Privacy Policy & CCPA

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MOBILE PRIVACY POLICY

Privacy Policy

This notice is intended to describe how we collect, maintain, disclose and dispose of customer information. This notice may be amended from time to time at our discretion.

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To limit our sharing

• Call 713.499.1800 and speak with a Stellar Bank customer service representative or
• Visit us online: stellar.bank/privacy
• Complete the Online Request Form

Please note:

If you are a new customer, we can begin sharing your information 30 days from the date we sent this notice. When you are no longer our customer, we continue to share your information as described in this notice. However, you can contact us at any time to limit our sharing.

Questions?

Call 713.499.1800 or go to stellar.bank/privacy.

Who we are

Who is providing this notice?

The consumer financial companies within the Stellar Bancorp, Inc. family, including Stellar Bank.

What we do

How does Stellar Bank protect my personal information?

To protect your personal information from unauthorized access and use, we use security measures that comply with federal law. These measures include computer safeguards and secured files and buildings. We authorize our employees to access consumer information only for legitimate business purposes and to keep information confidential. We require companies that work for us to protect your information.

How does Stellar Bank collect my personal information?

We collect your personal information, for example, when you

• open an account or make deposits or withdrawals from your account
• pay your bills or apply for a loan
• use your debit or credit card

We also collect your personal information from others, such as credit bureaus, affiliates, or other companies.

Why can’t I limit all sharing?

Federal law gives you the right to limit only

• sharing for affiliates’ everyday business purposes – information about your creditworthiness
• affiliates from using your information to market to you
• sharing for nonaffiliates to market to you

State laws and individual companies may give you additional rights to limit sharing. See below for more information on your rights under state law.

What happens when I limit sharing for an account I hold jointly with someone else?

Your choices will apply to everyone on your account.

Definitions

Affiliates

Companies related by common ownership or control. They can be financial and nonfinancial companies.

• Our affiliates include Stellar Bancorp, Inc., Stellar Bank, American Prudential Capital, Inc., ABTX Financial, Inc., and any other affiliate we may add in the future

Nonaffiliates

Companies not related by common ownership or control. They can be financial and nonfinancial companies.

• Nonaffiliates that we may share with can include financial services companies such as insurance agencies or mortgage brokers; nonfinancial companies such as retailers, travel companies and membership groups; and other companies such as nonprofit groups

Joint marketing

A formal agreement between nonaffiliated financial companies that together market financial products or services to you.

• our joint marketing partners include financial services companies

Other important information

Special Notice For Texas Residents:

Stellar Bank is chartered/licensed registered under the laws of the State of Texas and by state law are subject to regulatory oversight by the Texas Department of Banking. Any consumer wishing to file a complaint against Stellar Bank should contact the Texas Department of Banking through one of the following means indicated below:

In Person or by U.S. Mail:

Texas Department of Banking Consumer Assistance Activities
2601 North Lamar Boulevard
Suite 300
Austin, TX 78705-4294

Telephone Number: 1.877.276.5454 (toll free)
Fax Number: 512.475.1313
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.dob.texas.gov/

Special Notice For California Residents:

In accordance with California law, we will not share personal information we collect about California residents with companies outside of Stellar Bank, except as permitted by law, such as a legal process, as required to service your account or unless you provide us with express consent to do so. 

Privacy Request Form

Submit the following form if you would like to limit our sharing of your information.

Mobile Privacy Policy

This notice is intended to describe how we collect, maintain, disclose and dispose of customer information. This notice may be amended from time to time at our discretion.

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Rev. February 2023

California Consumer Privacy Act Notice

Last Updated: September 2024

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Notice explains how we collect, use, retain, and disclose personal information about California residents. It also provides information about how California residents can exercise rights under the CCPA.

If you are a resident of California, then the following notice applies to you.

Your privacy is important to us. This PRIVACY NOTICE FOR CALIFORNIA RESIDENTS supplements the information contained in the Privacy Policy of Stellar Bank (collectively, “we,” “us,” or “our”) and applies solely to visitors, users, and others who reside in the State of California (“consumers” or “you”). We adopt this notice to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”). Any terms defined in the CCPA have the same meaning when used in this notice.

Please note that certain exemptions apply to your rights and Stellar Bank's obligations pursuant to the CCPA. These rights and requirements may not apply in certain situations depending on your relationship with Stellar Bank, our other legal obligations, and as otherwise provided for in the CCPA.

Stellar Bank reserves the right to amend this Privacy Policy at our discretion and at any time. When we make changes to this privacy notice, we will post the updated notice on the website and update the notice’s effective date. Your continued use of our services, products, websites and/or mobile apps following the posting of changes constitutes your acceptance of such changes.

Collection and Disclosure of Personal Information

We may have collected or disclosed Personal Information in the following categories from consumers within the last twelve (12) months. The categories and examples provided in the chart below are those defined in the CCPA. This does not mean that all examples of that category of Personal Information were in fact collected but reflects our good faith belief to the best of our knowledge that some of that information may have been collected about consumers. We will update this disclosure from time to time as appropriate.

Personal information does not include:

• Publicly available information from government records.
• De-identified or aggregated consumer information.
• Information excluded from the CCPA’s scope, like:
• Health or medical information covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act (CMIA) or clinical trial data;
• Personal information covered by certain sector-specific privacy laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) or California Financial Information Privacy Act (FIPA), and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

Where We Collect Your Personal Information From

We collect the personal information described below from one or more of the below sources:

• Directly from you throughout our relationship, including when you sign up for, and/or use, our products, services and websites, or when you visit our offices or attend a Stellar Bank event;
• Indirectly from you, for example, from observing your actions on our websites or mobile apps;
• From our parent entities, affiliates, subsidiaries and partners;
• From third parties that are authorized to share your information with us, such as intermediaries, broker dealers, our institutional clients and service providers; and
• From publicly available sources of information.

Use of Personal Information

We may use or disclose the personal information we collect for one or more of the following business purposes:

• To fulfill or meet the reason you provided the information;
• To provide, support, personalize, and develop our websites, mobile apps products, and services;
• To create, maintain, customize, and secure your account with us;
• To process your requests, transactions, payments and prevent transactional fraud;
• To provide you with support and to respond to your inquiries, including to investigate and address your concerns and monitor and improve our responses;
• To personalize your website experience and to deliver content and product and service offerings relevant to your interests, including targeted offers and ads through our websites, third-party sites, and via email or text message (with your consent, where required by law);
• To help maintain the safety, security, and integrity of our websites, software, systems, networks, products, services, databases other technology assets, and business;
• For testing, research, analysis, and product development, including to develop and improve our websites, mobile apps, products, and services;
• To manage our relationship with you or your business;
• To develop new ways to meet our clients’ needs and to grow our business, for example by seeking client feedback or sharing our market research;
• To develop and carry out marketing activities in order to keep our clients informed about our products and services;
• To develop and manage our brand;
• To respond to requests by law enforcement and our regulators and as may otherwise be required by applicable law, court order, or governmental regulations;
• To evaluate or conduct a , divestiture, restructuring, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some or all of Stellar Bank assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Stellar Bank is among the assets transferred; and
• As described to you when collecting your personal information or as otherwise set forth in the CCPA.

Disclosure of Personal Information for a Business Purpose

The categories of third parties to whom we may have disclosed Personal Information for our business purposes described in this privacy disclosure in the preceding twelve (12) months are:

• Affiliates and subsidiaries of Stellar Bank
• Vendors and service providers who provide services such as website hosting, data analysis, payment processing, order fulfillment, information technology and related infrastructure, customer service, email delivery, auditing, marketing and marketing research activities
• Partners and third parties who provide services such as payment, banking and communication infrastructure, storage, legal expertise, tax expertise, notaries and auditors, who promote the bank and its financial services and products to customers and other prospective buyers
• Other third parties who enable customers to conduct transactions online and via mobile devices, mortgage and fulfillment services, loan processes and aggregators (at the direction of the customer)
• Law enforcement, regulatory and other government agencies as required by laws and regulations

“Sale” of Personal Information

Within the last twelve (12) months, Stellar Bank has not sold consumers’ Personal Information. Stellar Bank does not sell the Personal Information of minors under 16 years of age without affirmative authorization. For purposes of this Notice, “sold” or “sell” means the disclosure of Personal Information to a third-party for monetary or other valuable consideration. While we often benefit from such exchanges, we do not share personal information for the sole purpose of receiving compensation for that information.

Data Retention

We will keep Personal Information no longer than necessary to fulfil the purposes described in this Notice and to satisfy certain regulatory recordkeeping requirements.  We destroy Personal Information according to our record retention policy; however, we may need to hold personal information beyond those retention periods in response to a regulatory audit, investigation, or other legal matter.

Your Rights under the CCPA

The CCPA provides consumers with specific rights regarding their personal information. This section describes your CCPA rights and explains how to exercise those rights.

Access to Specific Information Rights

You have the right, subject to certain exceptions defined in the CCPA and other applicable laws and regulations, to request that Stellar Bank disclose certain information to you about our collection and use of your personal information over the past twelve (12) months. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request, we will disclose to you:

• The categories of personal information we collected about you.
• The categories of sources for the personal information we collected about you.
• Our business or commercial purpose for collecting that personal information.
• The categories of third parties with whom we share that personal information.
• The categories of personal information that each recipient received.
• The specific pieces of personal information we collected about you.

You also have the right to request that we correct inaccurate personal information that we maintain about you.

Deletion Request Rights

You have the right, subject to certain exceptions defined in the CCPA and other applicable laws and regulations, to request that Stellar Bank delete any of your personal information that we collected from you and retained, subject to certain exceptions. Once we receive and confirm your verifiable consumer request we will delete (and direct our service providers to delete) your personal information from our records.

Right to Not be Discriminated Against

You have the right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising any of your CCPA rights. Unless permitted by the CCPA, we will not:

• Deny you goods or services.
• Charge you different prices or rates for goods or services, including through granting discounts or other benefits, or imposing penalties.
• Provide you a different level or quality of goods or services.
• Suggest that you may receive a different price or rate for goods or services or a different level or quality of goods or services.

However, we may offer you certain financial incentives permitted by the CCPA that can result in different prices, rates, or quality levels. Any CCPA-permitted financial incentive we offer will reasonably relate to your personal information’s value and contain written terms that describe the program’s material aspects. Participation in a financial incentive program requires your prior opt in consent, which you may revoke at any time.

Exercising Access, Correction, and Deletion Rights

To exercise the access, correction, and deletion rights described above, please submit a verifiable consumer request to us by either:

Calling us at 1.866.542.6668; or
Emailing us at [email protected]; or
Completing the Online Request Form

You may only make a verifiable consumer request for access twice within a 12-month period. The verifiable consumer request must:

• Provide sufficient information that allows us to verify, to a reasonably high degree of certainty, that you are the person about whom we collected personal information. This may include requesting that you provide us with at least two or more pieces of personal information to match against personal information about you that we may or may not maintain and which we have determined to be reliable for the purpose of verification.
• Describe your request with sufficient detail that allows us to properly understand, evaluate, and respond to it.

Verifiable Consumer Request

We cannot respond to your request or provide you with personal information if we cannot verify your identity or authority to make the request and confirm the personal information relates to you. Making a verifiable consumer request does not require you to create an account with us. We will only use personal information provided in a verifiable consumer request to verify the requestor’s identity or authority to make the request.

Authorized Agent

Only you or a person registered with the California Secretary of State that you authorize to act on your behalf, may make a verifiable consumer request related to your personal information. You may also make a verifiable consumer request on behalf of your minor child. If you submit a request on behalf of another person, we may require proof of authorization and verification of identity directly from the person for whom you are submitting a request.

Response Timing and Format

We endeavor to respond to a verifiable consumer request within 45 days of its receipt. If we require more time (up to 90 days), we will inform you of the reason and extension period in writing. If you have an account with us, we will deliver our written response to that account. If you do not have an account with us, we will deliver our written response by mail or electronically, at your option. Any disclosures we provide will only cover the 12-month period preceding the verifiable consumer request’s receipt.

In some instances, we may not be able to honor your request. For example, we will not honor your request if we cannot verify your identity or if we cannot verify that you have the authority to make a request on behalf of another individual. Additionally, we will not honor your request where an exception applies, such as where the disclosure of Personal Information would adversely affect the rights and freedoms of another consumer or where the Personal Information that we maintain about you is not subject to the CCPA’s access or deletion rights.

CCPA Request Form

This form is intended for California residents only.