Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

We collect the following types of information to provide and improve our service:

• Account & Sign-in Information — Your email address and authentication credentials managed through Supabase Auth and, if you use them, your Google or Apple single-sign-on identity and a phone number for SMS two-factor authentication. Passwords are securely hashed; we never store plaintext passwords.
• Financial Data via Our Aggregation Partner — When you connect a financial institution through Plaid, we retrieve account balances, transaction history, holdings, liabilities (credit cards, student loans, mortgages), and account metadata (names, types, masks, and currency).
• Equity Compensation & Entity Data — Information you enter about stock options, RSUs, other equity grants, K-1 schedules, and the entities (trusts, LLCs, joint accounts) that hold your assets.
• Real-Estate Data — Property addresses you add, which we send to property-data providers (RentCast and an address-lookup service) to retrieve valuations, rent estimates, and property records.
• Credit Data — If you connect a credit score through our credit partner (Array), we receive your credit score and the factors behind it. We do not receive your full credit report or Social Security number.
• Uploaded Statements — PDF, CSV, OFX/QFX, or image statements you upload are parsed to extract balances, transactions, and holdings. You control what you upload; the original file is processed transiently and not stored long-term, and the extracted data is treated as Confidential financial data.
• AURA Memory — When you use AURA, we may store short factual notes and brief session summaries (not full transcripts) so it can remember context across sessions. You can clear these at any time.
• User Preferences — Display settings (balance visibility, transaction visibility), dashboard layout, watchlist, and tax-profile inputs you configure within the app.
• Subscription Information — Billing data managed through Stripe, including your subscription tier and payment status. Formation does not store credit card numbers.
• Device & Usage Data — Basic product analytics, a security audit log of key account actions, and technical data such as IP address and browser type, used to operate, secure, and improve the product.

2. How We Connect to Your Financial Institutions

Formation uses Plaid to securely connect to your financial institutions. Plaid provides secure OAuth-based connections to thousands of financial institutions. You authenticate directly with your bank through Plaid Link; Formation never sees your bank login credentials.

Through Plaid, we retrieve:

• Account balances (checking, savings, investment, credit, loan, mortgage)
• Transaction history with merchant details and categories
• Account names, types, and institution information

This data is used solely to display your financial information within your personal Formation dashboard and to power AI-driven insights. We do not use it for any other purpose.

Your authorization & Plaid’s Privacy Policy. We use Plaid Inc. (“Plaid”) to gather your financial data from financial institutions. By connecting an account, you grant Formation and Plaid the right, power, and authority to act on your behalf to access and transmit your personal and financial information from the relevant financial institution. You agree that your personal and financial information will be transferred, stored, and processed by Plaid in accordance with the Plaid End User Privacy Policy.

3. AURA (AI assistant)

Formation includes an optional AI assistant, AURA. To answer your questions, we send relevant financial context — which can include your account balances, holdings, and recent transactions — to Anthropic (Claude), our AI provider. This is your real account data, not anonymized; we send only what is needed to answer, and we never include your password, full account numbers, or Social Security number. Anthropic does not use this data to train its models.

Specific AURA features use additional providers:

• Statement & K-1 parsing — When you upload a document, the file is sent to Anthropic's document-understanding model to extract the figures. The original file is not stored after parsing.
• Voice — If you use the voice assistant, your spoken audio and the same financial context are processed by OpenAI (real-time voice) and, for spoken replies, a text-to-speech provider (OpenAI or ElevenLabs).
• Memory — AURA stores brief facts and session summaries (not full transcripts) so it stays useful across sessions; these are deleted on request and purged after a 30-day soft-delete window.

You can hide specific accounts from AURA in Settings, in which case their data is never included in AI context. AURA is an educational tool, not a licensed financial adviser — see our Terms of Service for the full disclosure.

4. Data Storage & Security

Your data is stored in Supabase (managed PostgreSQL) with industry-standard security measures:

• Encryption at rest — AES-256 encryption for all stored data, including database backups.
• Encryption in transit — TLS 1.2+ for all data transmitted between your browser and our servers, enforced by HSTS.
• Row-level security — Database policies ensure each user can only access their own data. No other user or administrator has shared access to your financial information.
• Token security — Plaid access tokens are stored encrypted and are never logged or exposed in API responses.

For full details, see our Information Security Policy. The application is hosted on Netlify with automatic TLS certificate management, DDoS protection, and globally distributed CDN delivery. Server-side logic runs in Netlify Functions (serverless) and Supabase Edge Functions.

5. Payment Processing

Subscription billing is handled by Stripe. Formation does not store, process, or have access to your credit card numbers or bank account details for payment. All payment data is handled directly by Stripe in accordance with PCI DSS compliance standards. We only store your Stripe customer ID and subscription status.

6. Transactional Emails

We use Resend to send transactional emails such as welcome messages, security alerts, and account notifications. Your email address is shared with Resend solely for the purpose of delivering these communications. We send product updates only to people who have asked for them (for example, by opting into marketing email, which uses double opt-in), and every such email includes a way to unsubscribe. We never share your email address with advertisers.

7. Data Sharing

We never sell your personal or financial information, and we never share your financial account data — balances, transactions, or holdings — with advertisers. Our public marketing pages do use an advertising/analytics tag that shares limited browsing data (see Cookies & Tracking below).

Your data is shared only with the service providers we use to operate Formation, each acting under its own privacy commitments:

• Plaid — Financial account linking and data aggregation
• Supabase — Database hosting, authentication, and MFA
• Stripe — Subscription billing and payment processing
• Resend — Transactional email delivery
• Twilio — SMS two-factor authentication (phone number only, when enabled)
• Anthropic, OpenAI, ElevenLabs — AURA, document parsing, and voice (financial context as described in §3)
• Array — Credit-score connection, when you enable it
• RentCast and address/geocoding services — Real-estate valuations from property addresses you add
• Perplexity — Live market quotes, dividends, splits, and ticker news via web search (ticker symbols only; no personal data)
• Google — Advertising/analytics (Google Analytics and Google Ads, loaded via Google Tag Manager) on our marketing pages and web-font delivery (browsing data only; see Cookies)
• Meta Platforms (Facebook/Instagram) — Advertising measurement via the Meta Pixel and its server-side Conversions API, used to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook and Instagram ads across our marketing pages and subscription checkout. It receives limited browsing data and, when you begin or start a subscription, a one-way hashed identifier (such as a hash of your email) to attribute that conversion — never your financial account data. Consent-gated; see Cookies.
• LinkedIn — Advertising measurement and audience matching via the LinkedIn Insight Tag on our marketing pages and subscription checkout, used to measure the effectiveness of our LinkedIn ads. It receives limited browsing data (browsing data only; consent-gated, see Cookies) — never your financial account data.
• HubSpot — Website-traffic analytics and marketing CRM via the HubSpot tracking code on our public marketing pages (browsing data only; consent-gated, see Cookies). It never runs inside the application and never receives your financial account data.
• RB2B — Business-visitor identification on our public marketing pages (browsing data only; consent-gated, see Cookies). It never runs inside the application.
• hCaptcha — Bot protection on public sign-up and contact forms (browsing data only)
• Netlify — Application hosting and serverless functions

We may also disclose information if required by law, to protect the rights or safety of Formation or its users, or in connection with a merger or acquisition. Each provider's handling of your data is governed by its respective privacy policy.

8. Data Retention & Deletion

Your data is retained for as long as your Formation account remains active. You may request deletion of your account and all associated data at any time by contacting us. For full details, see our Data Retention and Disposal Policy.

Upon deletion, all of your financial data — including linked account information, balances, transactions, preferences, equity compensation entries, and aggregation provider access tokens — is permanently removed from our systems within 30 days.

9. Your Rights

You have the right to:

• Access your personal and financial data stored in Formation.
• Correct any inaccurate information in your account.
• Delete your account and all associated data.
• Export your data in a portable format.
• Disconnect individual financial institutions at any time; the associated access token is revoked at the provider where supported and deleted from our systems.
• Opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of limited browsing data for cross-context advertising, using the "Do not sell or share my personal information" link in our site footer — see Cookies & Tracking below.

California residents have these rights under the CCPA/CPRA, and we honor them for all users. We do not discriminate against you for exercising any of them. To make a request, contact us at info@formationmoney.com.

10. Cookies & Tracking

Essential cookies. Formation uses strictly necessary cookies to keep you signed in via Supabase Auth. The application itself does not run third-party advertising or analytics cookies against your financial data.

Marketing pages. Our public marketing pages load Google Analytics and the Google Ads tag (via Google Tag Manager) to measure ad effectiveness, the Meta Pixel to measure the effectiveness of our Facebook and Instagram ads, the LinkedIn Insight Tag to measure the effectiveness of our LinkedIn ads, the HubSpot tracking code to measure website traffic, Google Fonts to render type, and RB2B, a service that identifies business visitors. These set or read cookies and share limited browsing data — such as your IP address, device and browser type, and pages viewed — with those providers. They do not have access to your financial account data. Google Analytics, Google Ads, HubSpot, and RB2B do not run inside the application. The Meta Pixel also measures subscription checkout — when you begin or start a subscription — and, to attribute that conversion, our server sends Meta a one-way hashed identifier (such as a hash of your email) through its Conversions API; Meta never receives your financial account data. All of these are consent-gated and load only when you have not opted out; you can opt out of Meta's ad personalization in your Meta ad preferences.

Your choices. To exercise your CCPA/CPRA right to opt out of the "sale" or "sharing" of your information for cross-context behavioral advertising, use the "Do not sell or share my personal information" link in our site footer (or the "Privacy choices" link in the consent notice) — opting out is as easy as allowing, and your choice persists. We also honor the browser Global Privacy Control (GPC) signal as a valid opt-out automatically. You can additionally block or delete cookies in your browser settings, opt out of Google's ad personalization at adssettings.google.com, or email info@formationmoney.com and we will honor your request.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will notify you via the email address associated with your account and update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page.