Privacy.

This statement describes what GRH Bank collects from visitors to this site and from client families, what it does with it, and how long it keeps it. Where this statement and an account agreement differ, the account agreement governs.

What the site collects

Almost nothing. The site is a set of static pages served from the house's own domain. It sets no cookies. It runs no analytics, no advertising pixels, and no scripts from third parties. The typefaces are served from the same domain as the pages. The house does not know who you are when you read this page, and the site is built so that it cannot find out.

The web server keeps an access log: the address a connection came from, the page requested, the time, and the browser's declared identity. The log is kept for thirty days and is read only when something breaks. It is never joined to a client record.

The contact form

The form on the contact page asks for a name, a family office or firm, an email address, a telephone number, and a message. Only a name and a telephone number are required, because the Desk replies by telephone and prefers to know whom it is calling. What you write is delivered to the Desk and to nobody else. It is not added to a mailing list. The house does not keep one.

If a conversation follows, your details join the file for that conversation. If it does not, they are deleted after twelve months.

Telephone calls

Calls to and from the Desk may be recorded. The recording exists so that an instruction given by telephone can be checked against what was heard. Where a recording and a written instruction differ, the written instruction governs. Recordings are kept for five years, held in Windsor, and are played back only to settle a question about an instruction, to answer a regulator, or at the request of the client on the call. They are not used to train anything.

Client records

A client family's file holds what a bank must hold: the identity documents the law requires the house to see before an account is opened, the account agreement, the mandates and specimen signatures, and the record of every instruction and every transaction. The ledger is that record. It is kept in full for the life of the relationship and for seven years after the relationship closes, because that is what the law asks and because a family sometimes asks after that.

The file also holds what your banker has written down about you: the names of your children, how you prefer to be reached, what you have asked the house never to do. That is kept because it is the reason you have a banker. It is read by your banker and by the Desk, and by nobody else without your leave.

Statements and the fingerprint

Each statement carries a fingerprint, signed with the house's ledger key. Anyone you show the statement to can check its form on the verify page and confirm it with the Desk by telephone. The page itself sends nothing to the house and records nothing. The Desk answers one of three ways and records the fingerprint checked, the time, and the answer given. It does not record who asked, and it does not ask.

The client portal

The portal shows a family its ledger. Signing in creates a session that ends when you close it or after twenty minutes of quiet. The portal records each sign-in, the address it came from, and each instruction given, because the ledger requires it. It does not record what you looked at.

The house will never ask for your portal password by telephone or by email. Anyone who does is not the house.

Sharing

The house does not sell, rent, or trade information about anyone. It shares what it holds in four cases only. With your counsel, auditors, or family office, when you instruct it in writing. With the house's own auditors and counsel, who are bound to the same confidence. With a regulator or a court, when the law requires it, in which case you are told unless the law forbids it. And with the firm that prints and posts statements, which sees an address and a sealed document and nothing else.

Requests

You may ask what the house holds about you, ask for a copy, and ask for a correction. Write to the Desk at 41 Main Street, Windsor, Vermont 05089, telephone 802-GRH-0000, or send a message through the contact page. Requests are answered within thirty days, on paper, by post, because a question about a file should not be answered into an inbox. There is no charge.

Some records cannot be deleted on request: the ledger, the identity documents, and recordings within their retention period. The law requires the house to keep them. The house would keep the ledger regardless.

Changes

This statement is reviewed each September. This version was reviewed in September 2026. If the house changes what it collects, the statement is revised before the change takes effect, and client families are told in the next statement mailing.