Online Privacy Notice

Last Updated: February 1, 2023

Bank of the West, a trade name used by BMO Harris Bank N.A., and BancWest Investment Services, Inc., a subsidiary of BMO Harris Bank N.A., and their respective subsidiaries (collectively "Bank of the West", "we," "our," or "us") are committed to safeguarding the privacy and security of your Personal Information on our online or mobile websites (Sites) and mobile applications (Apps).

When you visit our Sites or use our Apps, we may collect anonymous Site Visit Information or Personal Information (or both) from and about you. In general, we use the information we collect to provide our services, respond to your requests, and enhance the quality of our Sites and our Apps. We encourage you to read this Notice carefully.

 
  • Information We Collect

    The Bank collects information when you use one or more of our Sites or our Apps. The type of information we collect depends on how you use our Sites and our Apps.

    Personal Information: Through our Sites and our Apps, the Bank collects information that either alone or when combined with other information identifies you as an individual. The Bank calls this information “Personal Information.” All Visitors to our Sites or Users of our Apps: If you do not bank online with us, we do not collect, capture, or retain Personal Information when you are just browsing our Sites or our Apps. We only collect the following anonymous information we call "Site Visit Information" when you visit our Sites or use our Apps:

    • network or device related information like your operating system or IP address
    • information about your physical location, but only with your permission
    • anonymous information about which pages you visit on our Sites
    • anonymous information about the webpage you visited just before our Sites, and information about the webpage you visited just after leaving our Sites

    Online Account Applicants: In addition to the Site Visit Information discussed above, if you apply for a new deposit or investment account online, we collect Personal Information such as your name, address, telephone number, and email address, and your account history information, Social Security Number or other identification information, supporting documents, and other account qualification information. The Bank keeps this collected information and any evidentiary materials from both completed and partially completed applications.

    Online Banking and Investment Customers: In addition to the Site Visit Information discussed above, if you do bank online with us, you are required to create an online banking profile by supplying a username, password, email address, and answers to a few security questions. Once you have created your online banking profile, we also collect and retain certain Personal Information including:

    • your name, postal address, email address, mobile number, and other contact information
    • your account number(s) and certain transaction information
    • your date of birth and Social Security Number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number
    • information necessary for you to transfer funds from your Bank of the West accounts to your accounts at other financial institutions or pay your bills online

    If you are an Online Banking and Investment Customer, we may utilize unique identifiers that can connect your Personal Information to your Site Visit Information.

    Online Credit and Loan Applicants: In addition to the Site Visit Information discussed above, if you choose to apply for credit or a loan online, we collect Personal Information including your name, address, telephone number, Social Security Number, date of birth, income, debts, email address, account history information, employment history, and other credit qualification information. We keep this collected information from both completed and partially completed applications.

    Credit and Debit Card Reward Customers: In addition to the Site Visit Information, if you are a credit or debit card customer, and you decide to register for online access to the Bank of the West Rewards Program (the Rewards Program), we collect Personal Information including your name, postal address, and email address in addition to your card number(s).

    Financial Tools: Our Sites offer tools for consumers to participate in rate-watch services and receive alerts when certain loan rates reach a desired level, as well as tools to obtain approximate values for collateral provided by Bank approved valuation guides. This information may also help consumers obtain loan rate quotations. Visitors who use these tools may be required to provide name, postal and email addresses, telephone number, vehicle information, seller or dealer information, and type of loan.

    App Users: If you download and use our Apps, in addition to the online banking customer information discussed above, we will also automatically collect and keep certain information about your mobile device or computer, such as your device’s unique identification number, its operating system, certain device settings and preferences, and information about how you are interacting with our Apps. If you use our mobile deposit services, and take photographs of checks using our App, we will also collect an image of your check solely to process your deposit.

  • How We Use and Share Personal Information

    Bank of the West collects Personal Information and contact information from you to respond to your requests, deliver services, remember users and their preferences, perform statistical analysis, authenticate users, comply with legal and regulatory obligations, prevent fraud, detect and respond to security incidents, for marketing purposes, and to deliver information to prospective and current online account holders. We do not sell or lease the Personal Information we collect to non-affiliate third parties for marketing purposes, but we may share certain information with our affiliates and select non-affiliated third parties for other purposes. You should read this section carefully to learn more about what we do with the Personal Information you share with us:

    Site Visit Information: When you visit our Sites or use our Apps we use anonymous information to help us remember you and your preferences. For more information on how we do this, please read the section on "Cookies and Beacons" below. We may also use cookies to identify and authenticate customers using a randomly assigned code, and not the customer’s Personal Information. Our Sites also collect location information with your permission, and we use that information to enhance the quality of our services by helping you find ATM and branch locations. Finally, we use and may share Site Visit Information for analytics and advertising purposes to improve our products and services as well as to allow us to provide advertising that is more relevant to the visitor. For more information about this, please read the section of this Notice on "Digital Advertising."

    Online Account Applicant Information: If you apply for a deposit or investment account through our Sites, we may use the Personal Information you provide and share it with others to process your request for an account, to obtain background and credit information about you from third parties to the extent permitted by law, or if you share your telephone number, email address, or physical address with us, we may use that information to contact you about the services for which you expressed an interest.

    Online Banking Customer Information: If you are an online banking customer, we use the Personal Information you share with us to identify you, process your transaction requests, confirm your identity, and to offer our own, our affiliates’, or select third-party products or services that may be of interest to you. We also use this information for online behavioral advertising. We also use your contact information to respond to your telephone or online chat inquiries or to provide information on products or services. We may share information about you with third parties, in accordance with our Consumer Privacy Policy. Such disclosure may be made, for example, if you have asked us to share information with the third party or we are required to disclose the information to complete a transaction on your behalf. Please see our Consumer Privacy Policy for more information.

    Credit and Loan Applicant Information: If you apply for a loan or a credit card through our Sites, we may use the Personal Information you provide and share it with others to process your request for a loan and to obtain background and credit information about you from third parties to the extent permitted by law. By applying for a loan or credit card through our Sites you agree that we may obtain this background and credit information. Bank of the West may use background and credit information for loan or credit card approval purposes and/or other business needs, as appropriate. The information may be also used to comply with other legal obligations. Credit and Debit Card Rewards Program Information: If you participate in our Credit and Debit Card Rewards Program, we may use the Personal Information you provide to allow you to access your Rewards Program account, to improve our Rewards Program, and to provide information about our own, our affiliates’, or third-party products and services that we think are of interest to Rewards Program participants.

    Financial Tools User Information: If you use the collateral valuation tools or other rate-watch tools on our Sites, the Personal Information you provided to us may be used to respond to you with the information you requested and to offer our own, our affiliates’, or select third-party products or services that we think you may find of interest.

    App User Information: If you use our Apps, we use the data collected to enhance the quality and efficiency of our mobile banking services, to process customers’ transactions, and to provide access to those services.

    Legal and Law Enforcement Requests: Bank of the West may also disclose, at its sole discretion, Personal Information and anonymous Site Visit Information collected from our Sites or our Apps as required or permitted by law, and to comply with any legally binding requests—like a subpoena, warrant, or similar legally enforceable request for information.

  • Digital Advertising

    In our efforts to deliver relevant digital advertising to you, we utilize cookies and beacons to evaluate our Sites and our Apps to track digital advertising performance. To do this, we engage third-party service providers to conduct these activities on our behalf. We call these third parties "Analytics Providers” and we use them to enhance Online Behavioral Advertising, or “OBA.” OBA helps us to deliver advertising content that is more likely to be of interest to you, and we use OBA information and other information about your activities on our Sites and Apps to help us determine which of our ads are more likely to appeal to you. The digital advertising information collected by our Analytics Providers is anonymous. For more information on your choices regarding OBA, please visit www.youradchoices.com.

  • Cookies and Beacons

    A cookie is an electronic file our Sites place on your computer to store information that makes your visit to our Sites and your use of our Apps more efficient. Cookies let our Sites and Apps recognize if your computer or mobile device has visited our Sites or used our Apps before, and what security requirements and browser preferences your computer or mobile device requires. We only use cookies to provide better services and more effective Sites and Apps. Additional information about cookies and how they work is available at www.allaboutcookies.org.

    "Beacons" include small graphic files with a unique identifier that are used to track a visitor to our Sites’ or user of our Apps’ online movements over time and across different websites. Unlike cookies, beacons are embedded on websites, not downloaded on your computer or device. Bank of the West uses beacons to better manage content on our Sites and to improve the use and efficiency of our Apps.

    We allow selected Analytics Providers to place cookies and beacons through our Sites. We do this to get better insights into the use of the Sites, to improve our understanding of our users’ demographics, and to engage in Online Behavioral Advertising.

  • Geolocation and Online Tracking

    When you visit our Sites, you may be asked if you would like to share your location with the Bank. You must opt-in to sharing your location before we will collect it, and the decision to share your location is entirely up to you. As we discussed above, we use this information to offer location-specific services, like helping you find our ATMs and our branches.

    Our Apps do not automatically collect location information from your device. However, our Apps use, but do not store, certain location-based data from your mobile device to help you find our branches or our ATMs. If you do not wish to use these location features, you should review your mobile device’s settings and disable location services.

    Our Sites and our Apps do not process or respond to "do not track" signals or other similar web browser signals. When you visit our Sites, we collect information about the webpage you visited before visiting our Sites and the webpage you visit after leaving our Sites.

  • Changing Your Information

    If you are an online banking customer or have applied for an account or a loan using our Site, you can correct or update your information by contacting our Customer Service by telephone or online chat. You may also be able to update select information by logging into your online banking account, and visiting the Services and Support page. If you are a mobile banking customer, you will be able to view and modify the list of approved devices associated with your account.

  • Potential Employees

    If you are a prospective employee of Bank of the West, you may be asked to share information with us if you apply for employment using our Careers Site. In order to use this feature of the Careers Site, you will be required to create a unique profile and supply a username and a password. In addition, to complete the application process, you will be asked to provide information about your previous employment, education and qualifications, and your contact information.

    If you have applied for a position with Bank of the West using our Careers Site, we may contact and obtain additional information about you from anyone whether or not identified in your application. You agree that we may obtain background information about you from third-party service providers to the extent permitted by law. We may use the information for recruitment purposes, organizational reporting, and/or other business needs, as appropriate. The information may also be used to comply with legal obligations regarding hiring and diversity of workforce or as otherwise required by law. Access to the database is limited to individuals who have a business need which may include human resource or technical professionals, among others. We may disclose your application information to third parties that assist us with the operation of this feature of the Site. You may correct your application information by accessing your candidate profile. Questions regarding this feature may be directed to MyCareer@bankofthewest.com.

    The information you provide will be saved in a database hosted in the United States. If you are applying for a position at Bank of the West from another country, the laws governing the Careers Site’s collection and use of Personal Information may be different from the laws of your country. If you decide to use the Careers Site, you are agreeing to be governed by the state and federal laws of the United States and you are expressly consenting to the transfer of your Personal Information and other data to the United States.

  • Site and App Security

    Protecting your personal information is a priority for Bank of the West. To protect your Personal Information from unauthorized access and use, we use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical controls to protect your Personal Information. While we take these important steps to protect you and your information, there are also important steps you can take to protect yourself. Also, despite all our efforts, no method of transmission over the internet, or method of electronic storage is completely secure, and Bank of the West cannot guarantee that your information will be secure. For more information please visit our Security Center on bankofthewest.com.

    Encryption: When you log in to any of the Bank's online services using our Sites or Apps, your login and personal information are protected by Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption, a security protocol that helps to ensure the data sent over the Internet between your device and us remains confidential. For our web sites, Bank of the West secure websites use Extended Validation Certificates to provide greater assurance you are communicating with the Bank and not another site that falsely claims or pretends to be the Bank (called “spoofing”). In most browsers, these certificates are identified and a secure connection is identified by a green address bar and padlock.

    Secure Passwords: If you bank online with us, we provide an additional layer of security for your information by the mandatory use of a username and password to access account information. It is important that your password is kept confidential. Your password should be unique to your Bank of the West login, difficult to guess, and ideally should have both lowercase and uppercase letters and also numbers and special characters.

  • Other Websites

    For your convenience, our Sites may contain links to other websites, or may refer you to other websites. Those other sites may be operated by other companies affiliated with us or by third-party companies not affiliated with us. Once you leave our Sites and access another website, you should be aware that you are subject to the privacy and security policies of that website.

  • Children's Online Privacy

    Our Sites and our Apps are not intended for children under the age of 13. Please do not access or use our Sites or our Apps if you are under 13 years of age. By using our Sites or using our Apps, you affirm that you are over the age of 13. For more information about the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), visit the FTC website: www.ftc.gov.

  • California Consumer Privacy Act

    For more information about how the Bank uses and shares the Personal Information it collects, and the rights of California residents under the California Consumer Privacy Act, visit: www.bankofthewest.com/ccpa.

  • Changes

    We may add to, delete from, or otherwise amend and update this Online Privacy Notice from time to time without prior notice. The date of last update is provided at the beginning of this Online Privacy Notice. Use of our Sites and Apps after an update indicates acceptance of the most current version.

  • Questions

    If you have questions please visit our Customer Service page or call us at the main Contact Us number.

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