Privacy Policy | Prudence

PRUDENCE is dedicated to protecting the confidentiality and privacy of information entrusted to it. As part of this fundamental obligation, PRUDENCE is committed to the appropriate protection and use of personal information that has been collected online.

Generally, our intent is to collect only the personal information that is provided voluntarily by online visitors so that we can offer information and/or services to those individuals. To learn more about how we collect, use, share and protect the personal information that we have obtained.

1. Collection and use of personal information

We obtain personal information about you if you choose to provide it – for example, to contact mailboxes.

When you register or submit personal information to PRUDENCE we will use this information in the manner outlined in this Privacy Statement. Your personal information is not used for other purposes, unless we obtain your permission, or unless otherwise required or permitted by law or professional standards.

A. The legal grounds we have to use your personal information

PRUDENCE generally collects only the personal information necessary to fulfill your request. Where additional, optional information is sought, you will be notified of this at the point of collection.

The law in Europe allows us to process personal information, so long as we have a ground under the law to do so. It also requires us to tell you what those grounds are. As a result, when we process your personal information, we will rely on one of the following processing conditions:

i. Performance of a contract: this is when the processing of your personal information is necessary in order to perform our obligations under a contract;

ii. Legal obligation: this is when we are required to process your personal information in order to comply with a legal obligation, such as keeping records for tax purposes or providing information to a public body or law enforcement agency

iii. Legitimate interests: we will process information about you where it is in our legitimate interest in running a lawful business to do so in order to further that business, so long as it doesn’t offset your interests; or

iv. Your consent: in some cases, we will ask you for specific permission to process some of your personal information, and we will only process your personal information in this way if you agree to us doing so. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting PRUDENCE

Examples of the ‘legitimate interests’ referred to above are:

i. To prevent fraud or criminal activity and to safeguard our IT systems.

ii. To customize individuals’ online experience and improve the performance usability and effectiveness of PRUDENCE’s online presence.

iii. To conduct, and to analyze, our marketing activities.

iv. To meet our corporate and social responsibility obligations.

B. Automatic collection of personal information

In some cases, PRUDENCE and its service providers use cookies, web beacons and other technologies to automatically collect certain types of information when you visit us online. The collection of this information allows us to customize your online experience, improve the performance, usability and effectiveness of PRUDENCE’s online presence, and to measure the effectiveness of our marketing activities.

i. IP addresses

An IP address is a number assigned to your computer whenever you access the internet. It allows computers and servers to recognize and communicate with one another. IP addresses from which visitors appear to originate will be recorded for IT security and system diagnostic purposes.

ii. Cookies

Cookies will typically be placed on your computer or internet-enabled device whenever you visit us online. This allows the site to remember your computer or device and serves a number of purposes.

Below is a summary of the categories of cookies collected on our websites, and how your consent may impact your experience of certain features as you navigate the websites:

Strictly necessary cookies: Strictly necessary cookies are essential in order to enable users to move around the website and use its features, such as accessing secure areas of the website. These cookies must be enabled or the site will not function, and cannot be blocked.
Performance cookies: Performance cookies are cookies used to gather data to enhance the performance of a website. You can manage your consent for performance cookies using the cookie banner, or by updating your browser’s settings.
Functionality cookies: Functionality cookies are used to remember customer selections that change the way the site behaves or looks. You may opt-out of these cookies, but it will impact your experience on the website, and you may need to repeat certain selections each time you visit. You can manage your consent for functionality cookies using the cookie banner, or by updating your browser’s settings to not accept cookies.

Other third-party tools and widgets will be used on our individual web pages from time to time to provide additional functionality. Depending on how you set your preferences in your browser and/or the cookie banner, use of these tools or widgets may place a cookie on your device to make their service easier to use, and ensure your interaction is displayed on our webpages properly.

Cookies by themselves do not tell us your email address or otherwise identify you personally. In our analytical reports, we will obtain other identifiers including IP addresses, but this is for the purpose of identifying the number of unique visitors to our web sites and geographic origin of visitor trends, and not to identify individual visitors.

iii. Google Analytics

PRUDENCE uses Google Analytics. To provide web site visitors with more choice on how their data is collected by Google Analytics, Google have developed the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript to indicate that information about the web site visit should not be sent to Google Analytics. The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on does not prevent information from being sent to the web site itself or to other web analytics services.

iv. Web beacons

A web beacon is a small image file on a web page that can be used to collect certain information from your computer, such as an IP address, the time the content was viewed, a browser type, and the existence of cookies previously set by the same server. PRUDENCE only uses web beacons in accordance with applicable laws.

PRUDENCE or its service providers will use web beacons to track the effectiveness of third-party web sites that provide us with recruiting or marketing services or to gather aggregate visitor statistics and manage cookies.

You have the option to render some web beacons unusable by rejecting their associated cookies. The web beacon may still record an anonymous visit from your IP address, but cookie information will not be recorded.

v. Location-based tools

PRUDENCE will collect and use the geographical location of your computer or mobile device. This location data is collected for the purpose of providing you with information regarding services which we believe may be of interest to you based on your geographic location, and to improve our location-based products and services.

C. Children

PRUDENCE understands the importance of protecting children’s privacy, especially in an online environment. In particular, our sites are not intentionally designed for or directed at children under the age of 13. It is our policy never to knowingly collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 13, except as part of an engagement to provide professional services.

2 Sharing and transfer of personal information

A. Transfer within the network of PRUDENCE firms

We share information about you with other member of the PRUDENCE network as part of international engagements, and with PRUDENCE International and affiliates/partner firms where required or desirable to meet our legal and regulatory obligations around the world. Other parts of the PRUDENCE network are also used to provide services to us and you, for example hosting and supporting IT applications, provision of certain forms of insurance for member firms and its clients, performing client conflicts checks and Anti-Money Laundering checks, assisting with client engagement services and otherwise as required in order to continue to run PRUDENCE’s business.

B. Transfers to third parties

We do not share personal information with third parties, except as necessary for our legitimate professional and business needs, to carry out your requests, and/or as required or permitted by law or professional standards.

PRUDENCE will not transfer the personal information you provide to any third parties for their own direct marketing use.

3 Choices

In general, you are not required to submit any personal information to PRUDENCE, but we will require you to provide certain personal information in order for you to receive additional information about our services and events. PRUDENCE will also ask for your permission for certain uses of your personal information, and you can agree to or decline those uses.

As described in “Cookies” above, if you wish to prevent cookies from tracking you as you navigate our sites, you can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. Note, however, that some portions of our sites may not work properly if you elect to refuse cookies.

4 Data security and integrity

PRUDENCE has reasonable security policies and procedures in place to protect personal information from unauthorized loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction. Despite PRUDENCE's best efforts, however, security cannot be absolutely guaranteed against all threats. To the best of our ability, access to your personal information is limited to those who have a need to know. Those individuals who have access to the data are required to maintain the confidentiality of such information.

We also make reasonable efforts to retain personal information only for so long (i) as the information is necessary to comply with an individual’s request, (ii) as necessary to comply with legal, regulatory, internal business or policy requirements, or (iii) until that person asks that the information be deleted. The period for which data is retained will depend on the specific nature and circumstances under which the information was collected; however, subject to the requirements of (i) & (iii) above, personal information will not be retained for more than 2 years.

5 Links to other sites

Please be aware that PRUDENCE web sites will typically contain links to other sites, including sites maintained by other PRUDENCE member firms that are not governed by this Privacy Statement but by other privacy statements that will often differ somewhat. We encourage users to review the privacy policy of each web site visited before disclosing any personal information.

By registering on any PRUDENCE web site and then navigating to another PRUDENCE web site while still logged in, you agree to the use of your personal information in accordance with the privacy statement of the PRUDENCE web site you are visiting.

6 Changes to this statement

PRUDENCE may modify this Privacy Statement from time to time to reflect our current privacy practices. When we make changes to this statement, we will revise the “updated” date at the top of this page. Any changes to the processing of personal data as described in this Privacy Statement affecting you will be communicated to you through an appropriate channel, depending on how we normally communicate with you.