Privacy Policy

How we collect personal information

We collect information through our mortgage loan application process, provided by you, our client(s). You can apply:

• On-line via our website at www.pegasuslending.com
• In person at 1457 McCowan Rd, Suite 202, Toronto, ON M1S 5K7

We want you to understand what personal information about you is collected through the mortgage loan application process. The information provided, no matter what the format, includes but is not limited to:

• Your name(s)
• Address(es), current and previous
• Social Insurance Number(s)
• Date(s) of birth
• Telephone number(s)
• Email address(es)
• Income(s), and employment history including employer names and length of employment
• Occupation(s)
• Assets and liabilities
• Details of the property being purchased, refinanced or renewed
• And other pertinent information as disclosed on our Application Form

With the client’s consent, we may also obtain information directly from a third party to help us determine your eligibility for various financial products and services. For credit matters, for example, it is essential that we know your financial worth as well as your credit record. We will also contact other lenders, financial institutions, credit bureau agencies and employers. Your consent is therefore important, because without it we will not be able to carry out the appropriate inquiries to ensure proper financing is provided to you. In most cases your consent is given on the forms used for specific purposes, or from time to time may be provided on a separate form.

We need this information about you so that we can:

• Understand your particular needs
• Analyse the suitability of the products or services that best suit your needs
• Determine your eligibility for the products and services offered
• Meet our legal and regulatory requirements

Note: We may ask you for your Social Insurance Number to use in verifying and reporting credit information to credit bureau agencies. You may refuse to consent to its use or disclosure for these purposes, and refusing will not by itself prevent us from arranging financing for you. We do require your Social Insurance Number for income tax reporting purposes where necessary.

Our goal is to maintain your trust and confidence when handling personal information about you.

The online mortgage application

Our website carries a mortgage application form. It is the most detailed collection of personal information we undertake, and it asks — among other things — for your Social Insurance Number, your income, your assets and liabilities, and your employment history.

• The form is submitted over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
• A submission is stored in our systems before it is emailed to us, so that a delivery failure cannot lose your application.
• It is protected by Google reCAPTCHA, which is described under “Cookies, analytics and third-party tools” below.
• You do not have to use it. The same application can be made in person at our office.

You may abandon the form at any point before submitting it. Nothing is recorded until you press Submit.

Personal information we collect and may disclose

The personal information we may collect about you comes from the following sources:

• Information we receive from you, such as your name, address, telephone number and the other information you provide in your application, as previously mentioned.
• Information about your income from your employer and/or from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) — Notices of Assessment (“NOAs”) — and from other government agencies, such as in relation to GST or retail sales tax.
• Information we receive from consumer reporting agencies and other sources, such as your credit bureau reports and other information relating to your creditworthiness.

Cookies, analytics and third-party tools

Our website uses cookies and similar technologies. Some are necessary for the site to work; others help us understand how the site is used, or let you speak to us directly. The tools it loads are:

• Google Ads conversion tracking, run by Google — tells us which advertisements lead to an enquiry.
• Google reCAPTCHA, run by Google — distinguishes people from automated abuse on our forms.
• Google Maps, run by Google — draws the office maps on our contact page.
• Google Fonts, run by Google — serves some of the typefaces the site is set in.
• Zoho SalesIQ, run by Zoho — a live chat window, now being replaced by our own chat described below.
• Anthropic, run by Anthropic PBC — writes the replies in our chat window. See “The website chat” below.

These tools are operated by the companies named, under their own privacy policies, and information collected through them — including your IP address — may be processed outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be accessible to foreign courts and law enforcement.

Apart from those tools, the only cookie this site sets is a sign-in session cookie, and only for members of our own staff using the site’s administration area. Reading the public site sets none.

You can refuse or delete cookies through your browser settings. Doing so may stop parts of the site working, but it will not prevent you from applying for a mortgage: the application can be made in person at our office.

The website chat

Our website has a chat window in the corner of the page, answered by an automated assistant called Jennifer. She does not claim to be a person, and if you ask her directly whether she is one she will tell you she is not, and offer to put you through to a broker. You do not have to use the chat: anything it can do can also be done by telephone on 416-281-9628, or by email at info@pegasuslending.com.

What is sent outside Pegasus. To write each reply, the following is sent to Anthropic PBC, the company whose Claude model the assistant runs on: the messages in your conversation, the address of the page you are on, the title of the article you are reading if you are on one, and the country your connection places you in. Your name, telephone number, email address and anything from a mortgage application are not sent as data — only whatever you choose to type into the window. Anthropic acts as our processor under its commercial terms, which provide that material sent through its interface is not used to train its models. This processing takes place outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be accessible to foreign courts and law enforcement.

A member of our staff can join the conversation, and can read it. If you ask for a person, or the assistant judges that you need one, your conversation is offered to whichever of our staff are on duty. Anyone who joins can see everything you have already said in that conversation, including what you said before they arrived. Our staff can also read those conversations afterwards, from the administration area of our website.

If you ask us to call you back, or if you are one of our agents making a request of the office, the chat records that as an enquiry in the same way our web forms do: it is saved on our own site and emailed to our office at info@pegasuslending.com, with the conversation attached, so that the person who contacts you knows what you have already asked.

How long chat conversations are kept. A conversation that did not lead to a request for contact is deleted ninety (90) days after its last message. A conversation in which you asked us to call you, or which otherwise forms part of an enquiry, is kept with that enquiry for the six (6) year period described under “Retention of personal information” below. Deletion is automatic and needs no request from you, and you may in any case ask us to delete a conversation sooner using the contact details at the end of this policy.

The chat is offered only to visitors in Canada and the United States. It does not ask for your Social Insurance Number, your income figures, your account numbers or your documents, and you should not type them into it.

Mortgage insurance

We do offer a mortgage insurance product with our mortgage service. You can either accept or waive this mortgage insurance at your own discretion. Should you accept the insurance, certain health questions will have to be answered and forwarded to the insurance company for their review. Understand that we use the same privacy policies for any health question as we would for any other personal or confidential information provided by you. Should you not wish to answer these questions, you can either waive the insurance, or we can let you deal directly with the insurance company so that your private health concerns are directly between you and the insurance company.

Use and disclosure of personal information

We use client(s) personal information to provide mortgage financing and other such services to our client(s), and to maintain our database for our own direct marketing purposes. We do not sell our mailing lists to any other non-financial company or individual(s), such as direct marketing firms, other than to send you our own solicitations from time to time.

Under certain circumstances we will disclose a client(s) personal information to third parties:

• As required or authorised by law;
• As consented to by the client(s) by way of a disclosure;
• When mortgage services require that a client(s) personal information be given to a third party (such as a real estate agent). The client(s) consent will be implied unless the client provides written authorisation otherwise;
• Where Pegasus engages a third party to provide administrative or support services to us (such as computer technician services, shredding, or file archival storage), and those third parties are bound by our Privacy Policy or by their own company’s privacy policy;
• For the protection of public interests, such as the denouncement of criminal activity including fraud or money laundering. In all such cases authorities are contacted and personal information may be disclosed;
• Should Pegasus retain law firm(s) to act on our behalf for any reason;
• If the information is already publicly known.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. All other categories exclude text messaging originator opt-in data and consent; this information will not be shared with any third parties.

Retention of personal information

Pegasus limits the collection of client(s) personal information to that which is necessary for the purposes identified in this Privacy Policy, as it may be amended from time to time, and/or for any additional purpose identified to the client(s) before the collection of their personal information.

Personal information is not used or disclosed for purposes other than those for which it was originally collected, except with the consent of the client(s) or as otherwise permitted by law.

We retain personal information for six (6) years following the end of our relationship with you, or the completion of the transaction to which it relates, whichever is later — the period required of mortgage brokerages in Ontario — after which it is securely destroyed. Where another law, or the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA), requires a longer period, the longer period applies.

Conversations in our website chat are the one exception, and they are kept for a shorter time: ninety (90) days unless the conversation formed part of an enquiry, in which case it is kept with that enquiry for the six (6) years above. See “The website chat”.

Accuracy

Pegasus will ensure that a client(s) personal information is as accurate, complete and up to date as is necessary for the purposes for which it was intended.

Security of information and safeguards

The security of personal information about you is our priority. We protect this information by maintaining physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that meet applicable laws. All of our employees and/or representatives have been trained in the proper handling of personal information. When we use other companies to provide services for us, we require them to protect the confidentiality of the personal information they receive.

Information submitted through our website is transmitted over an encrypted connection. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

Accountability, openness and client access

This policy advises you how we collect, handle and disclose personal information about you. If you want to limit our disclosing this information, or if you have any questions or concerns, please advise us by contacting our Privacy Officer at info@pegasuslending.com.

Our client(s) may withdraw their consent by written notice to us at any time, subject to any legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. A client(s) refusal to provide, or subsequent withdrawal of, his or her consent may affect our ability to provide the client(s) with mortgage services.

Pegasus will provide a client(s) access to their personal information. They may correct or amend any inaccuracies in the client(s) personal information. We reserve the right to refuse a request for access to personal information if:

• The information is protected by legal privilege;
• Granting access would reveal confidential commercial information;
• The information was collected for purposes related to the detection and prevention of fraud;
• The information was generated in the course of a formal dispute resolution process;
• The information would likely reveal personal information about another individual;
• The request is frivolous;
• Access would prejudice the protection of our firm’s rights and property.

Your rights, and how to complain

You have the right to ask us what personal information we hold about you, to ask us to correct it, and to withdraw your consent to our use of it. Write to our Privacy Officer at info@pegasuslending.com. We will respond within thirty (30) days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at www.priv.gc.ca or 1-800-282-1376.

Matters concerning our conduct as a licensed mortgage brokerage may also be raised with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario (FSRA) at www.fsrao.ca.