Canada Privacy Policy

INTRODUCTION

We at MPOWER FINANCING, PUBLIC BENEFIT CORPORATION (collectively, “MPOWER”, “Company”,“we” , “our” or “us”) are proud to offer you financial services and products that help remove financial barriers to higher education. We value openness and honesty so we wanted to tell you how we collect and protect the information you provide us through this website.

This website policy describes how MPOWER collects, uses, protects, and shares your information in connection with MPOWER’s website at www.mpowerfinancing.com (“Website”), MPOWER’s mobile application, and any student lending or related services (collectively, the “Services”) offered through the Website. Please note that this Privacy Policy forms part of MPOWER’s Terms of Service.

Please note that this privacy policy does not apply to information about you that third parties collect from you. Third party services are subject to their own privacy policy and we encourage you to review the privacy policy of all websites and services you visit and use.

1. INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU AND HOW WE COLLECT IT

Information you provide to us

We collect information that you choose to provide to us on or through our Website and/or Services, including when you:

• Apply for a new loan or to refinance an existing loan (make a “borrower inquiry”), and provide us with your name, address, email address, date of birth, gender, telephone number, social insurance number or other government-issued identification number, credit history, employment information and educational information (e.g., details about your educational background or about your prospective educational program);
• Apply for an MPOWER scholarship listed on our Website, and provide us with your name, email address, date of birth, gender, citizenship and educational information;
• Calculate your student loan payments, and provide us with your citizenship and information about your course of study;
• Register to use our Website;
• Report a problem with our Website;
• Subscribe to our newsletter;
• Respond to surveys that we might ask you to complete for research purposes; and
• Make information available to us via social networking logins, such as when you log in using your LinkedIn, Google, or Facebook account.

Where personal information is processed with consent, you may (subject to contractual and legal restrictions) refuse to provide your consent, or choose to withdraw your consent, to our processing of your personal information by contacting us as described in the “Contact Information” section below. Note that if you refuse to consent, or withdraw your consent, to certain processing of your personal information, we may not be able to provide certain parts of our Services.

Information we collect automatically 

MPOWER automatically collect certain information about how you use our Website or Services, including:

• Details of your visits to our Website or mobile application, including your IP address, time of visit, time spent on each page, pages viewed, click locations, and referring or exit web pages.
• Information about your computer or device and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, browser type, hardware brand and model, and mobile network.
• Information about your computer, mobile device, Internet connection, and usage of this Website or mobile application; and
• Your chat history on the Website if you interact with us using the chat function. 

To automatically collect this information, we may use various technologies including:

• Cookies, a small file saved on your computer that may transmit information about your site visits and preferences. Most browsers are initially set up to accept cookies. You can set up your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie. You may also choose not to accept cookies, but if you do so, you may not be able to access certain parts of our Website. and some features may be restricted or impaired. Please note some cookies are strictly necessary to operate the Services and our site, which cannot be turned off; and
• Web Beacons, a small transparent GIF image that is embedded in a web page or email to track when the page or email has been viewed.

Online tracking & third-party information gathering 

Some browsers have “Do Not Track” features that allow you to tell a website not to collect information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites or other online services. How browsers communicate the Do Not Track signal is not yet uniform. As a result, our Website is not yet set up to interpret or respond to Do Not Track signals communicated by your browser.

Some content or applications, including advertisements, on our Website are served by third-parties that may include advertisers, ad networks and servers, content providers, and application providers. These third parties may use cookies, either alone or in conjunction with web beacons or other tracking technologies, in order to collect information about you when you use our Website. The information they collect may be associated with your personal information or they may collect information, including personal information, about your online activities over time and across different websites and other online services. They may use this information to provide you with interest-based (behavioral) advertising or other targeted content.

We do not control these third parties’ tracking technologies or how they may be used. If you have any questions about an advertisement or other targeted content, you should contact the responsible provider directly.

2. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use information we collect to:

Determine your eligibility for a loan, refinance or scholarship, including confirming you are over the age of 18 and verifying your identity and the accuracy of your information;

• Communicate with you during and after the loan approval process;
• Evaluate and improve our business, including improving our loan offerings, website, marketing and advertising campaigns, and other services;
• Offer products and services to you from us or third parties that we think you’d be interested in;
• Provide customer support;
• Let you know about changes to our Website or other products and services;
• Enforce agreements that you have made with us, including to enforce the terms of our Website and Services;
• To detect and prevent fraud, illegal acts and other violations of our policies and agreements, and to manage risk to protect the Website, Services, you and us from fraud or abuse;
• Implement servicing activities;
• Implement collection activities as needed;
• Diagnose and address technical and service problems;
• Aggregate the information to perform data analysis, including trend analysis, demographic analysis and financial analysis
• Comply with our obligations, policies and any court order, law or legal process; and/or

The information we collect automatically helps us improve our Website and Services by letting us, where permitted by law:

• Estimate the size of our audience and their usage patterns;
• Store information about your preferences so we can customize our Website according to your individual interests;
• Recognize you when you return to our Website; and
• Improve our advertising and marketing services.

3. SHARING YOUR INFORMATION

MPOWER may share information from or about you with:

• Our subsidiaries and affiliates for the purposes of processing information on our behalf;
• Service providers who help us prevent fraud, collect bills, service loans, process payments, market our business, store data, and jointly offer or refer financial products and services to you. We require that these third parties use information from or about you only so they can perform the services you or we ask them to and with appropriate safeguards as required by applicable laws. For more information about the way in which our service providers treat personal information, please contact us as set out in the “Contact Information” section below;
• Third-party services, such as LinkedIn, if you connect your loan application to their accounts. We may use the information to inform your application.
• Credit bureaus to report account information, as permitted by applicable laws and as set out in additional agreements that you may sign with us or a third party lender;
• Companies we may merge with, be acquired by, or sell assets to, in which case we will continue to ensure the confidentiality of information that personally identifies you, and give you notice before that information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy; and
• Law enforcement and government officials when: we are compelled to do so by a court order, subpoena, search warrants, or similar legal procedure; we need to do so to comply with law; or if we believe in good faith that sharing your personal information is necessary to combat fraud, prevent physical harm or financial loss, or to report suspected illegal activity.

4. ACCESSING AND CORRECTING YOUR INFORMATION

You can review and change your personal information by logging into our Website and visiting your account profile page.

You may also contact our Privacy Officer using the information in the Contact Information section below to withdraw your consent, to request access to, correct or delete any personal information that you have provided to us. Your rights are subject to applicable legal restrictions and we may take appropriate steps to verify your identity before responding to your request. We cannot delete your personal information except by also deleting your user account. We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect.

5. THIRD PARTY LINKS

The Website may contain links to websites not operated by us. We provide these links for convenience only and do not endorse or recommend any particular third party websites. Once you leave the Website, we suggest that you review the applicable privacy policy and terms of use of the third-party website or application. We are not responsible or liable for the content or use of any third party websites or applications or the privacy practices of those websites or applications.

6. HOW WE PROTECT YOUR INFORMATION

MPOWER aims to make sure your information is safe and to protect you against fraud. We use commercially reasonable administrative, technical, personnel, and physical security measures designed to safeguard information about you in our possession against loss, theft and unauthorized use, disclosure or modification. We limit access to personal information to our employees and service providers who require access in connection with their role or function. Each of our employees is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of all personal information to which they have access. We keep our employees informed about our policies and procedures for protecting personal information. Of course, despite these measures, we cannot guarantee perfect security of networks, servers and databases we operate or that are operated on our behalf.

Your personal information will be stored, or otherwise accessed by an authorized party, including our service providers, in Canada and the United States. Accordingly, your information may be processed in a foreign country where it may be accessible to law enforcement and national security authorities of that jurisdiction. Your information will be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions.

We do not represent that our Website and Services are appropriate or available in any particular jurisdiction.

7. DATA RETENTION

Personal information is maintained on our servers or those of our service providers and is retained as long as necessary for the fulfillment of the purposes for which it was collected, in accordance with prudent business practices on general document retention, or as otherwise required by law.. If your account is closed, we may take steps to mask or aggregate personal data and other information, but we reserve our ability to retain and access the data for so long as required to comply with applicable laws. We will continue to use and disclose such personal data in accordance with this Privacy Statement and applicable laws.

8. CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 14

MPOWER does not target, nor intend to collect or solicit any information from children under the age of 14 and MPOWER’s Services are not directed to children under the age of 14. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under the age of 14, we will delete that information as soon as possible. If you believe that we might have any information regarding a child under 14, please contact our Privacy Officer.

9. CHANGES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY

MPOWER may change this privacy policy to reflect changes in our business and practices at  our discretion. Please review this page periodically. The new version will be effective as of the “Last Modified” date indicated above. We will notify you of material changes (including, for example by email or by posting a notice on the homepage of the Website), and updating the “Last Modified” date at the top of this page.

10. CONTACT INFORMATION

If you have any questions about this privacy policy or MPOWER’s privacy practices, please contact our Privacy Officer, Lana Lodge at compliance@mpowerfinancing.com. 

Call us at +1-202-417-3800 (U.S.) or +1-647-503-4607 (Canada)

or send us a letter to: 1101 Connecticut Ave. NW Suite 900, Washington, DC 20036