Manulife - Statement of Voiceprint Password Privacy

In accordance with our Corporate Privacy Principles and the Canadian Division Statement of Privacy Principles and Practices, we are committed to providing the highest quality financial products and services in a manner that fosters trust and confidence among our customers, employees and representatives. That commitment includes protecting the privacy of all the personal information in our care.

Our voiceprint program uses advanced biometric voice verification technology. Biometric verification uses one or more of a person’s unique physical or behavioural characteristics to identify them. Common types of biometrics include fingerprint, palm print, iris scan and voice recognition. Our voiceprint program uses voice recognition biometrics to assign a mathematical model to your voice to create a secure method for accessing your personal information when you call us.

You enrol in the voiceprint password program by recording your voice repeating a specific phrase in our Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. By doing so, you consent to us using your voiceprint password to confirm your identity. By using voiceprint passwords, our goal is to make it simpler for you to do business with us, while better protecting both you and us against fraud, misrepresentations and other errors.

We will only collect information that is pertinent and consistent with the purposes of the collection.

Your voiceprint is a numeric sequence that represents the features of your voice saying a specific phrase. Once you have enrolled in the program, each time you call us we will compare your voice against this stored numeric sequence. If they match, you are authenticated and transferred to one of our representatives or to an IVR self-service function. Your voiceprint will only ever be used to confirm your identity and replaces other methods of verification such as questions asked by one of our representatives.

Your unique voiceprint cannot be used to reverse engineer, reuse or recreate your voice. Your voiceprint is encrypted and kept in our secure database. Your voiceprint will only be accessible by:

• Our employees who need the information in the performance of their duties for us,
• Our affiliates, to: 
  • resolve your concerns about any related products and services with us
  • assist in other required investigations
• Service providers who need the information in the performance of their duties for us, and to satisfy their obligations to us, and,
• Anyone who is otherwise authorized by law

In some cases, your voiceprint will be provided to these people and service providers in other provinces or jurisdictions outside Canada, and would therefore be subject to the laws of those provinces or jurisdictions.

You may withdraw your consent for us to use your voiceprint but doing so will prevent you from using the voiceprint password system in the future, unless you re-enroll. This means you will be authenticated using the verification questions asked by our representatives when you call us for account information.

If you choose to withdraw your consent for any reason, your voiceprint will be de-activated and retained as required or permitted by law.