Privacy Policy
What we collect, why we collect it, and the things we will never do with it.
The short version. We are an insurance agency, not a lead generator. We collect what a carrier needs in order to quote you, we use it to get you that quote and to service your policy, and we do not sell, rent, or trade your information to anyone. You can ask us to delete it at any time.
1. Who we are
This website, shopsmartrate.com, is operated by SmartRate LLC, doing business as ShopSmartRate, a licensed independent insurance agency. Where this policy says "we," "us," or "our," it means SmartRate LLC.
We are an agency. We do not underwrite insurance and we are not an insurance company. We place coverage with licensed insurance carriers through the First Connect agency network. Those carriers have their own privacy practices, which govern the information they hold about you once you become their policyholder.
2. What we collect
We only ask for what is actually needed to quote and service insurance.
Information you give us
- Contact details — name, phone number, email address, mailing address, ZIP code.
- Quoting details — the type of coverage you want, your current carrier and renewal date, and anything you choose to tell us in the notes field.
- Underwriting details — once you ask us to quote, carriers require information such as date of birth, driver's license number, vehicle identification numbers, property characteristics, prior claims, and prior insurance history. We ask for these directly, usually by phone or secure document, not through the public form on this site.
- Business details — for commercial quotes, things like entity name, payroll, receipts, square footage, class codes, and loss history.
Information collected automatically
- Standard web log data: IP address, browser type, device type, referring page, and the pages you view.
- Analytics events, if and when analytics are enabled on this site — see section 7.
Information from third parties
With your authorization, carriers and their vendors may pull a consumer report such as a motor vehicle record, a loss history report (CLUE), or an insurance credit score. These are pulled by the carrier under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, not by us, and we tell you before it happens.
3. How we use it
- To prepare and present insurance quotes.
- To place, issue, change, and renew your policy.
- To service your account — ID cards, certificates, billing questions, and claims support.
- To contact you about your quote or your policy, within the consent you gave us.
- To meet our legal, regulatory, and recordkeeping obligations as a licensed producer.
4. Who we share it with
We share your information only with parties who need it to do the job you asked us to do:
- Insurance carriers and their underwriters, to obtain quotes and issue coverage.
- The agency network we access carriers through — First Connect — as part of submitting a risk.
- Service providers that operate our systems, such as our form processor, email provider, e-signature service, and agency management system. They are permitted to use your information only to provide that service to us.
- Premium finance companies, if you choose to finance your premium.
- Regulators, or in response to lawful legal process, where we are required to.
5. What we never do
We do not sell your information. We do not rent it. We do not trade it. We do not share it with other insurance agencies, lead buyers, lead aggregators, or marketing companies. If you submit a quote request here, your information goes to this agency and to the carriers we approach on your behalf. That is the entire list.
6. Calls, texts and email
When you tick the consent box on our quote form, you are agreeing that we may contact you at the number you gave us by phone, text, and email about insurance, including messages sent using automated technology.
- Consent is not a condition of purchase. You can buy a policy from us without agreeing to automated contact — just call us instead.
- You can stop it at any time. Reply STOP to any text, click unsubscribe in any email, or simply tell us. We record the request and it takes effect immediately.
- Message and data rates may apply. Message frequency varies.
- We keep a record of the exact consent language you agreed to, along with the date and time, so that what you agreed to is never in dispute.
7. The Client Center
If you are a client, you can sign in at shopsmartrate.com/login to see your policies in one place, so you do not have to phone us to find out who your carrier is or when your policy renews. Using it is entirely optional and nothing about your coverage depends on it.
What it holds. Your name, email address and phone number, and for each policy we placed: the carrier, the policy number, the renewal date, a summary of your coverage limits, the carrier's claims line, and a link to the carrier's own payment page.
What it deliberately does not hold. No Social Security number, no date of birth, no driver's license number, no vehicle identification numbers, no claims history, no credit-based insurance score, and no payment details. Payments go directly to your carrier — money never passes through this website. ID cards we issue are emailed to you rather than stored here. This is a deliberate limit rather than an oversight: information we do not hold cannot be exposed.
How signing in works. There is no password. You enter the email address on your policy and we send a one-time link that works once and expires after fifteen minutes. We store only a cryptographic fingerprint of that link and never the link itself, so a copy of our records could not be used to sign in as you. Once signed in, your session is kept in a cookie that is strictly necessary for the portal to function — it carries no advertising or analytics purpose and is shared with nobody. Signing out ends the session on our systems, not merely in your browser.
The email address on your policy is what signs you in. If it changes, tell us and we will update it.
8. Documents you send us
You can attach documents when you ask for a quote, or from inside the Client Center — usually a declarations page from your current insurer, sometimes a photo of a roof or a vehicle. This is optional. You can always email them instead, or post them, or read the numbers to us over the phone.
Why we ask. A declarations page lists exactly what you carry today, which lets us price the same coverage rather than something approximately like it. Without it we are quoting against a guess, and the number is less useful to you.
We delete them. Documents are removed automatically fourteen days after you send them. We use them to prepare your quote and then they are gone — we are not building a document archive, and a declarations page holds far more about you than we have any reason to keep. If you want one deleted sooner, ask and we will do it that day.
While we have them. They are stored privately in our own Cloudflare account, encrypted in transit. There is no public address for them — the only way one can be opened is by a member of this agency who is signed in, and every request is checked. We do not send them to anyone except the carrier the quote is going to, and only where the document is part of that submission.
We accept PDFs and photographs only, and we check the contents of a file rather than trusting its name.
9. Cookies and analytics
This site uses only what it needs to function. The only cookie it sets on its own is the signed-in session described in section 7, and only once you have signed in — if you never sign in, this site sets no cookie of its own at all. Most browsers let you block or delete cookies in their settings; the site will still work, though you will not be able to stay signed in.
We do use web analytics, and here is exactly what that means. This site runs Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts page views and tells us which pages people find useful and where our forms confuse them. It sets no cookie, does not fingerprint your device, and does not follow you to any other website. We use it to fix our own pages — not to build an advertising profile about you, and not to share anything with an advertiser.
That is the complete list of third parties this site contacts: Cloudflare, who host it and provide those analytics; Google Fonts, which serves the typefaces; and Formspree, which delivers the forms on this site to us — so when you submit a quote request or a service request, what you typed passes through Formspree on its way to your agent. There are no advertising pixels, no social media trackers and no data brokers. If that ever changes we will update this section before it does, and say plainly what is being collected.
10. How long we keep it
If you become a client, we keep your records for as long as you are insured with us and afterward for the period required by Illinois insurance recordkeeping rules and by our errors-and-omissions carrier — generally several years after the policy ends. If you request a quote and do not buy, we keep the quote file for a limited period so we can pick up where we left off if you come back, and you may ask us to delete it sooner.
11. How we protect it
We use encrypted transmission for this website and for our document delivery, access controls on our systems, and we limit access to the people who need it. No system is perfect, and we will not claim ours is. We do not ask for sensitive identifiers such as your Social Security number or driver's license number through the public form on this website — those are collected directly and securely when a carrier requires them.
12. Your choices and rights
Regardless of where you live, you may ask us to:
- Tell you what information we hold about you.
- Correct anything that is wrong.
- Delete your information, unless we are required to keep it as an insurance record.
- Stop contacting you, in whole or by channel.
Residents of states with comprehensive consumer privacy laws may have additional rights, including the right to know what is collected, the right to deletion, the right to correct, and the right to opt out of sale or targeted advertising. Since we do not sell or share your personal information for targeted advertising, there is nothing to opt out of — but the other rights are available to you.
To make a request, email support@shopsmartrate.com or call 855-USMART1. We may need to verify your identity before acting, and we will not treat you differently for exercising a right.
13. Children
This site is intended for adults purchasing insurance. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.
14. Changes and contact
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top of the page. Material changes will be noted plainly rather than buried.
SmartRate LLC dba ShopSmartRate Insurance Agency
Email: support@shopsmartrate.com
Phone: 855-USMART1
Illinois Insurance Producer License #22321839