The nonprofit graduate loan specialist

About Access Group

 

Privacy Policy

 
 
 

We are required to notify borrowers on an annual basis regarding Access Group's and National City Bank's privacy policies. If you would prefer to receive this notice via e-mail instead of regular postal mail, please go to My Account and update your Annual Privacy Policy Notification Preferences. If you would like to download a PDF version of the notice, click on the link below.

Access Group and National City Bank Privacy Notice
(PDF 50.9 KB, 2 pages)
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Access Group Privacy Policy

Our privacy policies
Keeping customer information secure, and using it only as our customers would want us to, is a top priority for all of us at Access Group, Inc. Here are our policies in brief:

  • We will impose strict standards of security and confidentiality and maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard any information you share with us. (See Information Collection and Security Procedures)
  • We will limit the collection of your information to the minimum required to administer our business and restrict internal access to your nonpublic personal information to authorized, trained employees on a “need to know” basis. Employees who violate our privacy policies will be subject to our normal disciplinary process.
  • Whenever we hire other organizations to provide support services, we will require them to conform to our privacy standards with respect to the information you have provided us and to allow us to audit them for compliance.
  • We will not reveal your information to other companies that may want to sell their products or services to you. For example, we will not sell your name to a catalogue company.
  • We may amend our privacy policy from time to time. As required by law, we will send our current customers our most recent privacy notice at least annually.
  • All of our privacy policies apply to our former customers as well as our current customers.

What information do we collect about you?
“Nonpublic personal information” (NPI) is information about you that we obtain in connection with providing a financial product or service. Such information includes, for example, your Social Security number and loan balance, and, once you have begun repaying your loan, your repayment history. We collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:

  • The loan applications or other forms that you fill out, which provide us with most of the information we use, such as your name, address, social security number, school, and course of study.
  • Your school, which confirms your enrollment status and eligibility for student loans.
  • Reputable national consumer credit reporting agencies, which report on your credit history.
  • Information that we collect about your transactions with us and our affiliates, such as your loan balance, repayment history, and any other parties involved in your transactions, such as a cosigner.

With whom do we share information about you?
Access Group does not disclose nonpublic personal information about you to any entities except as permitted by federal law, specifically the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. For instance:

A. As permitted by law, we may share all of the information we collect about you, as described above, with our affiliates described below and with companies that provide marketing services on our behalf.

B. By law, as needed for the purpose of offering, processing, servicing, and collecting loans, we may disclose your nonpublic personal information to other parties in the student lending business, such as guarantors, lenders, loan servicers, the Department of Education, credit bureaus, and schools. Under the agreements that govern the Access Group Loan Program, only Access Group may use nonpublic personal information about applicants or borrowers, except as may be necessary for the other participants to perform their respective roles.

We are required by law to disclose certain information about you (such as information related solely to our experiences or transactions with you) to credit bureaus and regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission, and to comply with legal requirements, such as when subpoenaed for a fraud.

Who has adopted these privacy policies?
The following Access Group affiliates have adopted these privacy policies: Access Group, Inc., which administers the loan program and may own or may in the future purchase your loan(s); and Access Group Loan Reserve Trust I, which acts as a loan reserve and purchases certain defaulted loans. Throughout this document, the term “we” refers to the participants identified above, collectively.


National City Privacy Notice

OPT-OUT: We will not share your nonpublic personal information with others as defined below. National City, on your behalf, has exercised your right to opt-out under 12 CFR Part 40, Privacy of Consumer Financial Information.

The basis of each customer relationship at National City is built on trust. You have chosen to do business with National City, and we guard that relationship with great care, beginning with the information you have chosen to share with us. That is why we have opted out for you as a matter of corporate policy. National City does not share information about you outside of our National City companies unless permitted by Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and other applicable laws and regulations.

National City Corporation, its family of financial services companies ("affiliates") and employees, are dedicated to protecting the privacy of your nonpublic personal information. We maintain information about you in order to provide you with the most effective and convenient access to our broad range of financial products and services. We want you to understand what information we collect, and how we use and protect it. This notice serves as a standard for all National City employees for collection, use, retention and security of nonpublic personal consumer information.

What Information We Collect
“Nonpublic personal information” is information about you that we obtain in connection with providing a financial product or service. Such information includes for example, account balance, income, assets, insurance premiums, payment history and overdraft history.

We may collect nonpublic personal information about you from the following sources:
• Information that you provide to us, such as on applications or other forms
• Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others, or
• Information from others, such as credit bureaus, real estate appraisers, and employers

Our Security Procedures
To maintain security of customer information, we restrict access to your personal and account information to persons who need to know that information to provide you products or services. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards to guard information.

What Information We Disclose
National City does not disclose nonpublic personal information about you to any companies that are not members of our corporate family ("third parties"), except as permitted by federal law, specifically Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. The confidentiality of your nonpublic personal information will continue to be maintained consistent with this privacy notice even if you decide to close your account(s), your account becomes inactive, or when you otherwise cease to do business with us.

National City works with a variety of third parties to bring you financial services. We disclose information about you as necessary to fulfill these third party service agreements. For example, we may disclose information about you to third parties that assist us in servicing or maintaining your loan or deposit account, or other business relationship, such as printing checks or billing you for loan payments. We may also disclose information about you to governmental entities, such as sending annual income statements to the IRS, and to other third parties such as credit bureaus, or in response to subpoenas.

We may disclose all of the information we collect, as described above, to third parties that perform marketing services on our behalf or to other financial institutions, such as insurance providers, with whom we have joint marketing agreements in order to make a variety of financial services available to you*. These third parties must agree to strict confidentiality provisions to assure the protection of your information. Because we already limit the sharing of your nonpublic personal information as outlined above, no action is necessary on your part to limit such sharing.

Fair Credit Reporting Act Disclosure*
We share information about you with our affiliates. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you may direct us not to share certain credit information with our affiliates. Examples of the kind of credit information that you may direct us not to share include the nonpublic personal information you provide in your application or that we obtain about you from nonaffiliated third parties such as credit bureaus. If you don’t want such information shared you may write to us at National City Corporation, Attention: Office of Consumer Privacy, P.O. Box 4068, Kalamazoo, MI 49009. Please provide your name, address, Social Security number and account number(s). (NOTE: If you have previously requested that we restrict such sharing you do not need to make another request.) Your request not to share credit information does not include information we are permitted to share by law, such as information related solely to our experiences or transactions with you. Your account balance and payment history are examples of transaction and experience information that we are always permitted to share with our affiliates.

National City’s Pledge to You
We believe that your privacy should never be compromised. At the same time, we want to offer you the array of financial products and services you need to accomplish your financial goals. We believe we can do both by adhering to the provisions of this privacy notice.

National City Companies (Please visit NationalCity.com for a current list.): National City Bank, NatCity Investments, Inc., National City Insurance Agency of Pennsylvania, Inc., Allegiant Asset Management Company, Allegiant Insurance Services Co., National City Insurance Group, Inc., Harbor Insurance Agency, Inc., National City Mortgage Co., National City Partnership Solutions, Inc., Alliance Title Agency, LLC, New England Trust Company, N.A., National City Abstract, LLC, Access Financial Corp., Red Capital Markets, Inc., Capstone Realty Advisers, LLC, Provident Auto Leasing Company, NatCity Trust Company of Delaware, NationalLink, LP, NationalLink, LLC, NationalLink of Alabama, LLC, Florida Consolidated Agency, Inc.

*Vermont Residents: In Vermont the information we disclose under joint marketing agreements must be limited to your name, contact information, and information about our own transactions and experiences with you. Your consent is required before we can share certain credit information about you with our affiliates. We are permitted to share information which is not a credit report under Vermont law without your consent, such as information related solely to our transactions and experiences with you. California Residents: We will not disclose or share information about California residents without first providing you with a California Privacy Notice and honoring your choice unless such sharing or disclosure is permitted by applicable law.

 
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