Privacy policy

What information do we collect?

As part of doing business, we regularly collect personal information. What we collect about an individual, however, may differ depending on your relationship with Capital Group/American Funds. 

If you own shares in the American Funds family of mutual funds or have an account with Capital Group Private Client Services, we may collect and retain certain nonpublic personal information about you, including:

• Information we receive from you or your financial intermediary, such as your name, address, date of birth, social security number and tax identification number;
• Information from third-party data services (for example, to update your address when you have moved and demographic and preference information to better understand your investment and service needs);
• Information, such as account balance and transaction activity (including, to the extent necessary for our servicing your account(s) with us or your investments with third parties); 
• Information related to your relationship with us (for example, information received through application forms, your current and previous investments, investment preferences, communications regarding your investment, as well as any information, data or record that relates to services we may provide); 
• Information collected from you online, information provided by you and data gathered from your activity and location. (For example, we may use cookies and web beacons to collect device and browser information, such as your IP address, so we can help verify your identity when accessing our web site, know your online preferences and viewing behaviors and can recognize you and your devices.) 

If you do business with Capital Group or its affiliates, we may collect and retain certain public and nonpublic personal information about you; including:

• Your contact and identification information, such as name, company, work and personal address, phone numbers, date of birth and representative identification number;
• Information regarding your business, such as assets under management, types of assets, customer profiles, areas of interest, preferences and coverage;
• Information from third-party data services (for example, information about your business, assets under management, preferences, business interests);
• Information collected from you online, information provided by you and data gathered from your activity and location. (For example, we may use cookies and web beacons to collect device and browser information, such as your IP address, so we know your online preferences and viewing behaviors, and can recognize you and your devices).

If you are an applicant, employee or contractor, we may collect and retain certain nonpublic information about you, including:

• Information we received directly from you such as your name, address, personal email address, phone numbers, date of birth, race, sex, ethnicity, social security number, fingerprints, prior employment history, education, skills and references, emergency contact information and banking information;
• Information we received from third parties such as confirmation of employment and educational history and criminal records;
• Information we receive to administer benefits under our employee benefit programs, such as health benefits, short- and long-term disability benefits, life insurance benefits and retirement benefits. 

In all instances, our effort is to collect only the information we need to comply with the law, administer our compensation and benefits programs and effectively run our business and for business purposes as described below. We occasionally disclose nonpublic personal information about you to affiliates and non-affiliates as permitted by law. We also may share your information with third parties who assist us with administering our compensation and benefits programs and who help us to benchmark our employment practices, compensation and benefits programs so that we can ensure we are providing premiere health, welfare and compensation programs to our associates. 

If you are enrolled in a retirement plan that is administered by Capital Group Retirement Plan Services pursuant to a services agreement with a plan sponsor (your employer or former employer), we may collect and retain certain nonpublic personal information about you, including:

• Information, such as account balance and transaction activity; and
• Information collected from you online, information provided by you and data gathered from your activity and location. (For example, we may use cookies and web beacons to collect device and browser information, such as your IP address, so we know your online preferences and viewing behaviors and can recognize you and your devices for multi-factor authentication.) and; 
• Information we collect from you, your employer or plan sponsor (such as your name, address, date of birth, social security number).
   

How do we use the information we collect?

In all instances, our effort is to collect only the information we need to effectively conduct our business and provide you better products and services and to ensure we are offering you the products and services that best suit your business and investment needs. This includes using information to verify your identity when you contact us in order to protect your confidential information. If you do business with us, we will collect only the information we need to conduct our business.

We may also use your personal information for internal business purposes, which include: 

• To provide the information, product or service requested by the individual or as reasonably expected given the context in which with the personal information was collected (such as providing customer service, personalization and preference management, providing product updates and dispute resolution);
• For identity and credential management, including identity verification and authentication and system and technology administration; 
• To protect the security and integrity of systems, networks, applications and data, including detecting, analyzing and resolving security threats, and collaborating with cybersecurity centers, consortia and law enforcement about imminent threats; 
• For fraud detection and prevention; 
• For legal and regulatory compliance, including all uses and disclosures of personal information that are required by law or as reasonably needed for compliance with company policies and procedures, such as anti-money laundering programs, security and incident response programs, intellectual property protection programs, and corporate ethics and compliance programs; 
• For corporate audit, analysis and reporting 
• To manage and enforce our contracts and to protect against injury, theft, legal liability, fraud or abuse and to protect people or property, including physical security programs;
• To de-identify the data or create aggregated datasets, such as for consolidating reporting, research or analytics;
• For business continuity and disaster recovery purposes, including making backup tapes. 
   

Do we share your information with third parties?

We occasionally disclose nonpublic personal information about you to affiliates and non-affiliates as permitted by law. Some instances when we may have shared information include:

• Disclosing information to a third party in order to process account transactions that our shareholders and clients request and authorize;
• Sharing information with companies related to us or to trusted third parties, as permitted by law, to make you aware of new funds, products or other services we offer;
• Sharing information with companies that provide services essential to the day-to-day running of our business, such as mailing prospectuses and assisting with financial professional meetings and materials.
• Retirement plans — If you are enrolled in a retirement plan offered by a plan sponsor (your employer or former employer), your personal information may be shared with the plan's third-party administrators, financial professionals and service providers, as authorized or directed by the plan sponsor.

As a general rule, when we share personally identifiable financial information with third parties other than at the direction of the plan sponsor, they are not permitted to use this information for any purpose other than to assist our servicing of our shareholder and client accounts, to assist us in providing superior services and products or as permitted by law. However, we do participate in consortiums that assist us and other investment advisors to better understand the financial advisors who we serve and to ensure we are providing them with services and information targeted to their specific business needs. In addition, we may use data collected to customize advertisements on other sites as you browse the Web. We may supplement the information we collect with information from other sources in order to enhance advertisements. Information shared with third parties at the direction of a plan sponsor is subject to the terms of the recipient's privacy policy.

We participate in the Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising managed by the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA). As part of this service, our website and any online advertisements from us are generally delivered with icons that help consumers understand how data about them is being used and provides choices for consumers who want more control and an ability to opt out of such behavioral (targeted) advertising.

Please click on the DAA icon or the icon in any targeted advertisements to opt out if you do not want your browsing behavior used for online behavior advertising purposes.

How do we protect your information?

At Capital Group, we are committed to the protection of the information we collect about our investors, clients and business partners. Our robust security program and infrastructure includes a team of cybersecurity and risk management professionals to help monitor and protect your personal information around the clock. We use a variety of controls to detect and prevent unauthorized access to our network and sensitive information. Our cybersecurity response program fulfills the requirements of federal and state laws and includes appropriate notifications when warranted. 

As part of our security system, we:

• Regularly refine and update security features. We review industry security standards and perform system testing to ensure we’re using the most up-to-date techniques and technologies.
• Actively monitor threats. We communicate with financial industry security groups and government agencies to monitor the threat landscape.
• Educate employees. Our associates receive ongoing security training, such as how to handle sensitive data.

In addition, our websites for customer and broker access have safeguards in place that are consistent with or exceed industry standards to detect and prevent unauthorized access attempts. The controls surrounding our shareholder servicing system, which includes computer systems, are examined and tested at least annually by an independent auditing firm. In addition, we are regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission which performs routine examinations periodically.