Amended March 9, 2006  

Farmers & Merchants Bank & Trust is committed to maintaining confidentiality and is the core of the bank’s relationship with our clients. The following is the Privacy Notice that is the guideline F&M employees will follow:

Our Commitment

Farmers & Merchants Bank & Trust (F&M) is committed to the belief that maintaining the confidentiality of our clients’ information is at the core of our relationship with our customers. Our Board of Directors has adopted these privacy principles to govern our promise to you, our clients, that we will protect your trust and confidence by following these principles. In order to provide our clients with a broad range of financial products and services as effectively and conveniently as possible, we use technology to manage and maintain client information. The following notice serves as a standard for F&M employees for collection, use, retention and security of nonpublic personal information.

What Information We Collect

F&M collects and retains information about you only when we reasonably believe that the information will assist us in our business and in providing products, services and other opportunities to our clients. We may collect “nonpublic personal information” about you from the following sources:

  • Information we receive from you on applications or other loan and account forms
  • Information we receive from you via online forms, such as your personal or business e-mail address
  • Information regarding your user activity while visiting our web site – www.fmbanktrust.com – or when accessing our web site from our e-mail newsletter
  • Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others
  • Information we receive from third parties such as credit bureaus

“Nonpublic personal information” is information about you that we obtain in connection with providing a financial product or service to you. For example, it includes information regarding your account balance, payment history and overdraft history.

Accurate Information

We strongly believe that it is in our best interests, as well as yours, to maintain information that is accurate. We have established procedures to enable customer information to be collected and maintained as accurately and completely as possible. If you notify us that information is inaccurate, we will correct the information in a timely manner. If you believe we have reported inaccurate information on your account, please contact us:

Telephone (319) 752-3661 or (800) 214-7161

Mailing Address P.O. Box 928, Burlington, IA 52601

What Information We Disclose

F&M is permitted under law to share information about our experiences or transactions with you or your account (such as your account balance and your payment history with us) with companies related to us by common control or ownership (“affiliates”). We may also share additional information about you or your account (such as information we received from you in applications or information from credit reporting agencies) with our affiliates.

You may direct us not to direct to our affiliates that doe not relate solely to our or our affiliates’ experiences or transactions with you or your account (such as the application and credit bureau information) by:

E-mail fmbanktrust@fmbanktrust.com

Telephone (319) 752-3661 or (800) 214-7161

Please ask for “New Accounts”

We do not sell or share customer information to unrelated third parties for the third parties to use for their own purposes. We do share information with companies that work for us. For example, we may share information with companies that print checks for us or provide data processing services. These companies are acting on our behalf when they provide these services and are obligated by contract to maintain the information that they receive in a confidential manner.

We provide information to others:

  • When you give us your written permission
  • To credit bureaus
  • To account verification or check fraud services
  • To other parties when it is necessary or helpful in completing a transaction, including other financial institutions and networks involved in processing your transactions
  • To comply with a law, regulation, court order or subpoena
  • To verify the existence of your account and general information about the condition of your account for a merchant or other financial institution
  • In response to an inquiry about current sufficient funds to cover a check you have written
  • To local, state and Federal authorities if we believe a crime may have been committed involving your account
  • To paying agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, after the death or incapacity of a recipient or beneficiary of recurring direct deposits
  • To our independent auditors, consultants or attorneys and to our regulators
  • To third-party vendors, specifically those contracted for online banking website maintenance and brokerage and investment services.

If you decide to close your account(s) or become an inactive customer, we will continue to adhere to the privacy policies and practices described in this notice.

Online Information

When a client or any other person visits our website – www.fmbanktrust.com – we may obtain certain information. The information we collect is subject to all of the safeguards we have described above, and is also subject to the following guidelines. F&M may collect information from visitors to our website in two ways – general information that we gather from your PC and specific information that you choose to provide to us. As a general policy, we do not automatically store or collect specific personal information concerning visitors to our website. We may, however, collect and store general information, such as:

  • The name of the domain from which you access the Internet (for example, msn.com if you are connecting from the Microsoft Network, or aol.com if you are connecting from America Online).
  • The Internet address of the website fro which you linked directly to our site (for example, www.Yahoo.com if you find us using the Yahoo search option
  • The specific link from which you accessed our website, if any (for example, an article link from our client e-mail newsletter).
  • The type of web browsing software you are using to view our site (for example, Netscape or Explorer).
  • The date and time you accessed our site

If you choose to provide additional information about yourself such as information on an application form, we will retain and use that information in accordance with our Privacy Notice principles.

Occasionally, we will link to other Internet sites as a convenience to you, our client. F&M will link only to sites that uphold our standards. However, we are not responsible for the content of those sites, nor their policies for the collection of client information.

Cookies

To provide you with better service and quicker access to the sections of our website of interest to you, we may use a “cookie”. A cookie is a small bit of information given to your browser by a website, which can later be retrieved. A cookie is a way for a website to recognize whether you have visited the site before. It cannot be read by a website other than the one that “set” the cookie. We may use cookies for administrative purposes, such as where you are able to customize the information you see. Recording cookies at such points makes your online experience easier and faster. Most of the cookies set last only through a single visit. They do not read your hard drive or contain any information that you have not already provided. None will contain information that will enable anyone to contact you via telephone or e-mail. Your web browser can be set to inform you when cookies are set or to prevent them from being set.

E-mail

We may preserve the content of your e-mail, your e-mail address and our response so that we can better serve you. Depending on the content of your e-mail, we may be required by laws and regulations to keep this information. If you send an e-mail to us, please remember that e-mail is not secure against interception.

If your e-mail contains information that is very sensitive or includes personal information such as account numbers, credit card numbers or your Social Security number, you may wish to consider sending this information in another way, either by telephone or mail.

Children’s Privacy

Our website is directed to a general audience. We do not knowingly solicit or collect personal information from children on our site.

Our Security Procedures

F&M will take steps to safeguard client information. We restrict access to your personal and account information to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you. We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with Federal standards to guard your nonpublic personal information.

Further, F&M’s Privacy Policy for its employees contains the following Code of Conduct:

Employees, directors and their associates may be held personally liable for using confidential information (obtained while serving as a director or employee) for personal benefit. They may also be subject to governmental or corporate administrative action. F&M’s business and client information and any related files are confidential and cannot be disclosed to unauthorized persons, including competitors, without permission or as permitted by law. All instances of violation of this policy will be reported to his/her supervisor. The situation will be considered and appropriate action will be taken by the Board of Directors. Action will be commensurate with the seriousness of the misconduct. Failure to comply with this policy may result in probation or termination of employment. Each officer, director and employee will receive a copy of the Policy annually and will sign a written acknowledgement of its receipt and agreement to comply with the Policy.

Outside Contractors

F&M uses outside contractors to perform services on our behalf. In some cases, we disclose some or all of the information that we collect, as described in the What Information We Collect section of this notice. This information may be provided to certain non-financial companies and independent contractors for the purposes of servicing the client’s account or similar services on our behalf with respect to products or services we provide. These companies and contractors are subject to confidentiality provisions and restrictions that prohibit using the information beyond the performance of the specified services on our behalf. The following language may be used in outside contractor agreements:

Contractor shall establish and maintain policies and procedures designed to insure the confidentiality of client information (nonpublic personal information). The contractor acknowledges to F&M that it is against Federal law to disclose nonpublic personal information received from a financial institution under certain circumstances as stated in Title V of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Pub. L. 107-102). Contractor will only use said nonpublic personal information provided by F&M to carry out the purpose(s) for which the information was provided, or as otherwise allowed by law or regulation. This provision shall survive termination of the agreement.

The bank will perform due diligence before any new agreements are signed with all outside vendors. This may include, but is not limited to, inquiry as to the vendor’s reputation and experience, references, financial statements, physical site, disaster recovery plans and internal controls, legal existence, licensing and/ or bonding and conflicts of interest.

Information Disposal

Procedures will be established within each department for the proper disposal of all information, regardless of format (paper, electronic storage). The procedures depend on the sensitivity of the information, which will be determined by each department.

Response to Inquiries

It is the policy of the bank that all handling of information about clients by the bank’s employees will be accomplished in compliance with all governing rules and regulations. F&M shall take all action necessary that it remains only a “user” of such information, never a “consumer reporting agency” as those terms are defined.

All requests by persons or entities outside the bank for general information about clients shall be referred to the Bookkeeping Department of the bank, which shall be the sole authorized source of such information for outsiders. All requests by persons or entities outside the bank for credit information about clients will be referred to the Loan Department. All other bank employees who may have or come into possession of such information shall decline to release it to anyone outside the bank. Each department shall handle such requests in accordance with established procedures.

Response to Client Information Changes

All requests by persons to make changes to a client’s account (i.e., address changes, ownership) shall be referred to the New Accounts department of the bank, which will handle all such requests in accordance with established procedures.