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Data Retention and Disposal Policy

Last updated: October 15, 2026

This policy defines how Pilot Wealth retains, manages, and permanently disposes of consumer data in compliance with Canada's PIPEDA and applicable privacy legislation.

1. Purpose and Scope

This Data Retention and Disposal Policy governs how Pilot Wealth retains and disposes of personal and financial data collected through the Pilot Wealth platform. It applies to all data collected from users including financial account data, transaction history, investment holdings, personal profile information, and any data received via third-party integrations such as Plaid.

This policy is designed to ensure Pilot Wealth retains data only for as long as necessary to provide services and meet legal obligations, and that data is disposed of securely when no longer needed.

2. Data Retention Principles

Pilot Wealth adheres to the following principles for data retention:

3. Data Retention Schedule

The following table outlines retention periods for each category of data:

Data Category Retention Period Basis for Retention
Plaid access tokens Duration of active bank connection Required to maintain bank sync functionality
Transaction history Duration of active account Core service functionality
Account balances and holdings Duration of active account Core service functionality
Stock watchlist and stock alert settings Duration of active account Stock Tracker and stock alert emails
AI chat history Duration of active account Personalized AI context
AI reply sources, charts, and ratings Until you clear your chat history, or for the duration of your active account Reloading replies with their sources and charts, finding the causes of poor AI answers, and reading a rated reply with its question to fix mistakes in the tutor (see Privacy Policy §2.8)
Income and budget settings Duration of active account Core service functionality
Subscription and billing records 7 years after account closure Canadian tax and financial record obligations
Security and access logs Up to 30 days Security monitoring and incident response
Pilot Coins balance and transaction ledger Duration of active account Deleted permanently on account closure
Province and age (optional, encrypted) Duration of active account Tax estimate defaults and age-based Pilot Score benchmarks
Transaction categorization model (aggregate, de-identified) Most recent 3 trained versions Improves automated categorization accuracy for all users (see §3.1)

3.1 The Transaction Categorization Model

Pilot Wealth trains and operates its own machine learning model to help assign a spending category to transactions. This model is trained periodically on a combined, de-identified dataset of transaction descriptions and categories drawn from across our user base. See our Privacy Policy §4.1 for what is and is not included in that dataset.

Deleting your account removes your own transaction records immediately, the same as any other data category above, and stops them from being used in any future training run. It does not retroactively alter a model version that was already trained using data that existed at the time. A trained model reflects general word-to-category patterns learned in combination from many users, not a retrievable record of any one person's transactions, so there is no individual copy to remove from it. Only the 3 most recent trained model versions are kept; older versions are deleted outright as each new one is trained.

3.2 Bill Entries Replaced by Bank Transactions

When a bank is connected, Pilot Wealth stops creating its own monthly entries for bills that bank pays, because the real charges arrive with your bank transactions. An entry it created for an earlier month is removed only when your bank's real transaction for the same bill appears, so nothing is counted twice. Your bill settings, bills you pay from an account that isn't connected, and anything you entered yourself are never removed.

3.3 Rated AI Replies

When you rate an AI tutor reply, we may read that reply together with the question it answered, to find and fix mistakes in the tutor. Only the founder does this. The reply and question are the encrypted chat messages already stored for your chat history, and they are kept on the same terms as the rest of that history. Clearing your chat history deletes them, along with the sources, charts, and rating saved with them, and so does deleting your account; this use ends when they are deleted. We do not use them to train an AI model, and they are not sent to xAI.

4. User-Initiated Data Deletion

Pilot Wealth provides users with full self-service account and data deletion directly within the application. When a user deletes their account:

How to delete your account: Log in to Pilot Wealth and select Settings > Account > Delete Account. Deletion is immediate and permanent. This action cannot be undone.

5. Bank Connection Disconnection

Users may disconnect individual bank connections at any time without deleting their full account. When a bank connection is removed:

6. Data Disposal Procedures

When data reaches the end of its retention period or a deletion request is received, Pilot Wealth ensures permanent disposal through the following methods:

7. Third-Party Data Retention

Pilot Wealth uses third-party services that maintain their own data retention policies. Users should refer to the relevant policies for each:

8. Compliance

This policy is designed to comply with:

9. Policy Review

This policy is reviewed at minimum annually and updated whenever there are material changes to our data practices, applicable law, or third-party integrations. The last review date is shown at the top of this document.

Data deletion requests: To request deletion of your data, use the self-service account deletion feature in the app, or contact us at support@pilotwealth.ca. We will process all requests within 30 days in accordance with PIPEDA.

Data and Privacy Contact

For questions about data retention, disposal, or to submit a deletion request:

support@pilotwealth.ca

Pilot Wealth, Canada