How FurWise collects, uses, stores and discloses personal information, in plain English, wherever we can manage it.
FurWise (“ FurWise ,” “ we ,” “ us ,” “ our ”) operates furwise.co.nz, a free tool that helps New Zealand pet owners compare New Zealand pet insurance policies.
FurWise is operated by FurWise Limited (NZBN: 9429053894991), a company registered in New Zealand.
FurWise is a comparison and information service. We are not a licensed insurer, insurance broker, or financial adviser, and nothing on this site is personalised financial advice — see our Terms of Use for details.
If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your personal information, contact us at:
This policy explains how we collect, use, store, and disclose personal information when you:
This policy is written to comply with the Privacy Act 2020 (NZ) and the Information Privacy Principles (IPPs) it sets out. If FurWise later serves users outside New Zealand, this policy will be reviewed.
| Where | What we collect |
|---|---|
| Contact form (Send us a message) | Name, email address, subject / topic, and the content of your message. |
| Comparison tool wizard | Pet details you enter (name, species, breed, age), your existing insurer’s name, and any pre-existing condition notes you type in. |
| Comparison tool “compare your current cover” upload | A copy of your current policy document or certificate of insurance that you choose to upload. |
| “My provider isn’t listed” form | The provider and plan name you enter, your contact email address (optional), a summary of your pet’s profile, and any free-text notes you add. |
| “Get a quote” referral (see 4.6) | Only if you choose to request a quote: your name, email address, phone number, and address, plus the pet profile and selected plan / cover preferences already generated by the wizard. |
We don’t ask for or require your name, email, or phone number to see your comparison results. The wizard works without you giving us any contact details. You’re only ever asked for this information if you actively choose to request a quote from a specific insurer.
When you visit furwise.co.nz, we (and the tools listed in section 5) may automatically collect standard technical and usage information, such as your IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed, referring pages, and approximate location, using cookies and similar technologies. See section 6 (Cookies) for details.
We don’t ask for financial account numbers, ID numbers, or health information about you (as opposed to your pet). If a document you upload happens to contain this kind of information about you, see section 4.2 for how it’s handled.
We only use personal information for the purpose it was collected for, or a directly related purpose.
Used to respond to your enquiry. Submissions are received through our website form (hosted on Vercel) and stored in our CRM (HubSpot) so we can track and respond to enquiries.
We may also use your contact details to send you occasional marketing communications about FurWise (for example, new features, premium anniversary tracking reminders or content we think you’d find useful). Every marketing message includes a clear, working unsubscribe link, and we stop contacting you as soon as you opt out You can also ask us directly at any time to stop, or to be told what information we hold about you.
Details you type into the wizard (pet profile, existing insurer, notes) are used only to generate your on-screen comparison. They are held in your browser session only They are not sent to, or stored on, any FurWise server or database, and disappear when you close or refresh the tab.
If you upload a copy of your current policy document, it is sent to our AI processing provider, Anthropic solely to extract structured details (like your excess, sum insured, and cover type) so we can pre-fill the comparison for you.
If you tell us about a provider we haven’t reviewed yet, the details you enter (provider name, plan, your optional contact email, notes, and pet profile summary) are sent by email (via our email provider, Resend) directly to a FurWise team inbox. This information is not stored in a database. Practically, it lives in that inbox until deleted, the same as any other business email. If you gave us your email address, we may reply to follow up on the provider you flagged.
We use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our site (e.g. which pages are popular, how people navigate the comparison tool) and Meta and other social advertising pixels to measure and improve our advertising and to show FurWise ads to people who’ve visited our site. See section 6 for how these use cookies, and how to opt out.
Separately, furwise.co.nz displays paid advertising placements (banners and similar creative) from insurers and other pet-related businesses, such as pet food, pet accessories, and veterinary providers — see How FurWise makes money . These placements are static creative (an image and a link) rather than a tracking pixel or script, so viewing one doesn’t itself send any of your information to the advertiser. If you click through to an advertiser’s own website, whatever information you share there is governed by that advertiser’s own privacy policy, not this one.
If you decide to take a comparison further, you can choose to request a quote from a specific insurer. Before this happens, we ask you for your name, email address, phone number, and address, and show you exactly which insurer will receive it. We only send your details to an insurer after you’ve explicitly ticked a consent checkbox naming that insurer There’s no blanket, one-off consent covering every provider on FurWise; each referral is its own opt-in.
Once you’ve opted in, depending on the option you choose:
Either way, your name, phone number, email, address, pet profile, and selected plan / cover preferences are disclosed to the insurer you chose. Once an insurer has your details, they hold and use them under their own privacy policy, not this one. We’d encourage you to check the relevant insurer’s privacy policy before opting in.
Separately from everything above, FurWise collects small, anonymous signals about how the comparison tool is used. For example, which species and breed range a comparison was run for, which cover type and category priorities were chosen, roughly what sum insured was targeted (grouped into a broad band, not your exact figure), which step of the tool someone stopped at if they didn’t finish, and whether someone who expressed interest in a plan went on to request a quote.
This is different from everything else in this policy in one important way: it never includes your name, email, phone number, address, or any free-text note you’ve typed It’s tied to a random identifier that exists only in your browser’s memory for the length of your visit, not a cookie, and isn’t linked to who you are at any point, including if you go on to request a quote through the referral flow in 4.6.
We use this information in two ways: to understand and improve how the comparison tool itself works, and aggregated across many visits, never at the level of one person’s session, to produce benchmarking insights that participating insurers can subscribe to (for example, “which policy features pet owners look at most closely this quarter”). Because this information is never personal information to begin with, it sits outside the “we don’t sell your personal information” commitment elsewhere in this policy in the same way a store’s aggregate foot-traffic count would. Any aggregate figure shared with an insurer is suppressed below a minimum sample size, so it can’t be reverse-engineered back down to a small, potentially identifiable group.
Retention: the underlying anonymous records are kept for up to 5 years, then deleted.
How this is governed: every insurer that subscribes to these benchmarking reports signs a written data-subscription agreement with FurWise before receiving anything. That agreement confirms the data supplied is anonymised and aggregated, never at the individual level, and never capable of identifying a specific pet owner, and it contractually prohibits the insurer from attempting to re-identify anyone, from reselling or redistributing the data, and from using it for any purpose beyond its own internal benchmarking. See How FurWise makes money and our Terms of Use for how this fits into FurWise’s revenue and why it doesn’t affect any provider’s rating.
The Anniversary Premium Tracker is a community-led feature: pet owners voluntarily share what their pet insurance premium changed to at their policy anniversary (renewal), so that other pet owners considering the same breed and provider can see what’s likely to happen to their own premium over time. It’s built and run entirely separately from FurWise’s own comparison wizard.
What we collect. If you choose to submit a report, we collect: your pet’s species and breed, the insurer and plan name, the cover type, sum insured, excess type and (if applicable) amount, a co-payment tier, your pet’s age at renewal in whole years (not an exact date of birth), and your previous and new premium (converted to an annual figure regardless of whether you actually pay annually, monthly, or fortnightly). We do not ask for your name, email address, phone number, or any other contact or identifying detail. This is a structural difference from every other form on this site described in section 3.1. There is nothing in the Anniversary Premium Tracker’s data to make it personal information about you.
Anti-spam and quality control. So the tool isn’t unusable due to spam or made-up numbers, each submission is checked against a device / browser signal that’s hashed (irreversibly) into a short fingerprint. This fingerprint is used only to (a) limit how many reports can be submitted from the same device in a day, and (b) flag statistically implausible submissions (for example, a premium far outside the normal range for that breed and provider) so they’re held for a manual review rather than published immediately. This fingerprint is never used to identify you, is never shown to other users, and is not linked to any other information FurWise holds about you (including if you’ve separately used the comparison tool or requested a quote). The actual limit this fingerprint enforces is short, one submission per device per 24 hours, but the fingerprint value itself is deleted (nulled out) after 90 days. The underlying premium report itself is not affected by this and is retained permanently since it carries no personal information at all, with or without the fingerprint.
When and what is shown publicly. After you submit, you always see your own figure straight away. For other pet owners to see how a given breed / provider / plan combination compares, FurWise needs at least three published, matching reports for that exact combination (or a slightly broader combination if an exact match doesn’t yet have three). This anti-spam threshold means a single (possibly wrong or malicious) submission can never be shown as if it were a trend. Even once unlocked, what’s shown is always an aggregate summary (e.g. the median, average, and range of premiums reported, and how many reports it’s based on). FurWise never shows another individual pet owner’s single raw submission to you, or to anyone else.
This is explicitly separate from FurWise’s product comparisons. The Anniversary Premium Tracker is an additional information point pet owners can use to inform their own decisions. It is never used, in whole or in part, to influence or adjust how any insurer or plan appears in the comparison tool. Submitting a report about a provider, or not submitting one, has no bearing on how that provider is presented.
Once enough published reports accumulate for a breed and provider (a higher bar than the public “3 reports” threshold), the resulting aggregate figures may be included in the same benchmarking reports that participating insurers can subscribe to under the data-subscription agreement referenced above. The same protections apply: anonymised, aggregated, never raw or individual-level, and contractually barred from re-identification, resale, or use beyond the subscribing insurer’s own internal benchmarking.
Moderation status. A small number of submissions are held for manual review rather than published automatically, based on the statistical check described above, for example if a reported premium change looks implausible for that breed and provider. Held submissions are reviewed and either published or rejected. They’re never shown publicly, in aggregate or otherwise, while held.
We don’t sell your personal information. We share it only with the service providers who help us run FurWise, and only for the purposes described above:
| Provider | Role | What they receive | Their privacy policy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vercel | Serverless hosting for the comparison tool’s backend functions | Data passing through those functions (uploads, lead form submissions) in transit only | vercel.com/legal/privacy-policy |
| HubSpot | CRM | Contact form submissions (name, email, topic, message) | legal.hubspot.com/privacy-policy |
| Anthropic | AI document processing | Uploaded policy documents (not retained by us — see 4.3) | privacy.claude.com |
| Resend | Transactional email delivery | “Provider isn’t listed” form contents, routed to our inbox | resend.com/legal/privacy-policy |
| Google Analytics | Website analytics | Automatically collected browsing/usage data (section 3.2) | policies.google.com/privacy |
| Meta / social ad platforms | Advertising measurement | Automatically collected browsing / usage data via pixel (section 3.2) | facebook.com/privacy/policy |
| The insurer you choose to get a quote from | Completing or following up your quote request | Name, email, phone, address, pet profile, and selected plan / cover preferences (section 4.6) | Varies by insurer — shown and linked at the point of consent (section 4.6) |
Unlike the other providers in this table, an insurer you’re referred to is not our service provider acting on our instructions. Once they receive your details, they become responsible for that information under their own privacy policy. Every other provider listed here handles your information only as directed by us, to help us run FurWise.
Several of these providers are based overseas (principally the United States). Where we disclose personal information to an overseas person, we take reasonable steps to be satisfied the information will be subject to protections comparable to the Privacy Act 2020, as required by Information Privacy Principle 12. For example, by relying on providers with their own privacy and security commitments, and limiting what we send them to what each task requires.
We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect our rights, or in connection with a business transfer (e.g. if FurWise is acquired or merges with another business).
Our website uses cookies and similar technologies for:
You can control or disable cookies through your browser settings, and opt out of Google Analytics using Google’s opt-out browser add-on or Meta’s ad preferences. When you first visit furwise.co.nz, a short banner tells you this and asks you to acknowledge it. Once you click “OK, got it”, we remember that for 12 months on your device so you won’t see it again.
We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purpose it was collected, then delete or de-identify it. In practice:
We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, including using reputable service providers with their own security safeguards, encrypting data in transit (HTTPS), and limiting access to the systems described above (e.g. the HubSpot CRM and shared inbox) to people who need it to run FurWise. No online service can guarantee perfect security, but we design our systems to minimise what could go wrong if something did.
Under the Privacy Act 2020, you have the right to:
To exercise any of these rights, email us at contactus@furwise.co.nz
If you’re not satisfied with how we’ve handled your personal information, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz or by calling 0800 803 909.
FurWise is intended for adult pet owners. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children, and the site is not directed at anyone under 18.
We may update this policy from time to time, for example as we add new features or service providers. We encourage you to check back periodically.
FurWise Limited (NZBN: 9429053894991) Email: contactus@furwise.co.nz