Privacy Policy
This privacy policy was last updated on 12/11/2007
Parnassus is committed to maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and security of personal information entrusted to us by current and potential financial service customers. We have always treated personal information as confidential and want you to be aware of our privacy policies.
We obtain non-public personal information about you from the following sources: information we receive from you on applications or other forms and information about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others.
We restrict access to non-public personal information about you to those employees who need to know that information to provide products or services to you. Parnassus employees are subject to a strict employment policy regarding confidentiality.
We do not disclose any non-public personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone except as required by law. However, we may provide such information to third parties in the course of servicing your account, such as identity-verification service providers. Relationships with these parties shall be pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement, protecting the release of shareholder information. We may disclose information to nonaffiliated parties if compelled by law, such as responding to a subpoena, preventing fraud or complying with an inquiry by a government agency or regulator. Parnassus may use personal information for the purpose of offering or furnishing products and services. Third parties may be used to help prepare notices of these offerings. However, names and addresses are never given or sold to third parties for any outside use.
We maintain physical, electronic and procedural safeguards that comply with federal standards to guard your non-public personal information. Under strict confidence, a backup database of Parnassus customers and accounts is maintained at an outside facility.
Please call us if you have any questions regarding our privacy policy. You can reach us by phone at (800) 999-3505. We're open 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Pacific time, Monday through Friday.
The above privacy policy is applicable to our Parnassus Funds.
Online Privacy Practices
How we collect and use your nonpublic personal information online
We obtain nonpublic personal information, such as but not limited to name, email address, social security number, and mailing address, about you from the following sources: information we receive from you on online applications or other forms and information about your transactions with us, our affiliates or others.
We allow the ability to opt-out of all subscribed, promotional postal and email mailings by contacting us by email or phone. For email messages, there is a hyperlink at the bottom to unsubscribe.
We post customer testimonials on our web site which may contain personally identifiable information such as the customer's name. We do obtain the customer's consent to post their name with the testimonial prior to displaying.
How your information is not shared with others
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our customers or former customers to anyone except as required by law. However, we may provide such information to third parties in the course of servicing your account, such as identity-verification service providers. Relationships with these parties shall be pursuant to a non-disclosure agreement, protecting the release of shareholder information.
We may disclose information to nonaffiliated parties if compelled by law, such as responding to a subpoena, preventing fraud or complying with an inquiry by a government agency or regulator. Parnassus may use personal information for the purpose of offering or furnishing products and services. Third parties may be used to help prepare notices of these offerings. However, any nonpublic personal information are never given, shared, rented, traded or sold to third parties for their own promotional and outside use.
How you can update your information
You can change your address online by first logging into your online account, and then selecting Update Your Mailing Address under the Update Your Info link. You can also change your address by downloading the Change of Address Request Form and mailing it back to Parnassus Investments or faxing it to (415) 778-0228 or by calling us at (800) 999-3505 between 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Pacific Time, Monday through Friday.
You can change your name on your account by mailing Parnassus Investments a letter of instruction and a copy of your driver license, marriage certificate, name change certificate, or Social Security Card that reflects your new name, for verification purposes.
You can change your web user's email address by logging in, then selecting update email address under the Update Your Info tab.
How we protect and secure your privacy online
The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as address and/or social security number) online on our registration or other forms, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology, SSL, so unauthorized parties cannot view the information during secure transmission (look for the padlock icon on your browser). Find out more about SSL certificates and technology. Also, your protected online account information resides on the secure portion of our website, and to access your account information online, a unique user name and password is required.
In addition to the secure practices in the above section for our mutual funds, we use firewalls and other security technology at all times to protect our network and systems from external attacks.
We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure, however. Therefore, while we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
How we use cookies and frames
A cookie is small amount of data that is transferred to your browser by a web server and can only be read by the server that gave it to you. It is commonly used for user behavior record keeping, and it cannot be executed as code or deliver viruses. We use both session cookies and persistent cookies on our website. On our website, a session cookie is used to identify the active web browser session, and persistent cookies are used for web site tracking analytics. No nonpublic, personally identifiable information is within any of our web site cookies usage. Our tracking analytics cookies provided by Google Analytics enable us to learn how our visitors navigate our website, so we can improve the users' experience.
Inline frames are a text area that can hold content from outside the webpage. We have partnered with RiskMetrics Group Institutional Shareholder Services, ISS, for our online proxy voting search and information, and our proxy voting page has an inline browser frame with the ISS website embedded within it. This gives the user a more seamless experience when visiting ISS from our proxy voting page. No personal information is exchanged with ISS at any time.
How we notify you of changes to this privacy policy
If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy policy, the home page, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by email, or by means of a notice on our home page.
How you can contact us
Please contact us by email or call us if you have any questions regarding our privacy policy. You can email to or call by phone at (800) 999-3505. We're open 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Pacific time, Monday through Friday.
Parnassus Investments
One Market - Steuart Tower, Suite 1600
San Francisco, CA 94105
About our TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal License
Parnassus Investments is a licensee of the TRUSTe Web Privacy Seal Program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit organization whose mission is to build user's trust and confidence in the Internet by promoting the use of fair information practices. This privacy policy covers our website, www.parnassus.com. Because Parnassus wants to demonstrate its commitment to your privacy, we have agreed to disclose our information practices and have those privacy practices reviewed for compliance by TRUSTe.
If you have questions or concerns regarding this policy, you should first contact our shareholder services department at or (800) 999-3505. If you do not receive acknowledgement of your inquiry, or your inquiry has not been satisfactorily addressed, you should contact TRUSTe at http://www.truste.org/consumers/watchdog_complaint.php. TRUSTe will then serve as a liaison with us to resolve your concerns.