DATA PROTECTION STATEMENT

Your personal data is important to us at Euler Hermes and we handle it with care. For your visits to our website, we would like to inform you about which personal data we store and how we use it in compliance with the applicable data protection laws.

I         RESPONSIBLE COMPANY

Euler Hermes, a member of the Allianz Group, is the world’s leading provider in trade-related credit insurance solutions with branches and affiliates across Europe and throughout the world. Euler Hermes provides B2B financial products to help our customers around the globe choose their business partners wisely and develop their businesses safely.

The company responsible for the processing of personal data in connection with the use of the website www.eulerhermes.ch is Euler Hermes, Wallisellen Branch Office of Euler Hermes SA, Richtiplatz 1, 8304 Wallisellen (“Euler Hermes”, “we”, “us” or “our”).

If you have any questions about this data protection statement or the processing of your personal data, please contact the Euler Hermes Data Protection Officer.

II         GENERAL INFORMATION

Personal data is data that can be used to identify you or can be personally assigned to you in some other way. We process certain personal data that you give us voluntarily, for example in the contact form or a request for a quote or as part of a campaign, and/or which you expressly permit us to process. We also process personal data that we legitimately receive from third parties or publicly available sources where this is necessary for the provision of our services.

The personal data we process can include your name, e-mail address, telephone number, job title and the name of your company.

We correct and complete stored data as soon as we become aware of a change. We also notify the data recipients of such changes and of any breaches of data protection and restrictions on processing.

For which purposes and on which basis is your data processed?

We process your personal data for the following purposes:

• to communicate with you
• to inform and advise you on products of Euler Hermes (e.g. by sending you our own advertisements or through other marketing campaigns)
• to offer, maintain, improve and further develop our services for you and to adapt them to your needs and interests (e.g. by forwarding individualised recommendations to you)
• as part of the preparation and/or performance of a contract with you in order to prepare offers for a new product, deliver our services to you and fulfil our mutual contractual obligations
• to set up and maintain your user accounts, for technical support or for other related purposes
• to comply with our legal obligations and combat fraud
• for other purposes, which we will explicitly inform you of upon collection of the data
• for sharing personal data within the Allianz Group

We do not create personalised user profiles.

If we use your data for any other purposes than described in this data protection statement, we will inform you of the other purpose accordingly and will obtain your consent where required. 

Will your data be passed on to third parties or transferred to other countries?

We do not pass your personal data onto unauthorised third parties. We can forward your personal data for processing and storage to foreign companies within the Allianz Group if they have equivalent data protection standards. The transfer of personal data to countries outside the European Economic Area (including the EU) shall be based on the relevant decisions on adequacy by the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) or the EU standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to third countries.

In addition, we only pass it on within the Allianz Group for marketing purposes if you have expressly consented to this. 

How long do we keep your personal data?

We will not retain your personal data longer than necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected or to fulfil legal obligations, or as permitted by law, e.g. to defend legal claims. Afterwards, we will delete your personal data. The individual retention periods depend on the type of personal data and the purpose of its processing. 
 

III         USE OF EULER HERMES WEBSITE

We leave it entirely up to you which personal information you would like to entrust us with during your visit to our website.

On its websites, Euler Hermes collects only the personal data that you voluntarily provide in online forms or that you otherwise allow us to collect according to the cookie preferences you selected when you first accessed our website. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time, and if you do so we will discontinue the processing of your data collected on this website. You can withdraw your consent by clicking here.

You can access all public pages of the website www.eulerhermes.ch anonymously. No personal data will be collected automatically, processed or used from your visit to our website without your express consent. We only store your personal data if you make it available to us voluntarily in one of our applications on the website (e.g. contact/online form).

We do, however, collect statistical information with the help of cookies – for example on the number of visitors to each individual web page – in order to continuously improve our website and ensure that it functions properly.

Cookies are small files that are saved on your computer and that enable the website to “remember” your actions or selected settings over the course of time. In principle, you can also use our websites without cookies and can fully or partially deactivate them in your browser settings at any time. If, however, you would like to be able to use our websites conveniently and in full, we recommend that you allow cookies.

There are various types of cookies:

• Session or temporary cookies: Session cookies enable us to save your actions (e.g. your login details) during a browser session. Session cookies are deleted when you close your browser or leave our website.
• Persistent or tracking cookies: Persistent cookies are saved on your computer between browser sessions. These cookies enable us to recall your previous settings or actions every time you visit our website until the cookies expire. They also serve to maintain your access to our website. If the cookie is deleted, you will have to enter your login details again.
• Third-party cookies: These cookies are used by third parties on other websites, for example to display advertising for third-party products in the form of banners or buttons for social media.
  

Strictly necessary cookies:

These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in or filling in forms. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not then work. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable information.

To obtain information about the use of our websites and improve our web offering, we also use the following web analytics tools:

This website uses Google Analytics, a web analytics service from Google Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses cookies – text files that are saved on your computer and enable analysis of your use of the website. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website, such as browser type and version, operating system used, referrer URL (the website you visited prior to ours), the host name of the accessing computer (IP address) and the time of the server request, is generally transmitted to a Google server in the US and saved there. The IP address of your browser transmitted by Google Analytics is not combined with other Google data. In addition, we have added the code “anonymizeIP” to Google Analytics on this website. This guarantees the masking of your IP address, ensuring that all data is collected anonymously. The full IP address is transmitted to a Google server in the US and shortened there in exceptional cases only.

Google will use this information on behalf of the website operator to analyse your use of the website, compile reports on website activities and provide further services related to website and Internet usage for the website operator. You can prevent cookies from being saved in the settings of your browser. If you do so, however, you may not be able to make full use of all this website’s functions.

You may also prevent the data generated by the cookie in relation to your use of the website (including your IP address) from being sent to and processed by Google by downloading and installing the browser add-on available via the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en-GB.

This website also uses Google AdWords, a Google analytics service, and conversion tracking as part of Google AdWords. Google AdWords saves a cookie for conversion tracking (a conversion cookie) on your computer’s hard drive when you click on an advert run by Google. These cookies expire after 30 days and are not used for personal identification. If you visit certain pages on our website, Google and we can recognise that you clicked on the advert and were forwarded to this page. The information obtained with the help of conversion cookies is used to produce statistics for AdWords customers who use conversion tracking. Through these statistics, we learn the total number of users who have clicked on the advert run by Google and accessed a page with a conversion tracking tag installed on it. We do not obtain any information with which it is possible to personally identify users. The information we obtain cannot be assigned to specific users.

In addition to conversion tracking, we also use the functions remarketing, affinity audiences, custom affinity audiences, in-market audiences, similar audiences, demographic targeting and geographic targeting.

With Google’s remarketing function, we reach users who have already visited our website. This enables us to address our advertising to target groups which are already interested in our products or services. AdWords also identifies shared interests and characteristics of our website’s users by analysing user behaviour on websites in the Google Display Network over the last 30 days and with the help of the contextual search engine. On the basis of this information, AdWords then finds new potential customers for marketing purposes who have similar interests and characteristics to the users of our website. Target-group-specific remarketing is based on the combined use of cookies, such as Google Analytics cookies and Google DoubleClick cookies.

For further information on the terms of use and data protection in the context of Google AdWords, please go to the following link: https://policies.google.com/technologies/ads?hl=en.

Data is also collected and saved on our website with Bing Ads technology and then used to create pseudonymised usage profiles. This is a service of the Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399, USA. The service enables us to track the activities of users of our website if they have accessed it via Bing Ads adverts. If you access our website via an advert of this kind, a cookie will be saved on your computer. A Bing UET tag is integrated into our website. This is a code via which, in combination with the cookie, certain non-personal data on the use of the website is saved, including time spent on the website, areas of the website accessed and the advert via which the users arrived at the website. No information on your identity will be recorded.

The saved information is transmitted to Microsoft servers in the US and saved for a maximum of 180 days there. You can prevent the data on your use of the website generated by the cookie from being collected and processed by deactivating cookies. This may, however, limit the website’s functionality in certain circumstances.

Furthermore, Microsoft may, in certain circumstances, track your usage behaviour across a number of your electronic devices by means of something called cross-device tracking, which will enable it to display personalised advertising on Microsoft websites and in Microsoft apps. You can deactivate this via http://choice.microsoft.com/en-gb/opt-out.

Further information on the Bing analytics services can be found on the Bing Ads website (https://help.bingads.microsoft.com/#apex/3/en/53056/2). Further information on data protection at Microsoft and Bing is provided in Microsoft’s privacy statement (https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/privacystatement).

We also use a suitable web analytics tool to analyse user behaviour and identify companies’ IP addresses for marketing purposes. To use this service, data on user behaviour (e.g. IP address, time of access, usage, browser requests) has to be transmitted directly to the analytics server and made available for exclusive use for www.eulerhermes.ch. The data collected is treated in strict confidence and is neither sold to third parties nor forwarded. If you no longer wish to be identified in the future, please send an e-mail to optout@permagroup.ch.

The Euler Hermes website may also contain links to other websites that are not covered by this data protection statement.

IV         DATA PROTECTION RIGHTS AND POSSIBILITIES FOR SELF-PROTECTION

What are your rights in respect of your personal data?

You have rights to the following in respect of your personal data:

• Information: You can request confirmation of whether we process your personal data from us. If we do, you have the right to request further information on the personal data stored, such as the source and category of the data and the purpose of the processing. Further information of this kind may be subject to a charge.
• Correction: You have the right to request the update or correction of your personal data so that it is always accurate.
• Deletion and restriction on processing: You have the right to request the deletion of your personal data and the restriction of its processing. Under certain circumstances, however, we are not able to comply with this request. Deletion is not possible, for example, if the data processing is mandatory for operational purposes or the statutory retention period has not yet expired.
• Objection: You also have the right to object to the use and transfer of your personal data for marketing purposes at any time.

Please contact our Data Protection Officer if you wish to exercise these rights.

How can you protect your personal data yourself?

If you are a member of a Euler Hermes user group, your access data is password-protected and communications are automatically encrypted. The security of your data therefore depends crucially on how you handle your access data.

We use the e-mail address you provided to answer you by e-mail with the requested information. If we send notifications of customer facts by e-mail and the notification is subject to data protection regulations, we do so exclusively in encrypted form. If the content of your message relates to a contractual relationship, we keep the e-mail. Before sending us an unencrypted e-mail via your Internet provider, please bear in mind that its content is not necessarily protected against unauthorised access, falsification, etc., on the Internet.

V           SECURITY OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA

We take technical and organisational security precautions to protect your personal data against manipulation, loss, destruction or access by unauthorised individuals whenever possible and to guarantee the protection of your rights and compliance with the applicable data protection provisions.

To do this, we adopt technical, organisational and other measures that seem appropriate to us, such as directives, training courses, IT and network security solutions (in particular modern encryption methods, firewalls, etc.), access controls and restrictions and other controls. We regularly review our security guidelines and processes together with our IT specialists to guarantee the protection of your data.

Our employees only have access to the data they require for operational processes and for the purpose of fulfilling their contractual and legal obligations and duties. Depending on the area of the company they work in, they are also subject to various confidentiality obligations.

Please note that, despite extensive technical and organisational security precautions, there is a possibility that data will be lost or intercepted/manipulated by third parties. We accept no liability for any instances in which a third party changes, views, adopts, uses or exploits data entered by you or us. 

VI           COMPLIANCE WITH AND AMENDMENT OF THE DATA PROTECTION PRINCIPLES

Who ensures compliance with the declared data protection principles?

The company Data Protection Officer ensures compliance with the data protection principles. Compliance with our data protection and IT security guidelines is monitored by the internal audit function.

Who can you contact?

If you have any questions about the collection, processing or use of your personal data by Euler Hermes, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

Dennis Räthel
Euler Hermes SA Brussels, Wallisellen Branch Office
Richtiplatz 1
CH-8304 Wallisellen 

If you are of the opinion that Euler Hermes is not complying with applicable data protection requirements, we recommend that you first contact the Data Protection Officer named above.

However, you can also file a complaint directly with the responsible data protection supervisory authority:

The Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner
Feldeggweg 1
CH-3003 Berne

How often do we update this data protection statement?

We regularly review this data protection statement and make changes to it from time to time. We will always ensure that the most recent version is available here and may additionally notify you directly (e.g. via e-mail) in the event of significant changes. This data protection statement was last updated on 16 March 2021.