Data privacy statement

What is Personal Information?

PIPA defines "personal information" broadly as any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual, meaning a natural person. This information may include, but is not limited to, your name, mailing address, telephone number, email address, Internet Protocol (“IP”) address, age and date of birth. Personal information does not include your business title, business address, business email or telephone number in your capacity as an employee of an organisation.

What types of Personal Information do we collect?

The personal information we process when you visit our website depends on the information you provide to us. If you access our site but do not interact further with us, we will only process the information contained in cookies which are necessary to be able to run our site (see section on ‘Cookies’ for more info). Should you choose to interact with our site further by (i) completing our Contact us – Enquiry form, or (ii) expressing your interest in a career with Forvis Mazars by submitting our Join us – Spontaneous application form, we will use the information you provide for the purposes stated on each form. Some of the fields are mandatory as without them we will be unable to make further contact with you to answer your request. You may choose to provide us with additional personal data, some of which may be categorized as “sensitive personal information”, which is personal information relating to an individual’s national or ethnic origin and sex (among other things). By voluntarily completing any of the forms on our website, you shall be deemed to have consented to our use of the personal information and/or sensitive personal information provided in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Statement.

Cookies 

Our website utilizes cookies, which are small text files placed on your computer that assist us in providing a more customised website experience. We use cookies to make navigation of our website easier for visitors and to facilitate efficient communication procedures.For further details on how and why we utilize cookies, please consult our Cookie Policy at: https://www.forvismazars.com/bm/en/legals/cookies-information.

How do we use your Personal Information?

We may process your personal data collected through our website for the purposes outlined below: 

·        Entering into and the performance of a contract: Should you indicate an interest in becoming a client of Forvis Mazars we will use the personal information provided in the Enquiry form in order to take steps to enter into a contract for services with you. We may continue to use the information provided through our website in order to perform our duties under a contract with you. We may use the information provided in order to perform our obligations under our contract with you.

• Legitimate interests: We process personal information in order to run our business, including managing our relationship with you, meeting or exercising our administrative, accounting and corporate rights and meeting our administrative, accounting and corporate obligations, maintaining and using our IT systems and developing our business and services (so long as such use is not detrimental to your interests).
• Recruitment and personnel administration: If you apply for a job through our website, we collect personal information from job applicants in order to recruit new employees, including processing your resumé, which is likely to involve the collection and use of sensitive personal information contained therein.
• Security, quality and risk management: Personal information may be processed in the context of maintaining our IT security and within the scope of internal quality and risk analysis. 
• Direct marketing: we may process personal data for direct marketing purposes to promote and develop our services and to provide you with information we think will be of interest to you. In all cases we will give you the opportunity to opt-out of our direct-marketing activities. However, you may choose to opt-put of our direct marketing activities by contacting us: https://www.forvismazars.com/bm/en/contact-us/enquiry-form.
• Legal requirements, regulations or a professional body of which we are a member: As a professional services firm we are subject to legal, regulatory and professional obligations. We are required to keep certain records to demonstrate that our services are provided in compliance with those obligations and those records may contain personal information.

You may withdraw your consent to the use of your personal information collected through our website at any time by contacting our Privacy Officer, Michael Newton, at Michael.Newton@forvismazars.com.

Disclosure of Personal Information

We may from time to time transfer or disclose your personal data to other entities of Forvis Mazars or to third parties for any of the purposes listed above, including to governmental and professional agencies and third parties who perform services on our behalf, such as web hosting providers, IT-providers, payment providers, and customer relationship management providers.

We may also share personal information with other Forvis Mazars member firms where necessary for administrative purposes and to provide professional services to our clients (e.g. when providing services involving Forvis Mazars member firms in different countries). These employees access all information through Forvis Mazars’ company servers. We require all overseas staff that have a legitimate interest in the use of your personal information to adhere to the terms of use of this Privacy Statement (or any other privacy statement issued by us), which accords with Bermuda law.

When we disclose your personal information to third parties who perform services on our behalf, we ensure that such service providers use your data only in accordance with the purposes for which it has been collected under this Privacy Statement and on our instructions. 

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties where we are required to do so by law, or for the purposes of, or in connection with any legal proceedings, or otherwise for the purpose of establishing, exercising or defending our legal rights. 

Retention of Personal Information

We will hold your personal data on our systems for the longest of the following periods: (i) as long as is necessary for the purpose for which it was collected; (ii) any retention period that is required by law; and (iii) the end of the liability period in which litigation or investigations might arise in respect of our services.  

After the applicable retention period(s) have expired, personal data will be deleted or anonymized. 

How do we protect and safeguard your Personal Information?

Forvis Mazars ensures appropriate technical and organisational controls are in place to protect your personal information from loss or theft, unauthorised access, disclosure, copying, use or modification, such as the use of anti-virus, firewalls, secure servers, hard disk encryption software, password protection, physical access controls, two-factor authentication, intrusion and anomaly detection. We conduct regular monitoring and testing of our security defences to ensure continued effectiveness against the latest threats.  

To the best of our ability, access to your personal information is limited only to employees or service providers with a business 'need-to-know' or whose duties reasonably require access to, or use of, such information. Our personnel who have access to your personal information have been trained to maintain the confidentiality of such information and are bound by strict professional discretion. They will only be granted access to your personal data to the extent that they need this information to perform their duties properly.

Conditions to protect personal information to at least the same standard as we do are imposed on all our contractors, (sub)processors and suppliers. All third parties (including overseas third parties) who have access to personal information are required to use the personal information only for the purposes for which we have collected it, in accordance with this Privacy Statement.

Personal information transferred over the internet by us and/or through this website is protected using encryption technologies and we have procedures in place for the secure erasure, blocking and destruction of your personal information. However, despite our best efforts, security cannot be absolutely guaranteed against all threats, and no method of transmission on the internet or method of electronic storage is completely fail-safe.

Your Rights

We recognise that individuals have specific rights conferred on them by PIPA, including:

1.           the right to access personal information about the individual in our custody or under our control;

2.           the right to be informed about the purposes for which personal information has been, or is being, used by us;

3.           the right to know to whom, and in what circumstances, the individual’s personal information has been, or is being, disclosed;

4.           the right to make a written request to correct an error or omission in any of the personal information which is under our control;

5.           the right to request that we cease, or not begin, using personal information for the purposes of advertising, marketing or public relations or where the use of personal information is likely to cause substantial damage or substantial distress to the individual or to another individual;

6.           the right to request that we erase or destroy personal information about the individual where that personal information is no longer relevant for the purposes of its use;

7.           the right to restrict the processing of the individual's personal information;

8.           the right to be informed of a personal information breach (unless the breach is unlikely to be prejudicial); and

9.           the right to complain to the Privacy Commissioner in Bermuda.

Children and our website 

Forvis Mazars understands the importance of protecting children's privacy, especially in an online environment. Our website is a general audience site and is not intended for or directed to children under the age of 16.

We do not knowingly collect or maintain information about anyone under the age of 16 through our website. If you are under 16 you must obtain the consent of a parent or guardian to submit information through our website. Please ask them to review this information before you communicate with us. If we discover that a child under the age of 16 has provided information through our website without consent from a parent or guardian, we will immediately delete the information, we will not use the information for any purpose, and we will not disclose the information to third parties. We are not legally liable for any transactions created or executed by a child on our website. This is the legal responsibility of the child’s parent or guardian.

Questions or concerns?

If you have any questions or comments about this Privacy Statement, or should you want us to update, amend, block, erase, or destroy your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at privacy.bm@forvismazars.com.

The terms of this Privacy Statement are based on the requirements and recommendations of the Bermuda Office of the Privacy Commissioner. If you are concerned about the way we have handled your personal information or upheld your rights with respect to your personal information, you can request a review or initiate a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner. The contact information for the Privacy Commissioner is privcom@privacy.bm.

Changes to this Privacy Statement 

This Privacy Statement may be amended from time to time, with an updated effective date. Any changes will be published on this page. We recommend that you check this page regularly to ensure you are familiar with our latest policies and that you remain in agreement with our personal information processing activities. 

Last updated: January 2025