Information on data protection for our insured members and beneficiaries

 

1. What is this privacy policy about?
Data protection is a matter of trust and your trust is important to us. Although we have not changed the way we handle personal data, we would like to inform you about how we handle the personal data of our insured members and beneficiaries in accordance with the requirements of the revised Data Protection Act as of 1 September 2023.

It is important to us that you are fully informed about the processing of your personal data. It is important to us that you understand:

  • what personal data we process about you,
  • the purpose for which we use your personal data,
  • who has access to your personal data,
  • what happens to your personal data after the end of our business relationship or after the statutory retention period.

This privacy policy applies to all our services and activities, unless we provide you with separate privacy policies.

2. Who is responsible for processing your data?
The following pension fund is responsible for data processing under this privacy statement, either alone or together with others:

Syngenta Pension Fund
Rosentalstrasse 67
4058 Basel

You can contact us as follows for enquiries relating to data protection:
E-mail address: pensionskasse.info@syngenta.com
Telephone: +41 61 323 51 17 

3. What is personal data and what does “processing” mean?
Personal data" refers to data relating to an identified or identifiable person, i.e. data that allows conclusions to be drawn about that person's identity.

"Personal data requiring special protection" are categories of personal data that are particularly sensitive, which is why their processing may be subject to special requirements. Particularly sensitive personal data includes, for example, health data and data on criminal or administrative sanctions and on social welfare.  
In section 5 you will find details of the data we process within the framework of this data protection declaration.

Processing" refers to any handling of personal data, in particular obtaining, storing, using, disclosing and deleting it.

4. Who is affected by our data processing?
Our data processing may affect the following persons ("data subjects") in particular:

  • Actively insured persons who work for an employer affiliated to us and are consequently insured for occupational benefits.
  • persons who receive retirement, disability or survivors' benefits
  • third parties who are legally associated with persons insured with us
  • Contact persons of our affiliated and business partners
  • Claimants, liable persons and other involved parties
  • Members of our bodies

If we process data from third parties that we have received through you, we assume that the person concerned has been informed about the data processing by us and agrees to it.

5. What data do we process about you, for what purpose and from whom is it collected?
Depending on the occasion and purpose, we process different data from different sources.
In the area of mandatory pension provision, we process personal data exclusively to fulfil our legal obligation. In the non-compulsory area, the processing of personal data is based on the pension contract. If you live in a property owned by us, the purpose depends on the conclusion and processing of the rental agreement.

For the above-mentioned purpose, we primarily process the categories of data described below, although this list is not exhaustive. If data changes in the course of time, we also keep the previous status in addition to the current status.

Master data

We refer to the basic data that we require for the processing of our contractual, legal and other relationships as master data. For example: name, gender, address, date of birth, civil status and national insurance number of insured members and beneficiaries.
We receive the basic data from you or from our business partners who work on our behalf (for example, property management companies).

Financial data
We process salary data from the actively insured members in order to determine the following values in particular:

  • Contribution amount
  • Purchase potential
  • Benefits in the event of risk (death, disability and old age)
  • Retirement savings

The salary data is transmitted to us by your employer.
Furthermore, we process bank data for the payment of benefits as well as, for example, purchases into the occupational benefit scheme and payment of termination benefits. We receive this data from you.

Health data
In order to clarify the obligation to pay benefits in the event of disability, we may obtain files from the IV office (usually also contains files from the daily sickness benefits insurance) and the accident insurance. In addition, we can make inquiries with your employer.
It may happen that your health becomes the subject of legal proceedings, which is why we can also obtain files from lawyers and courts.

Information on social assistance or criminal and administrative sanctions
If you take advantage of social assistance measures or if you are the subject of an administrative or criminal sanction, we will receive information on this from the Social Welfare Office, the Debt Collection Office or other competent authorities if this is relevant for us (payment of a retirement benefit to the Debt Collection Office or similar).

Communication data
When you contact us, we process your communication data (address, e-mail address, telephone number, etc.).
We mainly receive this data from you, but it may also be provided to us by third parties such as Swiss Post (address updates) or by employers and contractual partners.

Other data
Information on relationships with third parties who are also affected by the data processing is part of this data, e.g. partnership and children in the case of beneficiary declarations or children's pensions.

We may receive personal data from authorities and offices of all kinds (unemployment insurance, tax authorities, supplementary benefits, etc.).

In addition, we may obtain information on civil law matters for various processes (e.g. extract from the land register, will, divorce). However, we receive these documents exclusively from you or your descendants.

6. Do we make automated individual decisions?
According to the Data Protection Act, automated, i.e. purely computer-based and without the intervention of an employee, individual decisions must be identified. Depending on the process, such automated individual decisions may be made in the occupational benefit scheme.

Such automated decisions are marked by us. You can also assert your rights in accordance with section 11 with regard to these automated individual decisions.

7. Who is informed of your data?
Our employees have access to your personal data insofar as this is necessary for the processing purpose and the activities of the employees concerned. The employees act in accordance with instructions and are obliged to maintain confidentiality and secrecy when handling your personal data.

Furthermore, the following institutions may gain knowledge of your data:

Authorities and offices
We may disclose your personal data to authorities and agencies on the basis of legal obligations (unemployment insurance, supplementary benefits, social welfare office, specialist agency in the event of neglect of maintenance obligations).

Courts
In the event of disputes under social security law or family or inheritance law, it may be necessary for us to disclose data to the competent court.

Occupational benefits expert
Your personal data will be disclosed to the occupational benefits expert as required by law. You can find out who performs this activity for us in the annual report.

Auditors
Your personal data will also be disclosed to the auditors as required by law. You can find out who performs this function for us in the annual report.

Financial institutions
We disclose personal data to banks, other pension funds and vested benefits institutions in the event of entry/exit, advance withdrawals of capital, benefit payments, etc. 

Service providers
We may pass on your personal data to third parties if we wish to use their services ("order processors"). This mainly concerns the following areas:

  • Lawyer/legal advice
  • IT services

We mainly work with service providers in Switzerland. We provide the service providers with the data required for their services and ensure through our selection and appropriate contractual agreements that data protection is also observed by the service providers during the entire processing period.  

8. Will your data be disclosed abroad?
As a matter of principle, we do not disclose your personal data abroad, except to you.

As explained in section 7, not only we process your personal data, but also our service providers. As a matter of principle, we contractually ensure that your data is not disclosed abroad, even by our service providers.

However, when using the latest technologies (e.g. cloud solutions), there is a residual risk that your data may be transferred abroad. The countries in question may not have laws that protect your personal data to the same extent as in Switzerland or in the EU or EEA (e.g. USA). We therefore take contractual precautions (or require our service providers to take these precautions) to contractually compensate for the weaker legal protection. For this purpose, we generally use the standard contractual clauses issued or recognised by the European Commission and the Swiss Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC) (for further details and a copy of these clauses, see Standard contractual clauses for controllers and processors in the EU/EEA (europa.eu), unless the recipient is already subject to a legally recognised set of rules to ensure data protection.

9. How is your data protected?
We treat your data confidentially and take both technical (encryption, pseudonymisation, logging, access restrictions, regular backups, etc.) and organisational (instruction and training of employees, confidentiality agreements, etc.) security measures. We take both technical (encryption, pseudonymisation, logging, access restrictions, regular backups, etc.) and organisational (instructions and training of employees, confidentiality agreements, etc.) security measures to maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your personal data and to protect it against unauthorised or unlawful processing.

If the relevant area is under our control, we protect your data transmitted via our websites by means of suitable encryption mechanisms.

10.What rights do you have?
In order for you to retain control over your personal data, you have various rights in connection with data processing by us:

  • the right to request information from us as to whether and what data we are processing about you;
  • the right to have us correct data if it is incorrect; and is inaccurate;
  • the right to object to our processing for specific purposes and to request the restriction or deletion of data, unless we are obliged or entitled to continue processing it;
  • the right to request that we provide certain personal data in a commonly used electronic format;
  • the right to withdraw consent where our processing is based on your consent.

If we inform you about an automated decision (section 6), you have the right to request a review of the respective decision by a natural person.

Please note that certain conditions must be met in order to exercise these rights and that exceptions or restrictions may apply (e.g. to protect third parties or commercial secrets). We will inform you accordingly if necessary.

If you do not agree with our handling of your rights or this Privacy Policy, please let us know at the contact address given in Section 2.

11. Can this privacy policy be changed?
This data protection declaration can be adapted at any time. We will actively inform you of any changes. The version published on this website is the current version.

 

Cookie-Information

1. What is this about?
This data protection declaration can be adapted at any time. We will actively inform you of any changes. The version published on this website is the current version.

This cookie information describes how and for what purpose we collect, process and use personal and other data when using our websites and mobile apps - in particular in connection with cookies and similar technologies. In the following, we refer to websites in general for the sake of simplicity, but also mean mobile apps in each case.
Further information on our handling of personal data can be found in our data protection statement.

2. Who is responsible for data processing?
The Syngenta Pension Fund is responsible under data protection law for the processing of personal data in accordance with this cookie information. If you have any questions about this cookie information or the processing of your personal data, please contact us.

3. What is log data?
Every time you use our website, certain data is automatically generated for technical reasons and temporarily stored in log files, the so-called log data. These are, for example, the following technical data:

  • IP address of the requesting end device,
  • information about your internet service provider,
  • Information about the operating system of your end device (tablet, PC, smartphone, etc.),
  • Information on the referring URL,
  • details of the browser used,
  • date and time of access, and
  • content accessed when visiting the website.

This data is processed for the purpose of enabling the use of our websites (establishing a connection) and ensuring their functionality, guaranteeing system security and stability and enabling the optimisation of our Internet offering, as well as for statistical purposes.

Furthermore, the IP address is evaluated together with the other log data and possibly other data available to us in the event of attacks on the IT infrastructure or other possibly unauthorised or abusive use of the websites for the purpose of clarification and defence and, if necessary, used in the context of criminal proceedings for identification and for civil and criminal proceedings against the persons concerned.

4. What are cookies and similar technologies?
Cookies are files that your browser automatically stores on your device when you visit our websites. Cookies contain a unique identification number (an ID) that allows us to distinguish individual visitors from others, but usually without identifying them. Depending on the purpose of use, cookies contain further information, e.g. about pages accessed and the duration of the visit to a page. We use session cookies, which are deleted when the browser is closed, and permanent cookies, which remain stored for a certain period of time after the browser is closed (usually between a few days and two years) and are used to recognise visitors on subsequent visits.

We may also use similar technologies such as pixel tags, fingerprints and other technologies to store data in the browser. Pixel tags are small, usually invisible images or program code that are loaded from a server and thereby transmit certain information to the server operator, e.g. whether and when a website was visited. Fingerprints are information that is collected when you visit a website via the configuration of your terminal device or your browser, and which make your terminal device distinguishable from other devices. Most browsers also support other technologies for storing data in the browser, similar to cookies, which we may also use (e.g. "web storage").

5.  How can cookies and similar technologies be deactivated?
You can configure your browser in the settings so that it blocks certain cookies or similar technologies or deletes existing cookies and other data stored in the browser. You can also enhance your browser with software (so-called "plug-ins") that blocks tracking by certain third parties. You can find out more about this in the help pages of your browser (usually under the keyword "data protection"). Please note that our websites may no longer function fully if you block cookies and similar technologies.

6. What types of cookies and similar technologies do we use?
We use the following types of cookies and similar technologies:

  • Necessary cookies: necessary cookies are required for a website and its functions to be used. For example, these cookies ensure that you can move between pages without losing the information you have entered in a form.
  • Functional cookies: Functional cookies allow us to provide advanced functionality and display personalised content. These cookies allow us, for example, to save information that has already been entered (e.g. language selection).

7. How do we use cookies and similar technologies from other companies?
The cookies and/or similar technologies we use may each come from ourselves or from third party companies, for example where we use features provided by third parties. Such third parties may also be located outside of Switzerland and the European Economic Area (EEA), provided that the protection of your personal data is adequately ensured.

For example, we use analytics services to evaluate how you use our websites in order to optimise and personalise them. Cookies and similar technologies from third parties also enable them to target you with personalised advertising on our websites or on other websites and social networks that also work with that third party, and to measure how effective advertisements are (e.g. whether you arrived at our website via an advertisement and what actions you then take on our website).

Third party providers may record your use of the website in question. These recordings may be combined by the respective provider with similar information from other websites. The behaviour of certain users can thus be recorded across several websites and several end devices.

The respective provider can often also use this data for its own purposes, e.g. for personalised advertising on its own website and on other websites that it supplies with advertising. If users are registered with the provider, the provider can assign the usage data to the relevant person. The processing of such personal data is carried out by the provider under its responsibility and in accordance with its own data protection regulations.

Two of the most important third-party providers are Google and Facebook. You will find further details on these below. Other third-party providers generally process personal and other data in a similar manner.

 

Analytics

We use Google Analytics, an analytics service provided by Google LLC (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA, USA) and Google Ireland Ltd (Google Building Gordon House, Barrow St, Dublin 4, Ireland; both collectively "Google", with Google Ireland Ltd responsible for processing personal data), on many of our websites. Google uses cookies and similar technologies to collect certain information about the behaviour of individual users on or in the relevant website and the end device used for this purpose (tablet, PC, smartphone, etc.) (e.g. how often you have opened our website, how many purchases have been made or what your interests are, as well as data about the end device you are using, such as the operating system). You can find more information about this under this link:

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12017362?hl=en

Changes to this cookie information
This cookie information may be amended over time, in particular if we change our data processing or if new legal provisions become applicable. In general, the cookie information in the version current at the start of the processing in question applies to data processing.