GMS disclosures and privacy policies

Registration Disclosures

The GMS Group (“GMS”) is a S.E.C. dually registered Broker Dealer (“BD”) and Investment Advisor (“RIA”), headquarted in the State of New Jersey and provides investment advisory and related services for clients nationally. GMS will maintain all applicable registration and licenses as required by the various states in which GMS conducts business, as applicable. We render individualized responses to persons in a particular state only after complying with all regulatory requirements, or pursuant to an applicable state exemption or exclusion. Additional Important Disclosures about our investment advisory business may be found in the GMS Form ADV Part 2A. For a copy, please click here.

Order routing disclosure

Click here to access The GMS Group’s Pershing® order routing disclosure information.

In the field labeled “Enter Broker-Dealer’s Full Name,” enter “The GMS Group LLC”.

Privacy policy

We are committed to ensuring that you feel comfortable using this website and sharing information with us. The information that you choose to share with us allows us to serve you better, and to improve your website experience. We understand that your privacy is important to you, and we are committed to protecting all user information. This policy will explain how we gather user information, how we use that information, and with whom we may share user information.

Information we collect

You can visit and enjoy our website without disclosing any personal information about yourself. However, we offer some special services on our website, and for these services to work properly you will need to share with us certain personal information about yourself (see “Voluntarily Provided Information”).

We collect information in two ways:

1. Information you voluntarily share with us. Please see the “Voluntarily Provided Information” section for more information on what personal information we may ask you to share with us.
2. Information that is automatically collected by your use of this website. Please see the “Automatically Collected Information” section for more information on what information we may collect by your use of this website.

Voluntarily provided information

In order to optimize your use of this website and our available services, we may ask that you share certain personal information about yourself when you request more information on a particular topic. The personal information we collect may include your full name, email address, and phone number.

Automatically collected information

We use automated methods of collecting information, alone or in combination with the voluntarily provided information you may share with us, to improve our website, to understand website usage and trends, and to enhance and deliver certain services of this website.

Methods of Collecting Information: We use the following methods of automatically collecting information when you use this website: site and third-party cookies, GIF images (“web beacons”), Facebook Social Plugin, Google Analytics, application data caches, and browser web storage (including HTML 5).

Information Collected: In addition to information you may voluntarily share with us, we may also collect the other types of information when you use this website, such as: your hardware model, operating system version, unique device identifiers, mobile network information, search queries, IP address, system activity, hardware settings, domain name, browser type, browser language, date and time of a request, and your referral URL. Additionally, we may collect information regarding the time you spent on a specific page on the website, the pages you viewed, the first and last pages you visited on the website, and any search words you may have used on the website.

Definitions:

• Anonymous Identifier: a randomized string of characters generated by the website server. While these can be used to provide some functionality similarly to cookies when cookie technology is not available, for best results this website was designed to function primarily through cookie technology.
• Cookie: a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a website’s computer and stored on your computer’s hard drive.
• GIF image (“web beacon,” or “clear GIFs”): a single pixel image, usually placed in a email or on a website, that allows the email sender or the website owner to determine information, such as a user’s IP address, the time the material was viewed, browser type, and cookies set by the server.
• IP address (also known as an Internet Protocol address): a unique number assigned to your computer when you connect to the Internet. Among other purposes, your IP address may be used to determine from what country you have connected to the Internet, as the numbers are sometimes assigned in country-based blocks.
• Server logs: records of the page requests automatically generated by the operation of the website server when you visit the website. The record may include information, such as your web request generated by your click on a link, your IP address, browser type, browser language, the date and time of your request, and one or more cookies that may uniquely identify your browser
• Unique Device Identifier: a string of numbers that is assigned by your computer or device manufacturer to identify a specific and unique device.
• Browser Web Storage: a larger amount of information, but otherwise similar to a cookie, which is stored locally within the user’s browser.

How we use cookies: We may use cookies to identify and communicate directly to your unique browser. If you would like to disable cookies from being saved to your computer, we recommend accessing the “help” section of your browser for instructions. If you decide to disable cookies on your browser, you will still be able to access this website; however, you may not be able to access or utilize some functions of this website, and/or some functions may not work correctly. This is because this website was designed to optimize your experience through the use of cookie technology.

How we protect your information

Any information you voluntarily provide to us is protected using industry-standard SSL encryption to protect data transmissions.

How we will communicate with you

If you choose to share your personal information with us, we may contact you by telephone or email with information pertaining to your request or question, or to provide a requested service.

How we use your information

We use automated methods of collecting information, alone or in combination with the voluntarily provided information you may share with us, to improve our website, personalize user experience, improve customer service, and understand website usage and trends.

If you share information with us in relation to a specific request or service, we will not sell, exchange, transfer, or give that information to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the information or service requested.

Compliance with the law

We may disclose specific personal information based upon a good faith belief that such disclosure is necessary to comply with or conform to the law or when that disclosure is necessary to protect the users of our website, the site itself, or the public.

How to unsubscribe

If you have shared your personal contact information with us, but would no longer like to be contacted, please contact us at the address or phone number below.

Third parties and external links

Our website may contain links to other websites operated by unrelated third parties. In addition, if you click on an advertisement on our website, you may be directed to a web page within our website or to a third-party website or product. Please note that we are not responsible for the privacy practices or policies of third-party websites or products. We encourage you to be aware of this when you leave our website and to read the privacy policies of every website and product that collects personally identifiable information from you. This Privacy Policy only applies to GMS Group, unless you are notified otherwise upon accessing any third-party website or product, in which case the terms and conditions set forth in such notification will apply.

We contract with third-party advertising companies which, in turn, collect non-personally identifying information by placing cookies on your browser when you visit us here. These companies may use information (not including your name, email address, or telephone number) about your visit to deliver our ads on this and other websites through their online advertising networks. These companies also provide this information to us, which we, in turn, use to gauge how effective our ads are.

Contact us: privacy administrator

If you have any questions or problems, you may contact us at:

GMS Group
120 Eagle Rock Avenue, Suite 300
East Hanover, NJ 07039
(973) 535-5000

GMS Group’s business continuity plan

The GMS Group, L.L.C. has developed a business continuity plan for how we’ll respond to events that significantly disrupt our business. Since the timing of disasters and disruptions is unpredictable, we’ll have to be flexible in responding to actual events as they occur. With that in mind, we’re providing you with this information about our business continuity plan.

Contacting us: If after a significant business disruption you cannot contact us as you usually do at the GMS office that services your account, you should call the GMS main office at (973) 535-5000 or go to our website at www.gmsgroup.com. If you cannot access us through either of those means, you should contact our clearing firm, Pershing, LLC (“Pershing”) at (201) 413-3635 for instructions on how it may provide you with prompt access to funds and securities, enter orders, and process other trade-related, cash, and security transfer transactions for your account.

Our business continuity plan: We plan to quickly recover and resume business operations after a significant business disruption and respond by safeguarding our employees and property, making a financial and operational assessment, protecting the firm’s books and records, and allowing our customers to transact business. In short, our business continuity plan is designed to permit our firm to resume operations as quickly as possible, given the scope and severity of the significant business disruption.

Our business continuity plan addresses data backup and recovery; all mission-critical systems; financial and operational assessments; alternative communications with customers, employees, and regulators; alternate physical location of employees; critical supplier, contractor, bank, and counter-party impact; regulatory reporting; and assuring our customers prompt access to their funds and securities if we are unable to continue our business.

Our clearing firm, Pershing, backs up our important records in a geographically separate area. While every emergency situation poses unique problems based on external factors, such as time of day and the severity of the disruption, Pershing has advised us that its objective is to restore its own operations and be able to complete existing transactions and accept new transactions and payments within four (4) hours. Your orders and requests for funds and securities could be delayed during this period.

Varying disruptions: Significant business disruptions can vary in their scope, such as only our firm, a single building housing our firm, the business district where our firm is located, the city where we are located, or the whole region. Within each of these areas, the severity of the disruption also can vary, from minimal to severe. Our response to internal business disruptions such as a fire or power outage in one of our buildings includes the forwarding of incoming telephone calls to another GMS location and/or the relocation of essential staff to another location. Our response time to this type of limited disruption, or even a wider-spread disruption affecting more than one GMS office in the same region, is estimated to be less than one (1) hour. All GMS office locations are able to respond to client inquiries, execute and process securities transactions, and initiate the delivery of funds and securities to our clients. The GMS office locations and telephone numbers are listed on the GMS website. Our response to an external business disruption such as a terrorist attack or citywide flood relies on other organizations and systems, especially those of our clearing agent, Pershing. Our business continuity plan is reviewed at least annually and modified as needed.

In the event that it becomes necessary for GMS to execute its business continuity plan, we’ll post a message on the GMS website, www.gmsgroup.com. Again, if you’re unable to contact all the GMS offices by telephone, you may access your account and transact essential business by contacting Pershing at (201) 413-3635.