Policy Effective Date: December 29, 2023
Wealthfront’s number one priority is your trust. Your privacy is essential to earning and keeping that trust. This tenet drives all of the decisions we make, as well as how we gather, use and store any information we acquire from you.
We created this Privacy Policy to be as clear and direct as possible about how we gather and use your non-public personal information and other types of personal information (“Personal Information”) and to assist you in exercising your privacy rights.
Wealthfront Corporation and/or its affiliates (“Wealthfront”, “we”, “us” and/or “our”) currently offer a cash product, financial planning software and portfolio management services, and may offer additional products and services in the future (collectively, the “Services”), through Wealthfront’s website, www.wealthfront.com (“Site”) and our mobile applications (“App”). This Privacy Policy describes how Wealthfront treats your Personal Information when you use our Site, App and/or Services.
For the purpose of this Privacy Policy, a “User” is a party who creates an account on our Site or App only to use our free financial planning software and/or to understand or evaluate our Services; and a “Client” is a party (including a User) who signs one of our Client Agreement for any reason, including to open a Cash Account or engage in portfolio management services.
Our Privacy Policy, Website Terms of Use, Financial Planning Terms of Use, and Client Agreements, govern different aspects of your use of our Site, App, and Services.
The categories of information we collect from Users differs from what we collect from those who qualify as Clients. Examples of instances when we collect Personal Information include:
Wherever Wealthfront collects Personal Information, we endeavor to provide a link to this Privacy Policy and other relevant terms, such as our Website Terms of Use and/or Financial Planning Terms of Use.
We collect Personal Information from Users and Clients, including but not limited to:
In addition to the information described above, Clients provide us additional Personal Information, including but not limited to:
You are not required to provide these items to us to become a User, but Users who choose not to provide these items to us will not be able to become Clients.
Many of Wealthfront’s Users and Clients choose to input information from accounts at outside third-party financial institutions onto their Wealthfront dashboard on our Site or in our App. Although there is no requirement to do so, if you choose to enable Wealthfront to collect information from your outside accounts, Wealthfront retrieves your outside account information maintained by your outside financial institutions (“Outside Account Information”) as described in this section.
By linking your outside accounts to your Wealthfront account, you provide Wealthfront access to your Outside Account Information, which may include prior and current account balances, your transaction history, and holdings from your linked outside financial institutions. Portions of this Outside Account Information will be displayed on your Wealthfront dashboard. Wealthfront may use the Outside Account Information we receive to formulate your financial projections in Path, to move money between your linked outside financial institutions and Wealthfront in accordance with your instructions and authorizations (such as via our Automated Savings Plan), in connection with our fraud prevention activities, or for other purposes consistent with this Privacy Policy and the Services we provide to you. Wealthfront may also use aggregated Outside Account Information from our Users and Clients for purposes of deciding which products and services to offer in the future.
By choosing to use our Services to aggregate and analyze your Outside Account Information, you expressly authorize and direct Wealthfront, on your behalf, to access all Outside Account Information available via the login credentials you provide. You also authorize and direct Wealthfront periodically to refresh your retrieved Outside Account Information by re-accessing your linked third-party accounts using your login credentials for so long as the ACH link remains active. Wealthfront uses Yodlee, Inc. (“Yodlee”) as our third-party service provider for the collection, use, storage, and handling of data in connection with our account aggregation services and for purposes of verifying the outside accounts. Wealthfront does not store the login credentials for your linked third-party accounts after the credentials have been transmitted to Yodlee, but we may store your login names in encrypted form for purposes of fraud detection and prevention. As Wealthfront’s service provider, Yodlee is responsible for storing your credentials, collecting and processing your Outside Account Information, and providing it to us using the login credentials you supply. You can view Yodlee’s privacy notice here and Yodlee’s commitment to clients and consumers here. Any Outside Account Information that Wealthfront receives from Yodlee is in read-only format, and Wealthfront cannot alter the Outside Account Information maintained by your third-party institution. All transmissions of your Outside Account Information and your login credentials between Yodlee and Wealthfront are encrypted in transit. Wealthfront retains your Outside Account Information collected via this account-linking service in accordance with our regulatory recordkeeping requirements, as permitted by law, as described elsewhere in this Privacy Policy, and as required in connection with the maintenance of your account and the Services we provide to you.
Users may request deletion of their Outside Account Information in accordance with the “Retention and Deletion” section below. Wealthfront does not share your Outside Account Information with outside parties except in limited cases relating to fraud investigations. In such fraud investigations, we may share certain of your Outside Account Information with your linked third-party institution. We also reserve the right to share Outside Account Information with third parties as required by law. If you choose to remove or deactivate a link to an account with a third-party institution, we will not retrieve any new Outside Account Information for that account unless you re-link that account in the future.
Wealthfront manages referral programs that allow Clients to receive a benefit in exchange for referring an individual who becomes a Client. Participation in any of our referral programs is free and voluntary for our Clients. By participating, a Client is asked to provide to Wealthfront the name and e-mail address of each person to whom Client refers Wealthfront’s Services. We treat this information like all other Personal Information described in this Privacy Policy.
Due to the nature of our business, our Services are not available to minors. Except for beneficiary information as described above, Wealthfront does not knowingly solicit Personal Information directly from or about persons under the age of 18.
If you are under the age of 18, please do not submit any Personal Information to Wealthfront.
If you are a parent or guardian who becomes aware that, without your consent, your child under the age of 18 has directly provided us with Personal Information, you should contact us at support@wealthfront.com, and we will delete such information from our files to the extent permitted by regulatory requirements.
Other means by which we collect Personal Information include the following:
We will never rent, sell or trade your Personal Information to anyone. Ever.
We utilize the Personal Information of our Users for a variety of business purposes, such as to help our Users evaluate our Services, offer new products and services, enhance our Services, and for research and internal analysis.
Wealthfront stores, processes, and maintains Personal Information of our Clients for a variety of business reasons such as to provide client support, analyze and improve our Services, offer new products and services, and provide our Services to Clients in accordance with the rules of regulatory authorities..
We may use third-party vendors for identity verification. These vendors analyze whether the Client’s “selfie” matches the government-issued identity document. The information collected from Client photographs may constitute biometric information in some jurisdictions. Where required by law, we will seek consent from you prior to any such collection. We require our third-party vendors who support identity verification to agree to destroy any potential biometric data that is created or gathered for purposes of verifying your identity no more than ninety (90) days after its collection.
Your browsing activity may be tracked across different websites and different devices or apps. For example, we may attempt to match your browsing activity on your mobile device with your browsing activity on your computer. To do this, we may analyze your browsing patterns, geo-location and device identifiers to match the information of the browser and devices that appear to be used by the same person.
This Privacy Policy and these terms apply only to Wealthfront-operated Services and applications. Please note that our Site and Apps may for your convenience contain links to other websites, applications, social media accounts, and information that are not operated by Wealthfront. Wealthfront does not control these linked third-party websites or their privacy practices, which may differ from those set out in this Privacy Policy. Any Personal Information you choose to provide to linked third parties is not covered by this Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review the privacy policy of each company or website before submitting any Personal Information. Some third parties may choose to share their users’ Personal Information with us; that sharing is governed by that company’s privacy policy, not this Privacy Policy.
Wealthfront provides websites and online resources that are specifically designed to be compatible for use with mobile computing devices. Mobile versions of our Site are governed by the provisions hereunder related to the Site and may require that you log in with an account. In such cases, information about the use of each mobile version of the website may be associated with your accounts. In addition, we may enable individuals to download tools, such as an application, widget or other tool, that can be used on mobile or other computing devices. Some of these tools may store information on mobile or other devices. These tools may transmit Personal Information to Wealthfront to enable you to access your account information and to enable us to track the use of these tools. Some of these tools may enable users to e-mail reports and other information from the tool. We may use Personal Information or non-identifiable information transmitted to us to enhance these tools, to develop new tools, for quality improvement, and as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy or in other notices we provide.
We may run sweepstakes and contests. The contact information you provide may be used to reach you about the sweepstakes or contest and for other Wealthfront promotional or marketing purposes. In some jurisdictions, we are required to publicly share some winner information.
We will not share or disclose your Personal Information (whether you are a current or former User or Client) to any unaffiliated third parties except:
You have choices regarding the use and disclosure of your Personal Information, as set out in this Privacy Policy.
You may decline to provide Personal Information to Wealthfront. Declining to provide Personal Information may disqualify you from using Wealthfront Services, the Site, the App, and other features that require certain Personal Information.
Where you have consented to Wealthfront’s use of your Personal Information, you may withdraw that consent at any time by contacting us by email or physical mail via the contacts indicated under the “Questions and Contacting Us” section below. Clients and Users cannot opt out of providing Wealthfront Personal Information and continue to use the Services. Even if you opt out, we may still collect and use non-personal information regarding your activities on our Services and for other legal and regulatory purposes as described above. In addition to withdrawing consent by contacting us, Clients and Users must close their account(s) in order to opt out of further providing Wealthfront with Personal Information.
Before we use Personal Information for any new purpose we will provide information regarding the new purpose.
Wealthfront may use your Personal Information to communicate with you regarding our Services or to tell you about blog posts or Services that we believe will be of interest to you. If you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive marketing communications from us, please follow the “unsubscribe” instructions provided in the communications or contact us at support@wealthfront.com. Please note that you cannot opt out of administrative communications such as regulatory, billing, or service notifications, or updates to our Terms or this Privacy Policy.
We process requests to be placed on do-not-mail, do-not-phone, and do-not-contact lists as required by applicable law.
We may send you push notifications through our mobile application. You may at any time opt out of receiving these types of communications by changing the settings on your mobile device. We may also collect location-based information if you use our mobile applications. You may opt-out of this collection by changing the settings on your mobile device.
Users or Clients may contact us at support@wealthfront.com to request information about how to access your Personal Information.
Wealthfront retains the Personal Information we receive as described in this Privacy Policy for as long as you use our Site, App, or Services, or as necessary to fulfill the purpose(s) for which it was collected, to provide our Services, resolve disputes, establish legal defenses, conduct audits, pursue legitimate business purposes, enforce our agreements, or as otherwise required to comply with contracts and comply with all applicable laws.
Due to regulatory recordkeeping obligations, we may retain information related to you and your account, as well as any data related to your trades, in accordance with applicable laws. In no case will we share any individual trading data unless required by regulators or other government bodies, to support processing of settlement of your transactions, or in accordance with applicable laws.
User Deletion Requests. If you are a User (as defined in the Introduction of this Privacy Policy) you may request deletion of Personal Information by contacting support@wealthfront.com and providing sufficient information to identify your account and prove that you are the owner of the identified account or an authorized representative. Please note, if you utilize a third-party data deletion request company to make these requests, you must personally provide us with separate written authorization before we will process your request.
Client Deletion Requests. In connection with separate regulatory recordkeeping obligations imposed on Wealthfront, we generally must maintain and cannot delete Personal Information associated with our Clients.
Wealthfront takes reasonable steps, endeavoring to use appropriate technical or organizational measures, to protect your Personal Information from loss, misuse, unauthorized access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. However, no Internet, email, or electronic operating system that enables the transmission of data is ever fully secure or error-free; therefore, we cannot ensure or warrant the security of any information you transmit to us.
In certain cases, Wealthfront may transfer Personal Information internationally. We handle any Personal Information transferred internationally in accordance with this Privacy Policy and take measures to protect that information.
Please be aware that certain federal privacy laws govern the collection and record keeping of nonpublic Personal Information collected by Wealthfront, and state privacy laws may be inapplicable in certain situations related to such Personal Information.
Notice to California Residents
To the extent not covered by the federal privacy regulations noted above, California residents may have the following rights with respect to data collected by Wealthfront.
California law permits Users and Clients who are residents of California to request and obtain from us once a year, free of charge, a list of the third-parties to whom we have disclosed their Personal Information (if any) for those third-parties’ direct marketing purposes in the prior calendar year, as well as the type of Personal Information disclosed to those parties. Please note that this disclosure requirement only applies if we share Personal Information with third parties for those third parties to directly market their own products to those consumers, and Wealthfront does not share Personal Information with third parties for those third parties to directly market their own products to Users or Clients.
Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Users who are California residents may request and obtain from us twice a year, free of charge, information related to Personal Information we have collected in the 12 months preceding the request.
As noted above in the “Retention and Deletion” section, Users may also request the deletion of Personal Information Wealthfront has collected. Because of separate collection and record keeping requirements imposed on Wealthfront, deletion requests by those who qualify as Clients generally cannot be accommodated.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time as we deem necessary at our sole discretion. If there are material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will notify you as required by applicable law.
Wealthfront encourages you to review this Privacy Policy periodically to be informed regarding how we are using and protecting your information and to be aware of any policy changes. Your continued relationship with Wealthfront after the posting or notice of any amended Privacy Policy shall constitute your agreement to be bound by any such changes. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will take effect immediately after being posted or otherwise provided to you by us. Each version of this Privacy Policy will be identified on this page by its effective date.
This document constitutes Wealthfront’s complete Privacy Policy for Wealthfront and its affiliates and the Services, Site and App.
If after reviewing this Privacy Policy, you would like to submit a request to exercise your rights as detailed in this Privacy Policy or have any questions or privacy concerns, please contact us by email at support@wealthfront.com or via physical mail at:
Wealthfront Corporation
261 Hamilton Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94301