Welcome to the Brown & Brown website. We hope that you enjoy using our site. On this page you can browse our privacy policy, get information on how we collect and use cookies, and read more about the terms and conditions of using this site.
Throughout this page, the terms “Brown & Brown”, or “us” or “we” refers to the owner of the website. The term “you” refers to the user or viewer of our website.
Privacy and security
Respecting your privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of your personal information is critical to us. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, safeguard and use your data, and is designed to ensure that we interact with you in accordance with your wishes and in line with current data protection legislation, including the General Data Protection Regulation of May 2018.
Please note that this statement does not extend to websites that are linked to this website. You should refer to the privacy policies of any such websites for further details about their use of your personal information.
What do we mean by "personal information?"
For us, "personal information" means information which identifies you, like your name or email address. Any information that does not identify you is "non-personal information."
If we store your personal information with information that is non-personal, we will consider the combination as personal information. If we remove all personal information from a set of data then the remaining data will be classed as non-personal information.
General Use Of Your Information
When does Brown & Brown receive your personal information?
We collect personal information about you when you provide it to us. We only collect personal data relevant to the type of transactions you make with Brown & Brown.
For example, when you contact Brown & Brown to sign up to any of Brown & Brown’s online content, such as newsletters, or you telephone, email or write to Brown & Brown, we may receive and retain personal information about you.
If you engage with our social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, we may receive personal information about you then too. If you use these networks, their privacy policies apply, and we encourage you to read them.
The information we collect is relevant to the type of transaction you are entering into. It may include details such as your name, email address, postal address, telephone or mobile number.
How will Brown & Brown use your personal data?
Brown & Brown will use your personal information for administrative reasons, such as to answer your correspondence, keep your records up to date or to implement your instructions (for example, to ensure you no longer receive marketing information if you tell us to stop sending it to you). We may also use your data for marketing purposes, if you have given us permission to do so.
We will use your personal information for the following purposes:
For administrative reasons, including:
- "service administration", which means that Brown & Brown may contact you for reasons related to the completion of commercial or other transactions you have entered into with us, or online content you have signed up for;
- in relation to correspondence you have entered into with us whether by letter, email, social media or any other means, and to contact you about any content you provide;
- for internal record keeping so as to keep a record of your relationship with us;
- to keep your data up to date;
- to implement any instructions you give us to with regard to withdrawing consent to send marketing information;
- to use IP addresses to identify the location of users, which allows us to block disruptive use and to establish the number of visits from different countries;
- to analyse and improve the activities and content offered by the Brown & Brown website to provide you with the most user-friendly navigation experience. We may also use and disclose information in aggregate (so that no individuals are identified) for marketing and strategic development purposes.
If you have given us permission to do so, we may also use your contact details to provide you with information regarding our services. We will not do this unless you have given us additional, specific consent to use your data for this purpose.
Unless legally required to do so we will not provide your information to third parties without your consent.
How do we use personal information collected prior to May 2018?
The way that we collect your consent to send you marketing information has changed since the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. If you sent us an enquiry before May 2018, we asked you whether you were happy to receive marketing communication at that time. Unless you opted out from receiving such communication at that point, we will have registered you as being happy to receive these materials.
The GDPR includes an exception known as the ‘soft opt-in’. In Brown & Brown’s case, this allows us to send marketing emails to those who have previously enquired about our products or services as long as they did not opt out from receiving these emails at the time. We apply a 24-month time limit to this consent, and stop sending emails once this time period has elapsed. We will not use the "soft opt in" option if you have opted out of receiving email, either at the time of signing up or by subsequently unsubscribing from our mailing list.
If you are receiving marketing communications as a result of the soft opt-in being applied and would like to change this, you can click on the ‘unsubscribe’ link which is included in all of our marketing emails, or you can contact us directly by post, phone or email.
Other relevant parties
Our data may be processed on our behalf by Brown & Brown, meaning that they will organise our data into a form that is usable to us. However, Brown & Brown retains control of and legal responsibility for this information.
How do we keep your data secure?
We take all necessary steps to ensure any information you provide to us online is safe, secure and managed correctly. In order to prevent unauthorised access or disclosure of this data we have put in place suitable physical, electronic and managerial procedures.
The information you provide to us over the internet via this website is encrypted using secure socket layer technology (SSL).
Any personal information stored on our servers is not publicly accessible. The data is secured and can only be accessed by authorised Brown & Brown staff on a "need to know" basis.
How long will Brown & Brown keep your personal information?
We will only hold your personal information on our systems for as long as we need to. Once your data is no longer required, or if you request that we do so, we will delete your information from our database.
We will treat any consent you give us to share marketing materials with you as lasting for 24 months. After 24 months has elapsed from the date upon which you granted consent, we will either ask you to re-grant us permission to contact you, or will remove your details from our database.
If you request that we stop sending you marketing materials we will keep a record of your contact details and appropriate information to enable us to comply with your request not to be contacted by us (this allows us to specifically exclude your data when we generate mailing lists or undertake other marketing activity).
How can you control what we send you or request we update your personal information?
The accuracy of your information is really important to us. We want to ensure that we are able to communicate with you in ways that you are happy with, and to provide you with information that is of interest. You can tell us that your details have changed or change the way that we communicate with you in a number of ways.
If you wish to change how we communicate with you, or update the information we hold, then please contact our DPO (Data Protection Officer) Oli Brown:
- Email: oli@brownandbrown.co.uk
- Post: Brown & Brown, Borley Mill, Borley, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 7AB
- Telephone: 01787 881157
How long will it take for these changes to be effective?
When you request that we stop sending you marketing information, we aim to update our records within the following timescales:
Information sent to you via email - 24 hours (next working day) from receipt of email
Telephone calls - 24 hours (next working day) from receipt of request to opt out of receiving calls
Information sent to you by mail - 28 days from receipt of 'do not mail' request. This period is longer than for other channels due to the production times for mailing campaigns, and in most cases we would expect the change to be effective much more quickly.
You have the legal right to request a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to have any inaccuracies corrected.
What Other Information Do We Gather?
In addition to information gathered directly (as outlined above), we also gather information indirectly. This information does not identify you to us, but allows us to analyse how our website is being used, ensures that the site runs smoothly, and allows us to make improvements to our online service.
In common with most websites we have access logs. These logs record information on user activity on the site and are aggregated to produce summary information, allowing statistics about the popularity of the website to be compiled.
Access log files do not contain any personal information and do not identify you to us. Brown & Brown reserves the right to store this aggregated information indefinitely.
We may also use cookies, clear GIFs (small, transparent images which allow us to see how users behave when they reach a webpage), third party web analytics and device information for functionality and to better understand user interaction with our products, services, and communications. No personal information is collected during these processes.
Functionality: We may use cookies and device information to enhance functionality of certain areas of the website. For example, cookies are used to count how many times you have visited our site, so we can see if users are making repeated visits. This data is anonymised so you are not identifiable to us, but when viewed in aggregate, this information helps us to see whether our website is a useful resource to our visitors.
Please see below to find out more about our cookie usage across this website.
How can you contact us?
This website is owned and operated by:
Brown & Brown, Borley Mill, Borley, Sudbury, Suffolk, CO10 7AB
If you have any questions about this privacy statement or any other matters concerning this website or you wish to report a technical error, please get in touch using the various options available on the contact page.
Changes to Brown & Brown’s Privacy Policy
This Privacy Policy may be updated from time to time so you may wish to check it each time you submit personal information to Brown & Brown. The date of the most recent revisions will appear on this page. If you do not agree to these changes, please do not continue to use the Brown & Brown website to submit personal information. If material changes are made to the Privacy Policy we will notify you by placing a prominent notice on the website.
Cookie information
The Brown & Brown website creates cookies, in order to give you a better browsing experience. These cookies contain no personal information, but help our site to run more smoothly on your computer.
You can manage what cookies Brown & Brown deploy on your system via the Customise Cookies page.
About cookies on our website
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we place onto your device. It is used to tailor your experience either for the duration of your visit (using what is known as a “session” cookie) or for repeat visits (for which we store what is known as a “persistent” cookie).
We also use "analytical" cookies which allow us to recognise and count the number of times you visit and to see how you move around our website.
Some cookies are set directly by us, while others are set by trusted third parties.
Types of cookies
There are several types of cookies in use on this site. Some of these are set by us, and some are set by trusted third parties.
How are these cookies used?
Cookies set by us
Persistent cookies are used in cases where your interactions need to be remembered across multiple visits, such as recalling your preferences. This type of cookie can be removed by finding the ‘clear history’ option in your web browser and selecting cookies as one of the items to be deleted.
Session cookies are also in use on this site. These only last for the duration of your visit. They store information on your short term interactions with the site. For example, if a user with a visual impairment chose to resize the text on our website to make it easier to read, a session cookies might be used to remember this preference as they moved around the site.
We reserve the right to add further cookies in the future if we feel they will be beneficial for the performance of this website.
Cookies set by third parties
In addition to cookies set by us, we allow trusted third parties to place cookies on our site.
Google Analytics
We use Google Analytics, a free service offered by Google that gathers detailed information about your activity on this website. It does not gather any personal information, but it helps us to measure the way that you and other users move around the site with a view to improving your experience over time. Find out more about the cookies gathered by this service
Hotjar
This lets us see where you have interacted with dynamic elements on our website pages such as contact forms or buttons. We can’t see any personal information about you, but it helps us to make sure our pages are laid out in a user-friendly way. Find out more about Hotjar
Are cookies safe?
Yes, cookies are completely safe and do not hold any personal information such as your home address, date of birth or credit card details.
If you would like to find out more about cookies, visit www.aboutcookies.org
What if I don’t want cookies?
If you are not comfortable with our website using cookies please change your browser settings or navigate away from this website. Please note that by not using cookies some of the website's features may not be available.
You can manage or block the cookies set by us, or indeed any other website, should you wish to do so. This can be done via the browser settings on your device. If you have already consented, you can withdraw your consent at any time using these settings.
For more comprehensive information on the subject of blocking cookies please visit www.aboutcookies.org. If you wish to specifically manage or block cookies on the browser of your mobile device you may need to refer to the manual for the handset.
You should be aware that restricting or blocking cookies may have an impact on the functionality of this website and effect the intended experience.
We reserve the right to embed content from websites such as YouTube and Vimeo. As a result you should check the relevant third party website for more information about those cookies.