Our Commitment to You

Arete Wealth Strategists (“AWS”) is committed to safeguarding the use of your personal information that we have as your Investment Advisor and Financial Planner. AWS (referred to as “we”, “our” and “us” throughout this notice) protects the security and confidentiality of the personal information we have and make efforts to ensure that such information is used for proper business purposes in connection with the management or servicing of your account. Our relationship with you is our most important asset. We understand that you have entrusted us with your private information, and we do everything we can to maintain that trust.

We do not sell, lease or rent any personal information to anyone, period. Nor does AWS provide such information to others except for discrete and proper business purposes in connection with the servicing and management of your account as discussed below.

Details of our approach to privacy and how your personal non-public information is collected and used are set forth in this privacy policy. The Information We Collect About You typically includes such personal information necessary to complete an account application. This information may include, but are not limited to your:​ Name and address, Phone number, Email address, Assets, Account balance(s), Income / Expenses, Investment activity/experience, Social security # or Tax Payer ID Accounts at other institutions. In addition, we may collect non-public information about you from the following sources: Information we receive on Brokerage Agreements, Managed Account Agreements and other Subscription and Account Opening Documents; Information we receive in the course of establishing a customer relationship including, but not limited to, applications, forms, and questionnaires; Information about your transactions with us or others

Information About You That AWS Shares

AWS works to provide products and services that benefit our customers. We may share non-public personal information with non-affiliated third parties (such as brokers and custodians) as necessary for us to provide agreed services and products to you consistent with applicable law. We may also disclose non-public personal information to other financial institutions with whom we have joint business arrangements for proper business purposes in connection with the management or servicing of your account. In addition, your non-public personal information may also be disclosed to you, persons we believe to be your authorized agent or representative, regulators in order to satisfy AWS’s regulatory obligations, and is otherwise required or permitted by law. Lastly, we may disclose your non-public personal information to companies we hire to help administer our business. Companies we hire to provide services of this kind are not allowed to use your personal information for their own purposes and are contractually obligated to maintain strict confidentiality. We limit their use of your personal information to the performance of the specific service we have requested.

To repeat, we do not sell, rent or lease your personal information to anyone.

Information About Former Clients

AWS does not disclose, and does not intend to disclose, non-public personal information to non-affiliated third parties with respect to persons who are no longer our clients.

Confidentiality and Security

Our employees are advised about the firm’s need to respect the confidentiality of our customers’ non-public personal information. Additionally, we maintain physical, procedural and electronic safeguards in an effort to protect the information from access by unauthorized parties.

We’ll Keep You Informed

We will send you notice of our privacy policy annually for as long as you maintain an ongoing relationship with us. Periodically we may revise our privacy policy, and will provide you with a revised policy if the changes materially alter the previous privacy policy. We will not, however, revise our privacy policy to permit the sharing of non-public personal information other than as described in this notice unless we first notify you and provide you with an opportunity to prevent the information sharing.