Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

Privacy and personal information are very important to EQUIAM, and we take it seriously.

This Privacy Policy describes the policies and procedures of EQUIAM and its various affiliates (collectively, the “EQUIAM Group”, “us”, “we”, etc.) regarding the collection, use, processing, storage and transfer of non-public personal information concerning individuals who use the site www.equiam.com and related websites and software applications (together, the “Site”), as well as the software platform and other functionality and services available on the Site (collectively, the “Services”). This Privacy Policy applies to both information that is unique to you and may be used to identify you (“Personal Information”) and also applies to Personal Information collected by us that has been subsequently anonymized or aggregated. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, process and transfer your Personal Information.

By accessing the Site, using the Services, registering and continuing as a “Site Member” of the EQUIAM community, or agreeing to provide Personal Information to another party who, in accordance with your agreement with such other party, may share such Personal Information with EQUIAM, you consent to our collection, use, processing, storage and transfer of your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. We will not use, process or transfer your information except as described in this Privacy Policy without obtaining your prior consent. If you are using the Services on behalf of a business organization or other entity, or a client (such as a fund or holding company you may manage or advise, a trust, or a joint account), this Privacy Policy is nevertheless personal to you as an individual, and does not apply to that organization, entity, or client or any information relating to that organization, entity or client.

This Privacy Policy is intended to meet our obligations and duties relating to Personal Information under the legal and regulatory requirements of the jurisdictions in which we operate, including but not limited to, Hong Kong, the European Union and the State of California, USA.

We will post any updates to this Privacy Policy on this page. From time to time, it may be necessary for you to supply us with further information, including Personal Information, in connection with the Site and the provision of the Services. Failure to supply such information may result in you being unable to use the Site or Services. If at any time you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, please discontinue your use of the Site or Services.

2. How and why we collect Personal Information

We collect Personal Information from and about you to:

• Set up your user account, correspond with you, and otherwise enable and facilitate your usage of EQUIAM’s Services or as is necessary for your use of the Site and the provision of the Services.
• Verify your identity, your status as a professional investor, an accredited investor or qualified purchaser (or other qualifications), if applicable, process diligence checks, and establish your eligibility and suitability for being a member of the EQUIAM community.
• If you are using the Services on behalf of an entity, organization, or client, verify your affiliation and that you are authorized to do so.
• Setup and maintain accounts for sending and receiving funds and for depositing, holding and transferring securities.
• Facilitate your and our compliance with various laws, regulations, and industry oversight pertaining among other things to banking, financial information, securities transactions, money laundering, terrorism, and “know your customer” rules promulgated by, among others, applicable government and regulatory bodies.
• Create and maintain your account profile.
• Provide you with information about, and solicit your further participation in, the Services (which may include research and development purposes and direct marketing activities and/or the transfer of your Personal Information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes).
• Study, test, and improve the Services, and the overall user experience using the Services.
• Offer customer support, technical support, maintenance, and product development.
• Protect against fraud, Site misuse, privacy and security breaches, securities and other legal and regulatory violations, and to fulfill and enforce agreements reached with you and others.
• We ensure that all uses of your Personal Information have one of the foregoing legal bases: Personal Information (i) that is necessary to provide the Services, including customer support, personalized features, and safety and security protections, (ii) for which we have a legitimate interest not overridden by your data protection interest, such as research and development, marketing, and protecting our interests, (iii) to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations, or (iv) where you have given prior consent to such collection and use, which you may withdraw with respect to further processing.

We collect information by asking you to enter information (including Personal Information) into forms, by observing your account activity and usage of the Services, by logging your access and activity on the Site, by your uploading of documents, and via third party information providers that, among other things, provide background checks to verify your identity, creditworthiness, and your eligibility and suitability to participate in transactions. Third party information providers include, among others: credit reporting agencies, social media sites, our affiliated entities, fund administration partners, advertising platforms, data brokers and other data sources, and compliance service providers.

If you register or use the Services through a third-party site or application such as Facebook or LinkedIn, or link your EQUIAM account to those sites and applications, we may collect Personal Information from them. We may also collect Personal Information by direct communication with you and others by telephone, in person, and by online or electronic messaging means both on-Site and through off-Site services.

3. Types of Personal Information that we collect

• Your name and contact information.
• As applicable and with your consent, your bank account information, money transfer instructions, age / date of birth, and social security number, taxpayer ID number, or federal employer ID number.
• Account and identity information with respect to funds transfer accounts.
• Financial information with respect to your investment objectives and means, including information about your wealth and financial situation, equity compensation and prior investments.
• Service usage, as well as records of your communications with EQUIAM and customer service requests.
• Information requested or required by regulatory or governmental authorities or law enforcement bodies.
• Behavioral and marketing information such as your interests, and your public social media presence.
• Our online software also automatically collects information from your computer, browser, phone, or other devices and software used to access the Services, and logs this information in log files. This information includes among other things your device ID, ISP, IP address, user IDs and access tokens for third party sites such as AngelList, Facebook, and LinkedIn, information you have authorized a third party to share, and any information you have made public on those services.

We generally do not collect Personal Information about your race, ethnicity, religious or philosophical beliefs, sexual orientation, health information, trade union memberships, etc., and will not do so without asking for your further, explicit consent.

4. Parties with whom we share Personal Information

Like any company, we may share Personal Information that we have collected with our affiliates and third parties (whether located within or outside your jurisdiction) for the purposes described above. This includes:

• If we are under a subpoena, court order, investigation, audit, reporting requirement or other legal or regulatory obligation, we may be required to disclose Personal Information as a matter of legal or regulatory process to any local or foreign regulatory, governmental, tax, law enforcement or other agencies or authorities for the purposes of complying with any law, rule, regulation or guideline.
• Any affiliate, adviser, contractor, agent or third party service provider (including but not limited to affiliated broker-dealers, financial institutions and payment providers) who provide us with services relating to administration, telecommunications, payment, clearing, audit, accounting, risk management, credit, legal, compliance, operations, sales and brokerage, marketing, relationship management, securities management, information technology, records and data storage, performance measurement and compilation and analysis in connection with our provision of the Site and Services and our operations. For the avoidance of doubt, aggregated or anonymized data is no longer considered Personal Information for the purposes of this Privacy Policy, if it no longer directly or indirectly reveals your identity. Such aggregated or anonymized data that does not identify you may be shared with the foregoing persons, among others, for purposes of marketing, research and as part of our Services to the EQUIAM community, in order to evaluate and describe market pricing, or as a service to others.
• Our service providers who provide us with security, fraud prevention, marketing technology, information technology, site analytics, site maintenance, software development, electronic signatures, identity verification and other Site and service features, provided that all such parties will be under confidentiality duties to protect and not share any Personal Information we give them.
• To third parties you agree or ask us to disclose Personal Information to.
• Any other person under a duty of confidentiality to the EQUIAM Group or its affiliated entities that have undertaken to keep such Personal Information confidential.

Although we sometimes refer to affiliates as “we” or part of the Services, please be aware that some of these entities are not under common ownership with, or controlled by, EQUIAM.

5. Your Rights regarding Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, you have the right to do the following:

• Request to access your Personal Information and obtain information regarding the processing of your Personal Information, subject to applicable laws and regulations, including transferring to you or to a third party you choose, a copy of any automated Personal Information you provided consent for us to use, in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format, in accordance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.
• Correct your Personal Information, including any incomplete or inaccurate information, subject to applicable laws and regulations.
• Erase your Personal Information in certain circumstances (e.g. where there is no good reason for us to continue using it).
• Object to or request that we restrict our processing of your Personal Information, including deleting or removing it, even in cases where we have a good reason to use it, based on something particular to your situation, subject to our legal and regulatory obligations as described above.
• Withdraw any consent you have previously given to us with respect to the Personal Information.
• Opt out from direct marketing at any time and without charge on any marketing message sent to you, via your account settings if a Site Member, or by contacting us directly.
• Require us, at any time and without charge, to cease to provide your Personal Information to any other person for use by that other person for direct marketing and to notify any person to whom your Personal Information has been so provided to cease to use such Personal Information for direct marketing.
• Ascertain our policies and practices in relation to Personal Information and be informed of the kind of Personal Information held by us as well as the main purposes for which Personal Information held by us is or is to be used.
• Depending on your jurisdiction, you may have the right to lodge a complaint with applicable regulatory bodies if you think that any of your rights relating to your Personal Information has been infringed by us.
• The above functions should be available on the Site, or else by contacting us at the addresses stated in this Privacy Policy. Please note that we have the right to charge a reasonable fee for the processing of any Personal Information access request, to the extent permitted under local laws and regulations.

6. Your California Privacy Rights

California’s “Shine the Light” law (Civil Code Section 1798.83) permits users of the Site and Services that are California residents to request certain information regarding our disclosure of Personal information to third parties for their direct marketing purposes. To make such a request, please send an email to [email protected] or mail your written request to John Zic, Partner, at 1700 Montgomery Street, Suite 108, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA.

Effective from January 1, 2020, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (the “CCPA”) grants California residents certain rights with respect to Personal Information collected by businesses. If you are a California resident, you may exercise the following rights, subject to certain exceptions and limitations:

• The right to know the categories of Personal Information we collect, use, and disclose about you, and the categories of sources of the information and third parties with which we have shared Personal Information during the past twelve months.
• The right to request that we delete the Personal Information collected from you.
• The right to opt out of any sale of your Personal Information.
• The right not to receive discriminatory treatment for exercising your privacy rights.

Details regarding the Personal Information we collect, use, and disclose are described in this Privacy Policy.

California residents who wish to exercise any of their CCPA rights should complete and submit the required verifying information via email at [email protected]. We may need to request additional information from you to verify your identity or understand the scope of your request. You may designate an authorized agent to make a request on your behalf by providing us with written authorization or a power of attorney, signed by you, for the agent to act on your behalf. You will still need to verify your identity directly with us.

Requests are processed within 45 days of receipt. If we are unable to verify your identity, request processing may be extended by an additional 45 days. You may make a free request two times in any 12-month period.

7. Cookies and similar technologies

When you access the Site or Services, we and certain information providers may place cookies, pixel tags, web beacons, page tags, or other data-gathering and transmitting tools or files on your device. These help us recognize you as a user, customize and personalize the Services, study and improve our offerings, collect information about your device and software in order to improve Site performance or prevent fraud. Most Internet browsers and our consent management tool are able to disable or remove these cookies, and will contain instructions on how to do so, but doing so could affect your ability to use the Site and Services. We use the following cookies:

• Strictly necessary cookies. These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website (e.g., to enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services).
• Performance cookies. They allow us to recognize and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works (e.g., by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily).
• Functional cookies. These are used to recognize you when you return to our website (e.g., to personalize our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences).
• Targeting cookies. These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed, to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Some web browsers provide a Do Not Track feature that sends signals to the websites you visit to indicate that you do not want your online activities tracked. There is currently no industry agreed-upon response to a Do Not Track signal. At this time, we do not support the Do Not Track browser option.

8. Record Retention

We may retain or delete your Personal Information according to our internal data retention policies as permitted by applicable laws and regulations, even after you no longer use the Site and Services or terminate or deactivate your account or your relationship with EQUIAM, among other things for backup, archival, contract enforcement and dispute resolution, auditing, and regulatory compliance purposes. Note, also, that securities law and regulations, among other things, may require that we keep an archival / recordkeeping copy of some or all of your Personal Information, that we provide such information to regulatory authorities, and that removing, deleting, erasing, suspending processing of, or withdrawing consent with respect to your Personal Information may result in our no longer being able to provide you the Services.

9. Age restrictions

The Site and Services are directed at and intended solely for adults according to the age of majority and other laws of their jurisdiction. We do not knowingly collect any information from anyone under the age of 18 or allow them to use the Site or Services. If you learn that we may have inadvertently collected any such information, please contact us immediately for a resolution.

10. Other sites and services

EQUIAM may refer you to third parties, via links from its Site or Services, communications from EQUIAM, or otherwise. These include among others any banks, payment processors, electronic signature services, brokerages, educational and informational sites, and transfer agents. EQUIAM is not responsible for the privacy policies and practices, performance, or terms of use and other contracts offered by these third parties, and does not endorse, provide, or provide any warranties with respect to any content or services they offer you. Please remember that when you go to another website or other service, that service may have its own privacy policy that applies in place of or in addition to ours.

11. How we protect your Personal Information

EQUIAM is committed to maintaining the confidentiality, accuracy, and security of the EQUIAM community’s Personal Information, to honor our clients’ integrity, respect the trust the EQUIAM community places in us, and for purposes of compliance.

We protect Personal Information by using software, physical safeguards, and internal procedures, in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. This includes using secure servers, encryption, and locked facilities as applicable. We maintain access policies designed to limit access to Personal Information to those who need to know as part of the Services, and education and training for employees on the importance of confidentiality. We have a policy of requiring companies that work with us to protect Personal Information as well.

We ask you to help by taking reasonable precautions to protect your own files, use secure passwords, and generally exercise due care with any sensitive information about yourself or other people.

No security system is completely without risk. If there is a security or data breach affecting your Personal Information, we will attempt to investigate and as appropriate, notify you and take other applicable legal steps. Further, if you become aware that any Personal Information we have appears to be inaccurate, and you are unable to correct it yourself from your user account, you may contact us as described below. You may also contact us anytime if you have questions regarding your Personal Information, the Services, or any other matter.

12. Contacting Us

EQUIAM is the “controller” of your Personal Information. EQUIAM is the contact for all matters related to this Privacy Policy, including without limitation, any complaints or requests for access to and correction of your Personal Data.

You may contact John Zic, Partner, at 1700 Montgomery Street, Suite 108, San Francisco, CA 94111 USA, or [email protected].

All non-US clients, including those in the European Union and Asia-Pacific, should use the above contact addresses for any questions, issues, or requests regarding their Personal Information and this Privacy Policy. If you believe we have not adequately responded to any request or resolved any complaint, you may have the right to contact your local governmental or regulatory body to file a complaint.

13. Policy Changes

This Privacy Policy may be amended from time to time at any time. For the purposes of any such amendments, our posting of a revised version of the Privacy Policy, with an updated version date, is to be considered adequate notice to you of the amendment. Any revised version will be effective as of the time posted to the Site, or otherwise noticed to you. Therefore, you should review this Privacy Policy periodically. We may require you to affirmatively assent to any revised version of this Privacy Policy as a condition for continued use of the Site or Services or as required by relevant laws or regulations.

14. Transfer of Personal Information Between Jurisdictions

Our collection, holding, processing or use of your Personal Information in accordance with this Privacy Policy may (whether in whole or in part): (i) take place outside of the jurisdiction in which you reside, or (ii) be controlled by a party whose principal place of business is located outside of your current jurisdiction, where there may not be in force any data protection law which is substantially similar to, or serves the same purposes as, the data protection laws in your current jurisdiction. If transfers out of the European Economic Area (EEA) occur within the EQUIAM Group or with our service providers, we will only transfer your Personal Information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection by the European Commission or use specific contracts approved by the European Commission which give Personal Information the same protection it has in the EEA.

Individuals in the European Economic Area who wish to exercise any of their GDPR rights should complete and submit the required verifying information via email at [email protected].