Our commitment to you
As a Benefit Consultants Group client, you have entrusted to our care personal and financial data for you and your employees. (All references to “client”, “you” or “your” refer to you as the retirement plan sponsor, as well as your employees or former employees participating in your retirement plan.) We recognize that your relationship with us is based on trust, and that you expect us to act responsibly and in your best interests. Because your personal and financial data are your private information, we hold ourselves to the highest standards in their safekeeping and use.
This means, most importantly, that we do not sell client information—whether it is your personal information or the fact that you are a Benefit Consultants Group client—to anyone.
Instead, we use your information primarily to complete transactions that you request or to make you aware of other financial products and services that we offer or sponsor.
The information we collect about you
You provide personal information when you complete a Benefit Consultants Group account application. (If you enter information in an online application, we may store the information even if you don’t complete or submit the application.) You also provide personal information when you request a transaction that involves Benefit Consultants Group or one of the Benefit Consultants Group-affiliated companies.
In addition to personal information you provide to us, we may receive information about you that you authorize third parties to provide to us. We also may obtain personal information from third parties in order to verify your identity, to prevent fraud, or to help us identify products and services that may benefit you.
Personal information collected from any source may include, among other things, your name and address, Social Security or taxpayer identification number, date of birth, assets, income, account balances, investment activity, and accounts at other institutions.
How we handle your personal information
We do not sell information about current or former clients or their accounts to third parties. Nor do we share such information, except when needed to complete transactions at your request or to make you aware of related financial products and services that we offer. Here are the details:
In order to complete certain transactions or account changes that you direct, it may be necessary to provide identifying information to companies, individuals, or groups that are not affiliated with Benefit Consultants Group. For example, if you ask to transfer assets from another financial institution toBenefit Consultants Group, we will need to provide certain information about you to that company to complete the transaction.
In order to alert you to other financial products and services that Benefit Consultants Group offers or sponsors, we may share your information within the Benefit Consultants Group family of affiliated companies. This would include, for example, sharing your information within Benefit Consultants Group to make you aware of new BCG funds or other investment offerings, or the brokerage services offered through Benefit Consultants Group’s brokerage companies, or the asset management and trust services offered through Benefit Consultants Group’s trust companies and registered investment advisors inside Benefit Consultants Group.
In certain instances, we may contract with nonaffiliated companies to perform services for us. Where necessary, we will disclose information we have about you to these third parties. In all such cases, we provide the third party with only the information necessary to carry out its assigned responsibilities, and only for that purpose. And we require these third parties to treat your private information with the same high degree of confidentiality that we do.
Finally, we will release information about you if you direct us to do so, if we are compelled by law to do so, or in other legally limited circumstances (for example, to prevent fraud).
How we protect privacy online
Our website uses some of the most secure forms of online communication available, including data encryption, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol, and user names and passwords. These technologies provide a high level of security and privacy when you access your account information, initiate online transactions, or send secure messages.
BCGBenefits.com offers customized features that require our use of "HTTP cookies" and similar data files—tiny pieces of information that we ask your browser to store. However, we make very limited use of these data files. We don’t use them to pull data from your hard drive, to learn your e-mail address, or to view data in cookies or other similar data files created by other websites. We will not share the information in these data files or give others access to it—except to help us better serve your investment needs.
When you visit our website, we may collect certain technical and navigational information, such as computer browser type, Internet protocol address, pages visited, and average time spent on our websites. This information may be used, for example, to alert you to software compatibility issues or to resolve technical or service problems, or it may be analyzed to improve our Web design and functionality and our ability to serve you and your accounts.
See our Site Help and Technical Help for more details about website security and privacy features.
How we safeguard your personal information
Within Benefit Consultants Group, we restrict access to information about you to those Benefit Consultants Groupemployees who need to know the information in order to perform their jobs, such as servicing your accounts or notifying you of new products and services. To protect your personal information, we maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards in keeping with industry standards and practices, and we review and adjust these safeguards regularly in response to advances in technology.
What you can do
For your protection, we strongly recommend that you do not provide your account information, user name, or password to anyone. If you become aware of any suspicious activity relating to your account, it is your responsibility to contact us immediately.
We'll keep you informed
As required by federal law, we will notify you of our privacy policy annually. We reserve the right to modify this policy at any time, but rest assured that if we do change it, we will tell you promptly.
