Privacy Policy

This privacy notice will help you understand how we collect, use and protect your personal information. You should also show this notice to any named persons on your policy and anyone else whose details you provide to us.

There are multiple organisations involved in providing you with a travel insurance service. This privacy policy explains how the following organisations process your data:

• Hood Travel Limited (“Hood”) which sells and administers the policies and provides customer services facilities;
• ERGO Travel Insurance Services Limited (“ERGO”) which underwrites the policies and is responsible for claims handling; and

There are other organisations which are also involved and these have their own separate privacy policies which are included below this one. These are:

• Taurus Insurance Services Limited which provides the gadget cover and is responsible for gadget claims handling; (https://www.taurus.gi/Privacy)
• DAS Legal Expenses Insurance Company Limited which provides the legal cover and handles claims for such cover.
• Esure services Limited who are the brand owner and who will collect your data for their own purposes, detailed in their privacy notice (https://esure.com/privacy)

If you received a quote for your policy before 4th September 2023, it would include cover for Financial Failure provided by International Passenger Protection.

• International Passenger Protection Limited which provides the airline and supplier failure cover and handles claims for such cover; and their privacy policy can be found here (https://www.ipplondon.co.uk/privacy.asp)

In this privacy notice, ‘we’, ’us’ and ‘our’ refers to Hood and ERGO unless otherwise stated.

The type of personal information we collect

The types of information processed are shown in the table below. The identity of the data controller for each type of information is also shown. Where both parties are data controllers they act independently for that purpose.

Data	Data Controller
Identity Data includes first name, maiden name, last name, username or similar identifier, marital status, title, date of birth and gender.	ERGO Hood
Contact Data includes billing address, postal address, email address and telephone numbers.	ERGO Hood
Financial Data includes bank account and payment card details to purchase a policy. Financial data will be encrypted accordingly.	Hood
Transaction Data includes details about payments to and from you and other details of products and services you have purchased from us.	Hood
Technical Data includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.	Hood
Profile Data includes your username and password, purchases or orders made by you, your interests, preferences, feedback and survey responses.	Hood
Usage Data includes information about how you use our website, products and services.	Hood
Marketing and Communications Data includes your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences.	Hood
Health and Medical Information includes medical history obtained from you.	ERGO

How we get the personal information and why we have it

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you to Hood when you are applying for a quote for a travel insurance policy (by telephone or submitted through the website) or when you contact our customer services department (by telephone, email, post or real-time web live chat). This information may be shared with ERGO or esure to fulfil their own purposes.

You may also provide personal information directly to ERGO when making a claim (by telephone, email or post). ERGO may also receive personal information indirectly, from a doctor in the event of a medical emergency for which you are making a claim.

Purposes for processing personal information

Each of us use the information that you have given for different purposes which are listed in the table below along with the identity of the company to which the purpose relates.

Purpose	Company
Pricing risk rates	ERGO
Operations (assistance/claims validation, fraud investigations)	ERGO
Assistance and Claims Complaints	ERGO
Pricing retail rates	Hood Travel
Amendments to and renewal of a travel insurance policy	Hood Travel
Providing you with policy documentation relating to a contract of insurance	Hood Travel
Providing a customer services facility via telephone, email and real-time web live chat	Hood Travel
Complaints handling (non-claims complaints)	Hood Travel
Processing premium payments and refunds	Hood Travel
Screening against the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation sanctions list	Hood Travel
Prevention and detection of financial crime	Hood Travel
Marketing	Hood Travel
Providing you with information we believe may be of interest to you related to your travel insurance policy	Hood Travel
Understanding how people interact with the travel insurance website	Hood Travel
Recording phone calls for record keeping, training and monitoring	Hood Travel

We will only share your information if it is allowed by law, for prevention of fraud or with third parties who perform services to administer your policy. These include our respective group companies, price comparison website providers, third party administrators, reinsurers, other insurance intermediaries, insurance reference bureaus, medical service providers, fraud detection agencies, loss adjusters, external law firms, external accountants and auditors, regulatory authorities, and as may be required by law.

Under data protection legislation, the lawful bases each party relies on for processing this information are in the table below.

Lawful Basis	Hood	ERGO
Contractual obligation	✔	✔
Legal obligation	✔	✔
Legitimate interest	✔	✔

Automated Decision Making

ERGO and Hood use automated decision making, including profiling, to assess insurance risks, detect fraud, and administer your policy. This helps decide as to whether insurance can be offered and determine prices.

An example is that when you buy a travel insurance product, a potential policyholder may be rejected for cover based on their age. ERGO do not offer insurance for customers above a certain age. If accepted, the automated calculation of a person’s age may be used to calculate the premium payable.

If you have any concerns regarding the decision reached, please let Hood know at the contact details set out below and we will arrange for a person to check the accuracy of the result.

How we store your personal information

Your information is securely stored within the United Kingdom.

We keep your personal data for:

• six months after the date you request a quote; or
• in the case of a purchased policy, seven years after it has expired.

We will then dispose of your information by deleting it from our systems.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights including:

Your right of access - You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

Your right to rectification - You have the right to ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

Your right to erasure - You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to restriction of processing - You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing - You have the the right to object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to data portability - You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

Please contact Hood Travel using the details provided under ‘Our contact details’ if you wish to make a request.

How to complain

If you have any concerns about our use of your personal information, you can make a complaint to us using our contact details in the table below.

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Our contact details

Company	Hood Travel Ltd	ERGO Travel Insurance Services Ltd
Address	2nd Floor, Dencora Court Tylers Avenue Southend-on-Sea Essex SS1 2BB	Afon House Worthing Road Horsham RH12 1TL
E-mail:	dpo@hoodgroup.co.uk	Dataprotectionofficer@ergo-travel.co.uk

Cookies and similar technologies

A cookie is a small file sent to a web browser by a web server. When you use this site your IP address and some basic information about the way you use the site during your visit will be logged in this file. This information is used for site navigation and systems administration purposes only.

In certain situations, Hood may use cookies in order to recognise you as a site user and to personalise your visit. Hood only use cookies for the purposes stated above and where necessary for the full operation of the website.

Hood will not (and will not allow any third party) to track or collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to this site. Hood will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any other source. Hood will not (and will not allow any third party) to associate your IP address with any other data held by any third party. Hood will not (and will not allow any third party) to link, or seek to link, an IP address with the identity of a computer user.

Most web browsers will accept cookies, but if you would prefer Hood did not collect data by this method, you can disable this function within your browser settings. However, without cookies, you may not be able to use the full functionality of the website, including personalisation of the web content to reflect your personal usage.

If you want to delete any cookies that are already on your computer, please refer to the instructions for your file management software to locate the file or directory that stores cookies. Information on deleting or controlling cookies is available at http://www.allaboutcookies.org/

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google. It uses cookies to compile an anonymous report of how many visitors Hood have received, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Hood only use this information to ensure you are receiving full site functionality, easy navigation of the pages and system administration purposes. Hood also use this information to improve marketing campaigns. For more information, click here for an overview of privacy at Google.

Optimizely

Hood use Optimizely to run tests on our site that show different versions of pages to certain users. The cookies used by Optimizely simply enable this process to happen. No personal information or data is stored in these cookies. Hood then use the results of these tests to improve the users’ on-site experience and general site performance. For more information click here.

TradeDoubler

TradeDoubler is one of the UK's leading affiliate marketing network. When Hood agree an Affiliate deal with another site, Hood need to be able to tell when that site has sent Hood a user who purchased a policy as Hood will then provide that site with a reward. The cookies used by TradeDoubler simply tell us whether or not you have come from one of the affiliate partner sites, whether you then went on to buy a policy and a few other details about the visit or sale e.g. when exactly the user clicked through to us from an affiliate, which product they bought and which ad they clicked. As always, no sensitive user information is collected or stored, and everything is anonymised. Click here to read more about TradeDoubler cookies.

Links

For your convenience Hood have included some links on this website to other sites that Hood believe you may find useful. These websites will each have their own Privacy Policy, which may differ from ours. Therefore, please ensure, when you click on any of the links, that you read the Privacy Policy located on the website you have selected. Any websites connected with this site are not within our control.