Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

RateLens is a trade name used by Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate, licensed in Alberta by the Real Estate Council of Alberta and registered with Indi The Independent Mortgage Company Ltd. o/a Indi Mortgage.

In this policy, “RateLens”, “we” and “us” mean Daniel De Sousa and the RateLens team. Mortgages are arranged through Indi The Independent Mortgage Company Ltd. o/a Indi Mortgage, a mortgage brokerage licensed by the Real Estate Council of Alberta (RECA), and the information you give us is also held by Indi Mortgage under its own privacy policy. Our office is at 4990 92 Ave NW #105, Edmonton, AB T6B 2V4, open Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Mountain Time. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

Our Privacy Officer is Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate, reachable at privacy@ratelens.ca, by phone at (825) 797-5417, or by mail at the address above.

2. The law that applies to us

Because we’re based in Alberta and arrange mortgages on Alberta property, Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) is the primary law governing how we handle your personal information, and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta is our primary regulator.

The federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) also applies to us when your information crosses a provincial or national border (for example, when it’s stored or processed by a service provider outside Canada), and when we collect information from residents of provinces that don’t have their own private-sector privacy law. If you live in British Columbia, BC’s own Personal Information Protection Act may apply to your information. We apply the same standard of care in every case, and we’ve written one policy that meets all of them.

3. What we collect

We collect what you give us through our calculators, quote requests, pre-approval forms, rate alert sign-ups, booking tools and contact forms:

• your name, email address and phone number;
• the province and general area of the property, and whether you already live there;
• purchase price or mortgage balance, down payment or equity, and your renewal date;
• income and employment type, existing debts, and your own assessment of your credit;
• the message you write us, and the consent choices you make, together with the exact wording shown to you and the version of it;
• limited technical information (device and browser type, pages visited, referring site, and a hashed version of your IP address) through cookies and similar technologies, as described in section 8.

We don’t collect your Social Insurance Number on this website. If you proceed to a full mortgage application, it is completed in our origination platform, Finmo, which collects the additional information lenders require, including your Social Insurance Number where it is necessary for a credit check.

We also keep a short-lived record of an email address or phone number you’ve typed into a form but not submitted, so we can offer to help you finish. That record carries no consent of any kind, is used only for that purpose, and is deleted after 30 days.

4. Why we collect it

To prepare rate and payment estimates; to process pre-approval and mortgage applications; to contact you about your enquiry; to match you with lenders and mortgage default insurers (CMHC, Sagen or Canada Guaranty) where relevant; to meet our record-keeping and reporting obligations under Canadian law, including the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and the Real Estate Act and Real Estate Act Rules administered by the Real Estate Council of Alberta; to send the rate alerts you sign up for (the rate you picked, your target and your email address); to improve our services; and, only with your separate consent, to send you marketing communications.

Mortgage brokers, lenders and administrators became a regulated sector under the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act on 11 October 2024. That’s why an application asks you to verify your identity, and we’re required to keep those records.

5. Consent and how to withdraw it

By submitting a form you consent to our collecting, using and disclosing your information for the purposes above. Where the law requires it (for non-essential cookies, and for marketing email and text messages), we ask for your express, opt-in consent first, and we never pre-tick a consent box. Permission to reply to your enquiry and permission to market to you are separate choices and are never bundled.

You may withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits, by emailing privacy@ratelens.ca, using the unsubscribe link in any marketing message, replying STOP to any text message, or by calling us. Withdrawing marketing consent doesn’t end a mortgage we’re already arranging for you.

6. Who we share it with

• Lenders and mortgage default insurers (CMHC, Sagen, Canada Guaranty) when you ask us to arrange financing;
• Credit bureaus (Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada) when you authorize a credit check;
• Our service providers: hosting, our Canadian-hosted database, transactional email, customer relationship management, scheduling, our mortgage origination platform, and website analytics;
• The Real Estate Council of Alberta and FINTRAC where the law requires it;
• any other party you direct us to.

If we refer you to another service provider (a lawyer, an insurance broker, a realtor), we will tell you in writing before we pass on your name and contact details, and we will tell you whether we may receive a referral fee or other benefit for doing so. That disclosure is required of us under Rule 45(1) of the Real Estate Act Rules, and we record it the way we record a consent.

We don’t sell your personal information. We require every service provider to protect your information consistently with this policy.

7. Where your information is stored

RateLens is based in Edmonton, Alberta, and handles your personal information under Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). Your information is stored in a database hosted in Canada. Our website is served by a global content network, and requests may be processed transiently on servers located in the United States. Some of our service providers (including our customer relationship management, email and analytics providers) store or process information in the United States; those transfers are also subject to Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). Personal information processed outside Canada may be accessible to foreign courts and law-enforcement authorities under the laws of those jurisdictions. Questions or complaints may be directed to our Privacy Officer and, if unresolved, to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta.

8. Cookies and tracking

We use essential cookies to operate the site. They remember your theme, your motion preference and your consent choice, and nothing else. Analytics and advertising technologies load only if you consent, and nothing non-essential runs before you’ve chosen. You can change your choice at any time from the cookie preferences control in the footer of every page. Our Cookie Policy carries the full inventory by category.

9. Automated processing

The calculators and estimates on this site are produced automatically from the information you enter. They are estimates, not decisions about your application. Every mortgage decision is made by a lender and reviewed by a licensed mortgage professional. We also score incoming enquiries automatically to decide how quickly Daniel De Sousa should call you and who is the right person to call. That affects the order we work in, never whether you’re approved. If we ever make a decision about you based solely on automated processing, we’ll tell you and you may ask for a person to review it.

10. How long we keep it

11. Your right to access and correct it

You may ask for access to, or correction of, your personal information, and ask questions about our practices, by contacting our Privacy Officer at the address in section 1. We’ll respond within the time the law allows (generally 45 days under Alberta’s PIPA), and we’ll tell you if we need longer and why. There’s no charge for a straightforward request.

12. Security

We use administrative, technical and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, including encryption in transit and at rest, access controls that limit enquiry data to authorized staff, hashing of IP addresses instead of storing them in the clear, and logging of access to our systems.

13. Breaches

If a loss of, or unauthorized access to or disclosure of, your personal information creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, as required by section 34.1 of Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act, and any other privacy commissioner the law requires us to notify. We keep a record of every breach, reported or not, for 24 months.

14. Complaints and escalation

Raise it with our Privacy Officer first, so we have the chance to fix it. If you’re not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca), which is our primary regulator. Depending on where you live and where your information was handled, you may instead be able to complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia.

Complaints about how we arranged your mortgage (not about privacy) go through our complaints process and escalate to the Real Estate Council of Alberta.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. The “last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision, and material changes are announced on this page.