers to complete the requested transaction, for everyday business purposes, or for marketing purposes |
|
Geolocation Data |
|||
|
Browsing History |
|||
|
Search History |
|||
|
Audio, electronic, visual, or similar information, including but not limited to headshots, photos or likenesses, that can be linked or associated with a particular individual or household |
Audio and Visual Data |
Information you provide to us |
When applicable, we may disclose this information to affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties and vendors to complete the requested transaction, for everyday business purposes or for marketing purposes |
How We Use Information
Essent may use information for the following business purposes:
- Maintaining or improving our Site, including debugging to identify and repair errors;
- Maintaining or improving our products and services including investigating fraud, enhancing the models we use in operations, quality assurance purposes or loss mitigation;
- Managing and mitigating risks including institutional risk controls;
- Communicating with you, such as to respond to your inquiries or to provide you with information, periodic alerts or updates, or any other materials that you have requested from us, as well as shareholder materials;
- Facilitating credit counseling;
- Providing services to or receiving services from your employer, for example if you are employed by one of our customers or service providers;
- Emailing or otherwise sending you marketing or other promotional offers and information about Essent’s or others’ products or services that may be of interest to you and administering promotions which our customers or consumers elect to participate in;
- Managing your shareholding in Essent Group Ltd. and keeping your record on the shareholder register up-to-date;
- Fulfilling our contractual obligations to shareholders;
- Paying dividends to you and allowing you to exercise your rights as a shareholder;
- Protecting the security and integrity of the Site or otherwise protecting Essent’s rights or property, your health and safety, or the health and safety of others;
- Complying with our legal obligations, responding to court or government regulator requests for information, or enforcing our legal rights;
- Researching and modeling related to our business;
- As otherwise necessary or appropriate in connection with our business; and
- Fulfilling any other purpose for which you provide the information as we may otherwise disclose at the time of collection.
Sensitive personal information is only used for the following purposes:
- To resist malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal actions directed at Essent. For example, Essent may use sensitive personal information to detect fraud or potential identity theft.
- To provide our services. For example, Essent may use sensitive personal information as part of underwriting or providing mortgage insurance, to verify customer information, or to maintain or service accounts..
- To verify or maintain the quality or safety of the services that we offer.
- For other purposes that do not involve inferring characteristics about individuals, such as for tax purposes.
Essent does not process sensitive personal information for the purpose of inferring characteristics about individuals.
Essent may retain personal information after it is no longer needed to perform the service requested by the consumer and from time-to-time temporarily access it to improve the models used in our operations.
Disclosure of Information by Essent
Essent may disclose information to the following categories of third parties for the business purposes described in Section 3:
- Among our various businesses and affiliated companies.
- To service providers that provide services to help us with our business activities.
- To third parties that maintain our shareholder register and process shareholders’ personal information on our behalf.
- To law enforcement, government agencies, courts, or other third parties to protect ourselves, our employees, or others, to investigate fraud, or as required by law, such as to comply with a subpoena or similar legal process.
- To third parties in the event Essent is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, or in the unlikely event of bankruptcy.
- To any other third party with your prior consent.
Third-Party Information Collection
Some content or applications on the Site may be provided by third parties. These third parties may use cookies or other tracking technologies to collect information about you when you use our Site. We may receive reports based on the use of these technologies by these companies on an individual as well as aggregated basis.
Your browser may allow you to control the use of cookies, but these browser controls might not apply to all technologies. If you reject cookies, you may still use our Site, but your ability to use some features or areas of our Site may be limited.
One of the third-party services the Site uses is Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google"). Google Analytics uses cookies to analyze how individuals use the Site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the Site (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the Site, compiling reports on Site activity, and providing other services relating to Site activity. For more information about how Google collects and uses information, visit Google’s Privacy Policy. To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all sites click here.
Safeguarding Information
Essent uses reasonable physical, technical, and administrative safeguards to protect personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, use, loss, misuse, or unauthorized alteration, or destruction. Notwithstanding these security safeguards, it is impossible to guarantee 100% security in all circumstances.
Retention of Information
We will retain your personal information for as long as necessary in connection with our business and business purposes, and we may still retain, use, and disclose your information as necessary to comply with our legal, regulatory, or record retention obligations. Any request to delete your personal information is subject to these obligations and restrictions. Note that deletion may involve aggregation, deidentification, or anonymization of data, in accordance with applicable data protection laws.
Your Choices and Rights
Depending on where you reside, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal information, subject to applicable exceptions:
- Right to access. You may be entitled to request that we disclose to you the specific pieces of your personal information that we have collected about you in a portable and, to the extent technically feasible, readily usable format.
- Right to know. You may have the right to confirm that we have collected personal information about you and know what personal information we have collected about you, including, as applicable, the categories of personal information we have collected, the sources from which we collected that personal information, the business or commercial purposes for which we collected and disclosed that personal information, the categories of personal information that we disclosed to third parties for business purposes and the categories of third parties to whom we disclosed personal information.
- Right to deletion. You may be entitled to request that we delete the personal information that we have collected from you. We will use commercially reasonable efforts to honor your request, in compliance with applicable laws. Please note, however, that we may need or be required to keep such information, such as for our legitimate business purposes or to comply with applicable law.
- Right to correct your personal information. You may also have the right to update inaccurate information that we process about you.
- Right to opt out of the sale or sharing of your personal information. We may sell or share your information with our affiliates so they can contact you or for targeted advertising. You have the right to opt out of this sale or sharing of your personal information. If you would like to opt out of the sale or sharing of your information, please contact us.
- Right to exercise rights without discrimination. You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment if you exercise the rights conferred to you by applicable privacy law.
Please note that these rights may be limited under applicable laws.
If you would like to exercise one of your rights, please contact us or call 877.569.6547 and provide us with your name, the nature of your relationship with Essent, the name of your mortgage lender if you are a borrower whose loan is or was insured by Essent and the number by which such lender identifies your loan, and information by which we may contact you. Please note that we may require additional information from you to verify your identity and process your request. You can also submit a request via an authorized agent. If you use an authorized agent, we may request a copy of the agent’s signed permission to act, verify your identity directly, and ask that you confirm the agent’s authority. We will not discriminate against you because you exercise any of the consumer rights described in this section.
International Users and Transfers
Essent maintains information in the United States of America and in accordance with the laws of the United States, which may not provide the same level of protection as the laws in your jurisdiction. By using the Site and providing us with information, you understand and agree that your information may be transferred to and stored on servers located outside your resident jurisdiction and, to the extent you are a resident of a country other than the United States, that you consent to the transfer of such data to the United States for processing by us in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
Personal information and other information covered by this Privacy Policy may be transferred to, and processed and stored in, the United States or any other jurisdiction in which Essent or its affiliates, subsidiaries, or service providers maintain facilities, even if the level of data privacy protection required in such jurisdiction is less than that required by the jurisdiction in which you reside. By submitting your information to Essent, you consent to such transfers and to the worldwide processing of your personal information and other information.
Children’s Information
This Site is not directed at children under the age of thirteen (13), and Essent does not knowingly collect personal information from any child under the age of thirteen (13) through this Site. If we learn that we have collected or received personal information from a child under 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information.
Links to Non-Essent Websites and Third Parties
The Site may provide links to third-party websites for your convenience and information. If you access those links, you will leave the Essent Site. Essent does not control these third-party websites or their privacy practices, which may differ from Essent’s practices. We do not endorse or make any representations about third-party websites. The information you choose to provide to unrelated third parties is not covered by this Policy.
Updates to Essent’s Privacy Policy
Subject to applicable law, this Privacy Policy may be updated periodically to reflect changes in our personal information practices. We will provide you notice of any changes to this Privacy Policy as required by law. Each time we update this Privacy Policy, we will indicate when it was most recently updated and its effective date. Unless otherwise stated, the revised Privacy Policy is immediately effective upon publication. A copy of the Policy may also be obtained by written request sent to the address below.
Contact Information
Questions or concerns regarding Essent’s Privacy Policy or practices should be directed to the following:
Chief Compliance Officer
Essent Guaranty, Inc.
Two Radnor Corporate Center, 3rd Floor
100 Matsonford Road
Radnor, PA 19087
Compliance@essent.us
Updated: March 19, 2024