Privacy Policy

At the George M. Hiller Companies, we recognize that you expect us to protect the information you provide us and to use it responsibly.  We take your privacy seriously and are committed to fulfilling the trust that is the foundation of your expectations and our relationship with our clients.  In order to fulfill that trust, we have adopted the following Privacy Policy.

We collect only the information that is necessary to serve you.

We collect nonpublic personal information about you from some or all of the following sources:

• Information we receive from you on applications or other forms such as address, social security number, phone number, and income;
• Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others such as account balances, securities positions, or financial products purchased or sold;
• Information we receive from a consumer credit agency if relevant to the services we provide for you; and

   

• Information we obtain from others in the process of verifying information you provide us.

   

• Information you provide to us in connection to a potential advisory relationship, even if no account is opened or no contract is signed by you.

We limit the information that we share to others.

We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone, except as permitted by law.  To the extent permitted by law, we may disclose to either affiliated or nonaffiliated third parties some or all of the nonpublic personal financial information that we collect about our clients, as described above.

We release information to others with your verbal or written consent.

Any information that we share to affiliated or nonaffiliated parties will be for the purpose of enabling them to provide services to us so that we may more efficiently administer your accounts and process the transactions and services you request.  They are required to respect the confidentiality of all client information.

In addition, we may be required by law or regulation to disclose information to third parties.  For example, we may need to provide information in response to a subpoena, to prevent fraud, and to comply with rules and inquiries from industry regulators.

We maintain security standards to protect your  information.

We restrict access to nonpublic personal information about you to those employees, representatives, or agents who need to know that information to provide products or services to you.  They are also required to respect the confidentiality of all client information.

We have security practices and procedures in place to prevent unauthorized access to your nonpublic personal information.  Our practices of safeguarding your information help protect against criminal use of that information.

We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal and state regulations to guard your nonpublic personal information.

We will maintain personally identifiable information about you during the time you are a client, and at least for the time period thereafter that such records are required to be maintained by federal securities laws.  If we choose to dispose of records after the required retention period, documents containing personally identifiable information will be destroyed.

Information Security and Incident Response

We maintain written policies and procedures designed to protect the security and confidentiality of nonpublic personal information. Our program includes measures to identify and assess risks of unauthorized access or use. We have implemented safeguards to protect your information as well as procedures to detect, respond to, and recover from security incidents affecting client information.

If we determine that nonpublic personal information has been or is reasonably likely to have been accessed without authorization, we will notify affected clients as soon as possible and no later than 30 days after that determination.

Futhermore, we will continue to adhere to the privacy policies and procedures described in this notice even after your account is closed or becomes inactive.

SMS Privacy Policy

When you provide your mobile phone number to us, we may use it to send you text messages. However, we encourage you not to send sensitive information by text message. We may use this method to contact you to verify transactions and other instructions you have sent to us through email or voicemail.

Service Provider Oversight

We require that third-party service providers with access to clients’ personal nonpublic information maintain policies and procedures to protect that information. They must notify us of any unauthorized access or use of confidential information. They must cooperate in incident response and mitigation efforts to recover from any breach. We ask them to notify us within 72 hours of a breach that affects our clients.

Privacy Notice Delivery Requirements under Regulation S-P

We will provide initial privacy notices consistent with Regulation S-P. Customers will receive notice before any non-public personal information is shared with third parties, and customers will receive notice before a customer relationship is established. 

We may change this policy from time to time.

We may make changes to this Privacy Policy at any time and will provide you with any notice of such changes as required by law.  This statement replaces any other statements about our client information practices

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy, please call toll-free (800) 359-0222.