Privacy Policy

Berkshire Residential Investments Website Privacy and Cookie Policy

I. Introduction

Berkshire Residential Investments and its affiliates (“Berkshire”) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.  This privacy statement and cookie policy sets out the basis on which we will process any personal information that we may collect about you as a visitor to our website or through contact with one of our employees or business partners, and also sets forth the manner in which we may use “cookies” in connection with our website.  

II. Collection

We may collect and process the following information about you:

  • Information that you give us: This is information about you that you give to us by filling in forms on our website (or other forms that we ask you to complete), giving us a business card or other contact information, or corresponding with us by telephone, post, email or otherwise. It may include, for example, your name, address, email address and telephone number; financial status (assets and income); investment objectives; prior investment experience with different types of investment vehicles; and information about your professional role, background and interests.
  • Information that our website and other systems collect about you:
    • When you visit our website it will automatically connect some information about you and your visit, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the internet and some other information such as your browser type and version and the pages on our site that you visit.  Our website may also download “cookies” to your device – this is described in our cookie statement below.
    • If you exchange emails or have telephone conversations or other electronic communications with our employees and other staff members, our information technology systems may record details of those communications, sometimes including their content.
  • Other information: We may also collect some information from other sources. For example:
    • If we have a business relationship with the organization that you represent, your colleagues or other business contacts may give us information about you such as your contact details or details of your role in the relationship.

III. Use

We may use your information for the following purposes:

  • to operate, administer and improve our website and other aspects of the way in which we conduct our operations;
  • to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations and bring and defend legal claims; or
  • unless otherwise limited by separate agreement with you, to operate, manage, develop and promote our business and, in particular, our relationship with you or the organization you represent (if any) and related transactions – including for marketing purposes.

We may from time to time review information about you held in our systems – including the contents of and other information related to your email and other communications with us – for compliance and business-protection purposes as described above.  This may include reviews for the purposes of disclosure of information relevant to litigation and/or reviews of records relevant to internal or external regulatory or governmental investigations. To the extent permitted by applicable law these reviews will be conducted in a reasonable and proportionate way and approved at an appropriate level of management.

When we collect personal data from you, we will tell you if

  • provision of the requested information is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation; or
  • it is purely voluntary and there will be no implications if you decline to provide us with it.

Unless otherwise indicated, you should assume that we require the information for business and/or compliance purposes and then only where we have concluded that our processing does not prejudice you or your privacy in a way that would override our legitimate interest in pursuing those purposes.  To the extent that we do rely on consent to process your personal data, we will contact you to obtain this consent. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

If you are uncertain as to Berkshire’s need for information that we request from you, please contact us (see below), with your query.

IV. Disclosure

We may disclose personal data about you where we have obtained your consent or where it is reasonably necessary for the various purposes set out above:

  • to your colleagues within the organization that you represent;
  • to service providers who host our website or other information technology systems or otherwise hold or process your information on our behalf, under appropriate conditions of confidentiality and security;
  • to a person who takes over our business and assets, or relevant parts of them; or
  • in exceptional circumstances:
    • to competent regulatory, prosecuting and other governmental agencies, or litigation counterparties, in any country or territory; or
    • where we are required by law to disclose.

Your emails and other communications may also occasionally be accessed by persons other than the member of staff with whom they are exchanged for ordinary business management purposes (for example, where necessary when a staff member is out of the office or has left Berkshire).

V. Retention

We keep your personal data for as long as it is required by us for our legitimate business purposes, to perform our contractual obligations, or as is required by law or regulatory obligations which apply to us.  We will delete the information that we hold about you when we no longer need it.

Note that we may retain some limited information about you even when we know that you have left the organization that you represent, so that we can maintain a continuous relationship with you if and when we are in contact with you again, representing a different organization.

Please contact us for more information or if you have questions.

VI. Rights

You may have certain rights under data protection law, including:

  • the right to direct us not to disclose nonpublic personal information to a nonaffiliated third party;
  • the right to access your personal data;
  • the right to restrict the use of your personal data;
  • the right to have incomplete or inaccurate data corrected;
  • the right to ask us to stop processing your personal data;
  • the right to request for us to “port” your personal data in a portable, re-usable format to other organizations, where applicable and possible; and
  • the right to require us to delete your personal data in some limited circumstances.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, you must provide a written statement exercising that right.  Please contact us as set out below.

VII. Cookie Policy

Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognizes that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognize a user’s device and target the content displayed to the user’s interests.

By using our websites you agree that, unless otherwise limited by separate agreement with you or unless you have set your device’s browser to reject them, we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy.

You can find more information about cookies at www.allaboutcookies.org.

Why do we use cookies on our site?

We may use cookies (including HTTP, HTML5 and Flash cookies) and similar technologies (such as web beacons and JavaScript) to: (i) customize and improve the users’ experience of our websites; (ii) deliver content tailored to the users’ interests and the manner in which they browse our websites; and (iii) manage our websites and other aspects of our business.

What types of cookies may be used? 

Cookies may be either “session cookies” or “persistent cookies.” Your computer automatically removes session cookies once you close your browser. Persistent cookies will survive on your computer until an expiry date specified in the cookie itself, is reached. We may use both session and persistent cookies.

There are several broad types of cookies:

COOKIE TYPE DESCRIPTION
Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookies are necessary for the websites to work, and enable you to move around the websites and use the services and features. Disabling these cookies will encumber performance and may make these services and features unavailable.

 
Functional Cookies

Functional Cookies allow the websites to help maintain your session and remember the choices you made in order to provide functionality for your benefit. Functional Cookies are used to collect information about your preferences indicated during your visit. For example, functional “session” cookies allow the websites to remember settings specific to you (such as, your country selection) which ultimately improves your web experience. Functional Cookies also include persistent cookies which are used to remember your preferences when you subsequently visit. Functional “persistent” cookies expire after a fixed number of days.

 
Analytic Cookies

Analytic Cookies are used to gather statistics about the use of the website in order to improve the performance and design of our services. For these purposes, Analytic Cookies collect information about your device type, operating system type, browser type, domain, other system settings, IP address, referring URLs, information on actions taken on the website and the dates and times of your visits, as well as the country and time zone in which your device is located. These cookies are provided by our third-party analytics tool provider (Google Analytics) and the information obtained through these cookies will be disclosed to, or collected directly by, this third-party service provider. For more information about Google Analytic’s cookie and information practices (including the types of cookies used and their expiration date), please visit the link below:

Google Analytics

 

How do I change my cookie preferences?

The “Help” menu in the toolbar of most web browsers will tell you how to change your browser’s cookie settings, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie and how to disable cookies altogether. Below is some helpful guidance about how to make these changes.

Internet Explorer

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer and you wish to block our website cookies, you can perform the following actions:

  1. On your browser tools menu, select ‘Internet Options’
  2. Click on the ‘Privacy’ tab and then on the ‘Sites’ button
  3. Type into the ‘Address of website’ field:
  4. berkshireresidentialinvestments.com
  5. Click on the ‘Block’ button
  6. Click on the OK button

Other browsers

Guidance on how to block website cookies on other browsers can be found below:

More detailed information on disabling cookies can be found at www.allaboutcookies.org. However, please note that if you use your browser settings to block all cookies you may not be able to access all or parts of our website.

VII. Investor Privacy Notices

More information about the privacy of our investors and clients can be found in our Investor Privacy Notices, which are provided to all clients and investors upon onboarding, and annually thereafter.  

VIII. California Resident Privacy Rights 

Effective Date: January 1, 2020 

The California Consumer Protection Act (“CCPA”) grants California residents  certain additional rights of privacy related to personal information that Berkshire collects about you.  

Berkshire does not sell personal information collected from a consumer for any purpose.  

If you are a California Resident, California law requires us to provide you with the following rights:  

1. The Right to Know:  You have a right to request that we disclose the following personal information we have collected about you over the past 12 months:  

  1. The categories of personal information we have collected about you; 
  2. The categories of sources from which personal information is collected; 
  3. The business or commercial purposes for collecting or selling personal information; 
  4. The categories of third-parties, if any, with whom we share your personal information; and 
  5. The specific pieces of information we have collected about you. 

2. Right to Delete: Right to request that we delete your personal information upon receipt of a verifiable request. There are several exceptions to the right of deletion, including but not limited to, when the data is necessary to do any of the following:  

  1. Complete your transaction with us; 
  2. Detect security incidents; 
  3. Debug to identify and repair errors; 
  4. Exercise free speech;  
  5. Comply with the California Electric Communications Privacy Act;  
  6. Engage in research in the public interest;  
  7. Reasonably aligned with consumer expectations based on relationship with the business; 
  8. Comply with a legal obligation; or  
  9. Otherwise used in a lawful manner that is compatible with the context it was provided.

3. Right to Not be Discriminated Against: Berkshire will not discriminate against any consumer who exercises any of the rights mentioned above.  

California residents may submit a CCPA request by either sending an email to compliance@berkshireresi.com or calling our toll-free phone number at (877) 523–7722. Once Berkshire receives your request, we will take reasonable steps to verify your identity prior to responding to a request. These steps may include, but are not limited to, verifying your name, email address and other information provided to Berkshire by you. You are also permitted to designate an authorized agent to submit a request to know or a request to delete. For an authorized agent to be verified, you must provide the authorized agent with written permission to submit a request on your behalf. Berkshire may also follow-up with you to verify your identity before proceeding with a request made by an authorized agent.   

IX. Contact us

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the processing of Personal Data, please contact:

Berkshire Residential Investments

Attention: Chief Compliance Officer

One Beacon Street | 24th Floor

Boston, MA 02108

T 617.646.2300

F 617.646.2370

 

Last updated: January 1, 2020