Cookie policy

Cookies, AI, analytics and profiling

Here you’ll find information on certain technologies we (Bupa Global), “our” “us”) uses to process your personal information, your choices and rights:

  • cookies and tracking technologies
  • profiling and automated decision making
  • artificial Intelligence and machine learning
  • analytics

Where you are accessing services via Mon Espace Sante, the ExpaTPA cookie policy also applies. The ExpaTPA Cookie Policy can be accessed here: ExpaTPA Cookie Policy

Cookies and other similar technologies

What are these technologies?

When you use our websites and apps, we and third-party companies use cookies and similar technologies such as pixel tags to collect information.

A cookie is a text file containing small amounts of information which a server may download to your computer, mobile or tablet when you visit a website or use an app.

A pixel tag (sometimes called a web beacon) is an invisible image with a line of code placed in an email or on a web page.

For simplicity, we refer to all such technologies as ‘cookies’.

How do we use them?

There are different types of cookies to do different things, for example:

  • letting you navigate between different pages on a website efficiently
  • remembering preferences you’ve given, and
  • helping us identify ways to improve your overall experience of using our websites and apps

Some cookies are used:

  • to show you advertising tailored to your interests
  • to count the number of site visits and find out which are the most popular pages

Managing cookies and tracking technologies

You can check and manage cookies:

  • You can use our cookies management tool to see and control what cookies we use, how they are categorised and how long they last
  • You can also control, block, or delete cookies through your web browser settings, usually found under ‘settings’ on your chosen browser

Necessary cookies the storage of a cookie on the terminal depends on the choices made by the website user, who may freely express and modify these choices at any time.

Analytics

Analytics is a process to analyse data, statistics and other information, either automatically by a computer or manually by a person.

Anonymous analytics

As part of our day-to-day business, we produce management information reports. These are typically aggregated which means the information is grouped together and not looked at on an individual basis, and often they do not contain personal information. For example, we produce reports showing business performance split by day, business area or customer type.

Analytics using personal information

We sometimes conduct analytics that cannot be performed without personal information. This type of analytics involves analysing personal information and other data. The goal is to make recommendations about changes to the business or improvements to the services we offer our customers.

For example, we may analyse how our customers access our apps so we can understand how popular they are and identify where we can make improvements. This will involve us capturing your personal information, such as your member or registration number or email address used to access the app.

As part of these analyses, we sometimes carry out profiling activities. For example, if we want to know how many customers may be interested in our dental practices in a particular area, we will conduct analysis based on postcode.

Profiling and automated decision making

Like many businesses, we evaluate information about you and use technology to give you automatic responses and decisions (known as profiling and automated decision making).

We use these processes for:

  • business activities, to give you a quicker, more consistent and fair service
  • marketing, to give you information we think will interest you

1. Business activities

Running our business and delivering our products and services.

All our business

Improving our products and services

Profiling and automated decision making can help us identify how our products and services can be improved, as well as how we can achieve better outcomes for our customers and business partners. For example, we may profile you so we can give you relevant information and notices within our digital apps.

Detecting and preventing fraud

We may share some of your information (including your name, date of birth, sex and the country you live in) with third party companies who carry out fraud checks. This will allow us to identify matches and carry out further checks to detect and prevent fraud.

Even if you aren’t at risk of fraud or suspected of committing fraud, using a range of people’s information allows us to have better and more accurate anti-fraud processes.

Bupa Global

Pre-authorisation

We use technologies that automatically pre-authorise your treatment. This is more efficient for our customers, business partners and healthcare professionals. We need to use profiling to create a reliable system and this involves automatic decision making. We typically make sure an adviser reviews any problems with treatment approval to guarantee a fair outcome to our customers.

Medical underwriting

We use profiling and automated decision making to help us decide what level of cover we can offer you. We’ll use technology to review your medical information and find out if you have any previous or existing health conditions which aren’t covered by your health policy or scheme.

Pricing

We may use software to help us calculate the price of products and services based on what we know about you and other customers.

Our software may:

  • analyse your previous claims and compare it with the information we hold to find out how likely you are to claim in future
  • use data such as your age, where you live and details about your health (for example, existing health conditions and whether you smoke) to calculate prices for products
  • evaluate your payment and previous claims, information you’ve given us about yourself, and other information we’ve received from third parties, to automatically:
    • provide you with a renewal quote
    • decide what incentives we can offer you
    • choose the marketing messages you’ll receive

We use AI and machine learning technologies to do this automatically. The technology gives us more accurate and tailored information. You can find more information about this under AI and machine learning below.

2. Marketing

Conducting and improving our marketing activities.

We use profiling for marketing purposes. This helps us understand what offers, incentives and information may interest you and other people. We take the following steps:

We collect your information

We collect information directly from you and through automated means both as part of your onboarding as a customer or business partner and during our relationship with you. We also collect information about you from third parties, such as your employer or insurance brokers.

We create data sets

We combine your information with other people’s information. This helps us understand our customers and business partners on a less individual level.

We also segment the information into different categories, for example by type of customer. This gives us a more accurate picture of the marketing that might interest you and others.

We make predictions and gather insights about you and others

Profiling helps us evaluate information about you and others to improve our marketing activities. We undertake manual profiling, meaning our team will manually review a set of data and filter it by different categories. For example, we may predict that our female customers, in a given age range, will be interested in a female health initiative, or that if you’re already engaging with some of our digital products you may be interested in other useful digital features to improve your experience.

We also use AI and machine learning technologies to run the process automatically. The technology gives us more accurate information, such as predicting how likely you are to stop using our products and services. You’ll find more information about this under ‘Artificial intelligence and machine learning’

We market our products and services to you and others

We share personalised marketing communications by email and phone and within our apps and other digital services, displaying content that we think will be relevant to you. We also use the results of this to find other people with similar traits who might be interested in our products and services.

We use a combination of social media platforms and digital capabilities, such as customer relationship management tools, to send marketing, show our adverts and create personalised marketing campaigns using the results of our profiling and automated decision making.

Your rights about profiling and automated decision making

  • Right to object to profiling related to marketing
    • If you object, we’ll stop these activities.
  • Right to object to a purely automated decision about you
    • If you object, a member of our team will manually review the decision that was made about you.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning

What are these technologies?

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Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is where computers are programmed to think and act like humans This includes doing things such as learning, problem solving and decision making.

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Machine learning

Machine learning is a subset of AI that involves training machines to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. This is typically done by providing large amounts of data to the machine and allowing it to learn patterns and make predictions based on that data.

How do we use AI and machine learning?

  • Customer service. AI and machine learning can be used to improve customer service by providing personalised recommendations and assistance. For example, chatbots powered by AI can help customers claim or answer questions about their policies. This improves response times and our efficiency.
  • Risk assessment and pricing
  • Fraud detection
  • Training our model (the AI algorithm) that creates predictions for marketing and business activities

How do we use AI and machine learning responsibly?

We are committed to using AI responsibly by following five key principles:

  • privacy and security
  • fairness
  • transparency
  • safety
  • accountability
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How to contact us

If you have any questions about this Cookies, AI, analytics and profiling policy, you can contact us at [email protected].