Respecting and protecting customer privacy is vital to our business. The provisions of our policy applies to former customers as well as current customers unless we state otherwise.

a) The Privacy Policy explains the Following: Protecting the confidentiality of our customer information.
Who is covered by the Privacy Policy.
How we gather information.
The types of information we share, why, and with whom.
Opting Out instructing us not to share certain information

b) Protecting the Confidentiality of Customer Information:
We take our responsibility to protect the privacy and confidentiality of customer information very seriously. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to store and secure information about you from unauthorized access, alteration, and destruction. Our control policies, for example, authorize access to customer information only by individuals who need access to do their work. From time to time, we enter into agreements with other companies to provide services to us or make products and services available to our customers. Under these agreements, the companies may receive information about our customers but they must safeguard this information, and they may not use it for any other purposes.

c) Who is Covered by the Privacy Policy:
We provide our Privacy Policy to customers when they conduct business with our company. If we change our privacy policies to permit us to share additional information we have about customers, as described below, or to permit disclosures to additional types of parties, all parties will be notified in advance. This Privacy Policy applies to consumers who are current customers or former customers.

d) How We Gather Information:
As part of providing financial products or services, we may obtain information about consumers from the following sources:

Applications, forms, and other information that loan applicants provide to us, whether in writing, in person, by telephone, electronically, or by any other means. This information may include name, address, employment information, income, and credit references.

Transactions with us, our affiliates, or others. This information may include account balances, payment history, and account usage;

Consumer reporting agencies. This information may include account information and information about credit worthiness; Public sources. This information may include real estate records, employment records, telephone numbers, etc.

e) Information We Share:
We may disclose information we have as permitted by law. We are required to or we may provide information to third-parties without customers consent, as permitted by law, such as:

To regulatory authorities and law enforcement officials.

To protect against or prevent actual or potential fraud, unauthorized transactions, claims, or other liability. To report account activity to credit bureaus.

To consumer reporting agencies.

To respond to a subpoena or court order, judicial process or regulatory authorities.

In connection with a proposed or actual sale, merger, or transfer of all or a portion of a business or an operating unit, etc.

In addition, we may provide information to our service providers to help us process applications or service your accounts. Our service providers may include billing service providers, mail and telephone service companies, lenders, investors, title and escrow companies, appraisal companies, etc.

We may also provide information to our service providers to help us perform marketing services. This information provided to these service providers may include the categories of information described above under How We Gather Information limited to only that which we deem appropriate for these service providers to carry out their functions.

We do not provide non-public information to any company whose products and services are being marketed unless you authorize us to do so. These companies are not allowed to use this information for purposes beyond your specific authorization.

f) Opting Out
We also may share information within our corporate family of office(s). We may share all of the categories of information we gather, including identification information (such as name and address), credit reports, (such as credit history), application information (such as income or credit references), account transactions and experiences with us (such as payment history), and information from other third parties (such as employment history).

By sharing this information we can better understand the financial needs of our customers. We can then send notification of new products and special promotional offers that our customers may not otherwise know about. For example, if a customer originally obtained a mortgage loan with us, we would know that he/she is a homeowner and may be interested in hearing how a home equity loan may be a better option than an auto loan to finance the purchase of a new car.

In all states except Vermont, customers may prohibit the sharing of application and third-party credit-related information within our company or any third-party company at any time by opting out. For Vermont customers, application and third-party credit-related information will not be shared unless the customer opts in.