Financial Professional Notice

Last Revised: October 24, 2023

Financial Professional Notice

Advisors Excel is committed to protecting your privacy. This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) describes how Advisors Excel, AE Wealth Management, and AE Financial Services (collectively, “Advisors Excel,” also referred to as “we” and “us”) processes personal information in connection with our prospective, current, and former Advisors Excel agents or producers, AE Wealth Management investment adviser representatives, and AE Financial Services registered representatives regarding their professional relationship with us, excluding California Residents.

The information that we collect is controlled by Advisors Excel, LLC which is located in the United States at 2950 SW McClure Rd., Topeka, Kansas 66614 and can be reached by mail at this location. This information also may be collected by or transferred to, and therefore controlled by, an affiliate of Advisors Excel such as AE Wealth Management, LLC, AE Financial Services, LLC, and Advisors Excel Media, LLC.

Personal Information We Collect

We may collect one or more of the following types of information about you:

Identifiers – such as your name, alias, date of birth, billing and/or mailing address, unique personal identifier, internet protocol (IP) address, phone number, email address, social security number, tax identification number, driver’s license number, passport number, Central Registration Depository (CRD) Number, National Producer Number (NPN), carrier writing code/agent number, or other similar identifiers.

Demographic Information – such as your country of birth, state/province of birth, gender, criminal status, veteran status, and marital status.

Professional or Employment-Related Information – such as your educational history, professional designations, past and present business experience, and/or employment history.

Financial Information – such as your bank account number, credit or debit card information, financial account number, and Automated Clearing House (ACH) information.

Audio Information – such as call recordings when you connect on a call or leave a voicemail with us.

Regulatory Information – such as your hair color, eye color, height, and weight. This information is only used for registration and licensure with regulatory bodies.

Technology Information – such as your browser type and version, general geographic location, previously visited websites, computer or device type, internet connection type, user agent string, operating system version, date and time of website visits, time since your last visit, links clicked by you when visiting our sites, and pages you view when visiting our sites.

Other Information – such as your residential history, and your written signature for limited purposes like processing or administering policies or other documents regarding your business.

Personal Information for the purposes of this notice does not include publicly available information, deidentified or aggregated consumer information, and information collected pursuant to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (“GLBA”). Our privacy policies regarding information collected by AE Wealth Management and AE Financial Services subject to the GLBA can be found in their respective GLBA notices.

How We Use Your Information and Our Purpose for Collection Personal Information From You

We may use or disclose the above categories of personal information for one or more of the following business purposes:

To complete a regulatory form, such as an application, Form U4, or other similar document;
To deduct or deposit funds out of or into your account per your agreement with us;
To complete a transaction or operational task that you request;
To provide you with a service that you request;
To verify your identity;
To maintain and protect your accounts;
To improve our website design and functionality;
To ensure persistent service continuity, such as the use of session cookies to link actions across multiple sessions;
To ensure temporary service continuity, such as the use of session cookies to link actions during an online session;
To resolve technical or service issues with our technology;
To tailor and send you communications regarding our products or services;
To collect outstanding and delinquent debts and/or loans you owe to us;
To our outside auditors, lawyers, accountants, or other professionals who advise and assist us regarding the lawful and effective management of our organization;
For research, analytics, anti-fraud, anti-phishing, anti-spamming, marketing, and data enrichment;
To operate and administer our events; and
To comply with a legal request or order, such as a collections, levy, or garnishment request.

In addition to the purposes identified above, Advisors Excel may use and disclose any and all personal information that we collect as necessary or appropriate to:

Comply with laws and regulations;
Monitor, investigate, and enforce compliance with and potential breaches of our policies and procedures and legal and regulatory requirements;
Comply with civil, criminal, judicial, or regulatory inquiries, investigations, subpoenas, summons, or other legal requests;
Exercise or defend our legal rights and the rights of our employees, affiliates, customers, contractors, agents, and producers; and/or
To evaluate or conduct a merger, divesture, reorganization, dissolution, or other sale or transfer of some of all of Advisors Excel’s assets, whether as a going concern or as part of bankruptcy, liquidation, or similar proceeding, in which personal information held by Advisors Excel is among the assets or business operations transferred.

We may combine the information collected on our websites with information collected from or about you in other contexts. This may include information collected online, such as on our website or through our email exchanges with you, from publicly available sources, or from offline sources, such as when you establish an account with us or call us. If you do not wish to provide information to us, we may be unable to provide certain products or services to you.

Cookies and Web Beacons

We use a variety of online technologies, such as cookies, web beacons, and similar mechanisms, as described further below, to collect information that helps us understand how our websites are used. Specifically, Advisors Excel or our service providers may automatically collect a variety of technical and navigational information about you via these technologies, as described above.

We may also use similar tracking technologies in emails that we or our service providers send to you. This information may be used, for example, to alert you to software compatibility issues, to resolve technical or service problems, and for security purposes. We also analyze this information, with the assistance of our service providers, to improve our website design and functionality, to enhance our ability to serve you and your accounts, and to tailor our communications to you regarding our products and services.

Cookies: A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is stored on your computer or other device when you visit a website. Cookies contain information that is transferred to or read on your device and allow websites to recognize devices and store certain information, such as user preferences. Cookies are used to distinguish you from other users of our online services. This helps us to provide you with a useful experience when you browse and also allows us to improve our online services. We and our service providers use session cookies, which link your actions during a particular online session and expire at the end of that session, as well as persistent cookies, which remain on your device and allow us to remember your actions or preferences across multiple browser sessions.

If you are concerned about having cookies on your computer or other device, you can set your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being set, allowing you to decide whether to accept it. You can also delete cookies from your device. The help feature on most web browsers will inform you how to prevent your browser from accepting new cookies, how to receive notice when a new cookie is being set, and how to disable cookies altogether. However, if you chose to block or delete cookies, certain features on our websites may not operate correctly.

For further information about deleting or blocking cookies, please visit allaboutcookies.org/how-to-manage-cookies.

Web Beacons: Our websites and the emails that you receive from Advisors Excel use an application known as a web beacon (also known as a pixel tag or clear gif). A web beacon is an electronic file that usually consists of a single-pixel image, embedded in a web page or an email to measure usage and activity. In some cases, a web beacon triggers the placement of a persistent cookie on your device.

Our websites offer customized features that require our use of cookies and web beacons. Certain sections of our websites require cookies to be enabled to support site or application performance and provide enhanced authentication. For example, cookies enable us to personalize and improve your user experience and help enhance navigation. Cookies also help us to understand how people use our online services so that we can improve their structure, functionality, and content. Web beacons allow us, directly or through our service providers, to collect information used for website analytics, such as how many users have visited particular pages or downloaded documents, or how frequently users search for a particular term. However, our use of these cookies and web beacons is limited. We do not view or collect data in cookies or 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 needs and as described in this privacy policy.

Emails: We and our service providers use web beacons and cookies to determine whether and when you receive or open our emails. These beacons and cookies may also capture information about the type of device, operating system, email program, and web browser used to view the email, the IP address from which you opened the email, and whether you click any links in the email. These beacons and cookies are utilized to gauge the effectiveness, relevance, and value of our email communications, as well as to target relevant advertising to you and to measure the impact of the advertising on your Advisors Excel relationship.

Website Analytics and Internet-Based Advertising

We engage a service provider to analyze, audit, research, and report on the cookies and web beacons utilized above. In particular, our websites use Google Analytics to help collect and analyze certain information for the purposes discussed above. Google Analytics is a web analytics service offered by Google, Inc. that tracks and reports website traffic. This data is shared with other Google services. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of sharing your activity to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about your activity. For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy web page at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

How We Safeguard Your Information

We are committed to maintaining the security of your personal information. We use administrative, technical, and physical security measures designed to safeguard your information against loss, theft, unauthorized use, disclosure, or modification. We also take measures to ensure service providers that process personal information on our behalf also have appropriate security controls in place. Please note that regardless of security measures, no system is completely infallible. While we strive to safeguard your information, we cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss, or a data breach will never occur.

How Do We Share Your Personal Information

Advisors Excel shares your personal information:

With third-party service providers to provide products or perform services on behalf of Advisors Excel. Our Service Providers are given access to personal information only as reasonably necessary and are subject to confidentiality obligations in their service agreements;
With third-party service providers assisting Advisors Excel with research, analytics, anti-fraud, anti-phishing, anti-spamming, marketing, and data enrichment or for them to reach out to you on our behalf;
With third-party payment processors who process your credit card or other payment information for Advisors Excel;
With third-party service providers that are assisting us with the operation and administration of events. If we are running an event in partnership with other organizations, we will share your personal information with such organizations for use in relation to the event;
With third-parties for analyzing the usage of their products or services by you;
With third-parties to market their products or services to you;
With auditors, lawyers, accountants, and other professional advisors who advise and assist us in relation to the lawful and effective management of our organization and in relation to any disputes we may become involved in; and
If we are involved in a merger, reorganization, or other fundamental corporate change with a third party, or sell/buy a business unit to/from a third party, or if all or a portion of our business or assets are acquired by a third party, with such third party including at the due diligence stage.

Advisors Excel does not knowingly collect or share the personal information of consumers under 18 years of age.

What You Can Do

For your protection, you should not provide your Advisors Excel account or login information, username, or password to anyone. If you become aware of any suspicious activity relating to your account or information, it is your responsibility to contact us immediately at privacy@advisorsexcel.com.

Updates or Amendments to this Notice

We recognize that data privacy is an ongoing responsibility of Advisors Excel. We reserve the right to update or amend this Notice from time to time and any such updates or amendments will be reflected in the Notice available on our website.

Contact Information
To ask questions or comment about this privacy notice and our privacy practices, contact us at privacy@advisorsexcel.com.