Privacy Policy

PRIVACY POLICY FOR OUR CUSTOMERS

Introduction

At Farmers State Bank, the basis of each customer relationship, many of which span generations, is trust. You have chosen to do business with Farmers State Bank, and we are obligated to honor that relationship with great care, beginning with the information you have chosen to share with us. We believe that your privacy should not be compromised. At the same time, we want to offer you the array of financial products and services you need to accomplish your financial goals. We believe we can do both through the privacy policy outlined below.

Disclosure of Privacy Principles to Customers and Recognition of a Customer's Expectation of Privacy

As mentioned in the introduction, Farmers State Bank considers the privacy of your information to be very important. Disclosure of this policy is our way of communicating our commitment to confidentiality. We recognize that you have a right to expect your personal financial information to remain private and secure. We take every precaution to provide you with the same level of privacy within our virtual branch (computer online banking) that you receive through more traditional bank delivery channels, such as over the counter, by telephone, and via the mail. This privacy policy will be distributed to any individual who becomes a customer of this bank before that customer relationship is established, and annually as long as the relationship continues.

Use, Collection, and Retention of Customer Information

We collect, retain, and use information about you only where we reasonably believe that it will help administer our business or provide products, services, and other opportunities to you. We collect and retain information about you only for specific business purposes - and we will tell you why we are collecting and retaining it upon your request. The information is obtained from three primary sources:

1. directly from you and/or your application(s) for products or services,
2. from credit bureaus and other consumer reporting agencies, and
3. from your transactions with us, including transactions through our virtual branch.

We use information to protect and administer your records, accounts, and funds; to comply with certain laws and regulations; to help us design or improve our products and services; and to understand your financial needs so that we can provide you with quality products and superior service. Furthermore, auditing mechanisms have been put into place to further protect your information by identifying which employee(s) has accessed and in any way modified, e.g. updated or added to, your personal information.

Online customers: Employing stringent security measures in the collection of your personal information, all Farmers State Bank online account applications are submitted to the bank's secure administration site through an encrypted direct line to the bank. Once received by the bank, only approved personnel may open and process the application.

Medical Information: Farmers State Bank recognizes that, when consumers provide medical information for a specific purpose, they do not wish it to be used for other purposes, such as for marketing, or in making a credit decision. If a customer provides personal medical information to Farmers State Bank, we will not disclose the information, unless authorized by the customer.

Maintenance of Accurate Information

We continually strive to maintain complete and accurate information about you and your accounts. Should you ever believe that our records contain inaccurate or incomplete information about you, please notify us at the address, phone number, or e-mail address located at the end of this privacy statement. We will investigate your concerns and correct any inaccuracies. The bank is required by law to have procedures in place to ensure that customer financial information and history is accurate, current, and complete. The bank will not furnish information relating to a customer to any consumer reporting agency if we know or consciously avoid knowing that the information is inaccurate. The bank will also not furnish information to a consumer reporting agency if you have notified the bank, at the address specified by the bank, that specific information is inaccurate.

Employee Access to Information

At Farmers State Bank, employee access to personally identifiable customer information is limited to those with a business reason to know such information. Individual user names and passwords are used by approved bank personnel to access your personal information online, providing audit trails to further safeguard the privacy of your personal information. Employees are educated on the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of your information in accordance with these Privacy Principles.

Security Procedures

We safeguard information according to established security standards and procedures, and we continually assess new technology for protecting information. Bank management is committed to maintaining security standards and procedures to help prevent unauthorized access to confidential information about you, our customer. The bank will update and test the technology on an ongoing basis to ensure the protection and integrity of your personal information. Our employees are trained to understand and comply with these information principles.

Disclosure of Account Information

We are committed to protecting the confidentiality, security, and integrity of your personal information, and we make disclosures to other nonaffiliated/unrelated third parties only as permitted by law. We do not reveal specific information about your accounts or other personally identifiable data to parties outside the bank for their independent use unless:

1. You request or authorize it;
2. The information is provided to help complete a transaction initiated by you;
3. The information is provided to a reputable credit bureau or similar information reporting agency; or
4. The disclosure otherwise is lawfully permitted or required.

Nonpublic personal information is not shared with the bank's affiliated holding company. Furthermore, Farmers State Bank does not act as a credit reporting agency in the dissemination of information, nor is information on former customers shared with affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties.

We do not currently share customer information for marketing purposes. Furthermore, we do not and will not provide account or personal information to non-Farmers State Bank companies for the purpose of independent telemarketing or direct mail marketing of any non-financial products or services of those companies.

Business Relationships with Third Parties

Sometimes it is necessary to provide personally identifiable information about you to a party outside our affiliated network, such as to a vendor, check printing company, data processing company, or another service company in order to prepare your account statements or to provide support or services for one or more of our products. Arrangements with nonaffiliated third parties are limited to those relationships necessary to carry out essential business functions. These vendors and service companies agree to safeguard our confidential information about you and your products and services with us and must abide by applicable law.

Responding to Inquiries

Farmers State Bank recognizes and respects the privacy expectations of our customers. We want our customers to understand our commitment to privacy in our use of customer information. As a result of our commitment, we have developed this Privacy Policy that is readily available to our customers. Customers who have questions about this policy or have a question about the privacy of their customer information should visit, write, call, or e-mail Farmers State Bank using the information listed below, attention Branch Manager.

Marion
P.O. Box 7 57043
Phone: 605.648.3683

Parker
P.O. Box 216 57053
605.297.3683

Humboldt
P.O. Box 106 57035
605.363.3808

Bridgewater
P.O. Box 50 57319
605.729.2582

Tea
P.O. Box 550 57064
605.498.3683
hometown@farmersstatebanksd.com

This policy statement is subject to change at any time. You will be notified of any changes.

GUIDELINES FOR PROTECTING YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY

How we Guard Against Identity Theft and Other Fraud

If unscrupulous parties obtain certain information, such as your social security number and account numbers, they could misappropriate your identity or defraud you. We recognize this type of information requires heightened security, and we do not allow unrelated third parties to have it except to ensure the accuracy of data we provide or receive (for example, it is necessary to provide your social security number to a credit bureau to ensure information is accurately reported in your credit file). We hold our employees responsible for our privacy principles, and we remind employees to be cognizant of privacy principles when asked to disclose customer financial information.

How to Remove Your Name From Mailing Lists

If you wish to have your name removed from lists created by outside agencies and companies in the business of compiling lists of names for purchase by others, send a written request with your name(s), home address, and home telephone number (including area code) and signature in a letter or on a postcard to:

Mail Preference Service
Direct Marketing Association
PO Box 282
Carmel, NY 10512

To help reduce the amount of unsolicited e-mail that you receive, you may contact the Direct Marketing Association's e-Mail Preference Service at the following website: www.e-mps.org.

Additional information regarding these services can be found at the Direct Marketing Association's website: www.the-dma.org.

Internet and Online Banking Security

Consolidation Sites (aka "Information Aggregating" or "Screen Scraping"): Please use caution when using consolidation sites, which are Internet sites that offer the ability to collect all of your personal information on one site. For example, you may be encouraged to provide consolidation sites your personal financial information, such as your Online ID, Access ID, PC Password or Online Password for Online Banking. Your privacy may be compromised if you reveal this information to information aggregators. NEVER PROVIDE THIS INFORMATION TO A SITE THAT YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE AND FULLY TRUST.

You should know that all transactions initiated by a consolidation site using access information you provide are considered to be authorized by you, whether or not you were aware of the specific transaction. You may revoke this authority only by notifying us, and we may need to block your account until we issue new access codes.

Farmers State Bank is committed to making sure that your Online Banking is safe and secure. With our own security infrastructure in place, we are confident that access to your accounts is private and secure; we are unable to provide similar assurance for other websites. Only provide your Access ID or Online ID when your browser shows a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connection directly to the Farmers State Bank website or to another site you have investigated and fully trust. SSL encryption turns all Internet communication between you and Farmers State Bank - from your password to your money transfer requests - into a string of unrecognizable numbers. Only Farmers State Bank and your computer can decode the information. This process safeguards your banking session from intruders.

How We Handle E-Mail: We preserve the content of your e-mail, your e-mail address, and our response so that we can more efficiently handle any follow-up questions you may have. We also do this to meet legal and regulatory requirements.

Regular non-encrypted Internet e-mail is not secure; therefore, carefully consider the content of your e-mail messages to us before they are sent. Since an Internet e-mail response back to you would not be secure, we will not include confidential account information in an e-mail response.

No Data "Capture" with Planning Tools: There are financial calculators at Farmers State Bank's website that help you figure loan payments, interest charges, college funding, and retirement planning. We encourage you to try all of your "what if" scenarios as often as you like. When you use the various financial calculators on our website, the calculations run on your PC or on our server. We do not capture the personal information you provide on these calculators.

When Information is Collected and Not Collected: Some areas of our website require information, such as application information, e-mail address, or account number, to enable you to perform certain tasks. In these cases, we collect your information if necessary to interact with you. This information will only be used by Farmers State Bank to provide you with services you have requested or are likely to be interested in. If you do not interact with us or you browse our website anonymously, personal information, such as your e-mail address, is not collected.

Protecting Our Children: We do not knowingly solicit data from children, and we do not knowingly market to children. We recognize that protecting children's identities and privacy online is important and that the responsibility to do so rests with both the online industry and with parents.

Other sites: We are not responsible for the content of sites linked from www.farmersstatebanksd.com.