1. Introduction and Acceptance
These Terms of Service (these "Terms") are a binding agreement between you and CSI Group Business Solutions, LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company with its principal office at 1599 NJ-34, Suite 2, Wall Township, NJ 07727, acting on its own behalf and as Portal operator for its affiliated entities (collectively, "CSI," "we," "us," or "our"). These Terms govern your access to and use of the CSI Member Portal, including its website and mobile interfaces, the document exchange, e-signature, scheduling, messaging, organizer, and payment features made available through it, and the Ask Peter assistant made available to members (collectively, the "Portal").
The "CSI Entities" served through the Portal are: CSI Group Business Solutions, LLC (tax and accounting), CSI Group Advisors, LLC (investment advisory), CSI Retirement Services, LLC (retirement services and insurance agency), and CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. (legal services). Additional affiliated entities may be added to the Portal in the future, in which case these Terms will be updated in accordance with Section 19.
By clicking "I Accept," creating a Portal account, or accessing or using the Portal, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and by the CSI Member Portal Data Privacy Policy, which is incorporated by reference. You must be at least 18 years of age and able to form a binding contract. If you accept these Terms on behalf of an entity, trust, or another person, you represent that you have authority to bind them. If you do not agree to these Terms, do not access or use the Portal.
2. Definitions
"Member" means a client or prospective client of one or more CSI Entities who has been issued Portal credentials.
"Authorized Household User" means an individual, such as a spouse or other family member, whom a Member designates and CSI approves for access to some or all of the Member's Portal information.
"Member Content" means all documents, data, messages, organizer responses, and other information that you upload to, enter into, or transmit through the Portal.
"Professional Services" means the tax, accounting, investment advisory, retirement, legal, and related services provided by a CSI Entity under a separate Engagement Agreement.
"Engagement Agreement" means the engagement letter, advisory agreement, retainer agreement, or other services contract between you and a CSI Entity, including the Form ADV disclosures and Form CRS delivered by CSI Group Advisors, LLC.
"Tax Return Information" has the meaning given in Treasury Regulation Section 301.7216-1(b)(3): information furnished in any form in connection with the preparation of a tax return.
"Legal Matter Content" means information you share with CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. within or in connection with a legal engagement, including communications with attorneys and legal staff and documents in a legal matter workspace.
"Ask Peter" means the member-facing AI assistant available in the Portal. "AI Features" means Ask Peter together with the AI-assisted tools CSI personnel use internally to prepare for and follow up on your meetings.
3. The Portal Is Technology, Not the Engagement
The Portal is a technology channel through which you and the CSI Entities exchange information and manage your relationship. These Terms govern the Portal only. Your Professional Services are governed exclusively by your Engagement Agreements and by the professional standards applicable to the relevant CSI Entity. If these Terms conflict with an Engagement Agreement with respect to Professional Services, the Engagement Agreement controls.
Creating a Portal account does not by itself create a client relationship, an attorney-client relationship, a fiduciary relationship, or an engagement with any CSI Entity. Those relationships arise only under a signed Engagement Agreement or as otherwise established by applicable law.
Nothing in these Terms limits, waives, or modifies any duty a CSI Entity owes you under applicable law or professional rules, including the fiduciary duty CSI Group Advisors, LLC owes you as an investment adviser and the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct applicable to CSI Group Law Firm, P.C.
4. Accounts, Credentials, and Security
You must provide true, accurate, current, and complete registration information and keep it up to date. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your credentials and for all activity under your account, including activity by any Authorized Household User you designate. You will use the multi-factor authentication methods the Portal requires and will not disable or circumvent them.
Notify us immediately at the contact address in Section 20 of any actual or suspected unauthorized access to your account. We may suspend an account without prior notice if we reasonably believe it is compromised or being misused, and we will notify you promptly of any such suspension.
Where you provide a mobile number, you consent to receive text messages from us for authentication, security alerts, and servicing notices. Message and data rates may apply. You may opt out of non-essential texts by replying STOP; authentication and security messages may continue while your account is active.
5. License and Acceptable Use
Subject to these Terms, CSI grants you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to access and use the Portal for managing your relationship with the CSI Entities. We reserve all rights not expressly granted.
You will not, and will not permit anyone else to:
- share credentials or allow any person other than an approved Authorized Household User to access your account;
- copy, modify, reverse engineer, decompile, or create derivative works of the Portal, or access it with bots, scrapers, or other automated means;
- probe, disable, or circumvent any security measure, or use the Portal to transmit malware or unlawful, infringing, or fraudulent content;
- use the Portal or its outputs, including Ask Peter outputs, to train, fine tune, or develop any third-party artificial intelligence model or competing product;
- use the Portal for the benefit of any third party or in violation of applicable law.
We may suspend or terminate access for violation of this Section.
6. Member Content
As between you and CSI, you own your Member Content. You grant CSI a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, transmit, display, and process Member Content solely to (a) operate, secure, and improve the Portal, (b) provide the Professional Services you have engaged, (c) provide the AI Features described in Section 10, subject to the limits in that Section, and (d) comply with law. This license does not expand any right CSI has to use Tax Return Information, which is governed by Section 8, or Legal Matter Content, which is governed by Section 9.
You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of Member Content. The CSI Entities rely on the information you provide and do not independently verify it except as an Engagement Agreement expressly provides. You represent that you have the right to upload all Member Content, including information about family members, employees, or other third parties, and that you have obtained any consent required to share it with us.
The Portal is not a backup or archival service. Retain your own copies of original documents. CSI Entities maintain client records as required by applicable professional and regulatory retention rules, which are described in the Data Privacy Policy.
7. Integrated Services and Cross-Entity Data Sharing
CSI operates an integrated model in which affiliated entities coordinate tax, advisory, retirement, and legal services, including through CSI 360 planning reviews. By using the Portal you acknowledge that, subject to the limits below, information you provide may be shared among the CSI Entities and their personnel to serve you, administer the Portal, and satisfy legal and compliance obligations. Details, including your ability to limit certain sharing, are set out in the Data Privacy Policy.
This Section is subject to three hard limits:
- Tax Return Information. No CSI Entity will use or disclose your Tax Return Information for any purpose other than preparing your return except as permitted without consent by Treasury Regulation Section 301.7216-2 or with your prior written consent obtained through a separate consent document as described in Section 8.
- Legal Matter Content. Information protected by the attorney-client privilege, the work product doctrine, or the duty of confidentiality is handled as described in Section 9 and is not shared outside CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. without your informed consent.
- GLBA. Sharing of nonpublic personal information is subject to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the privacy notices delivered to you, including the privacy disclosures of CSI Group Advisors, LLC.
8. Tax Return Information and IRC Section 7216
THESE TERMS ARE NOT, AND SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED AS, A CONSENT TO THE USE OR DISCLOSURE OF TAX RETURN INFORMATION UNDER INTERNAL REVENUE CODE SECTION 7216 OR TREASURY REGULATION SECTION 301.7216-3.
Federal law strictly limits how a tax return preparer may use or disclose Tax Return Information. Where CSI seeks your consent to use your Tax Return Information for a purpose other than return preparation, or to disclose it to an affiliated CSI Entity so that entity can offer or provide advisory, retirement, or legal services, CSI will present you with a separate, standalone consent document that complies with Treasury Regulation Section 301.7216-3 and, for Form 1040 series filers, Revenue Procedure 2013-14, before any such use or disclosure occurs. CSI does not use Tax Return Information to train AI models today; if CSI ever introduces model training, Tax Return Information would be used for that purpose only under a specific signed consent as described in Section 10. You may decline any such consent, and declining will not affect the preparation of your tax return or your access to the Portal.
Uploading a document to the Portal is treated as furnishing it in connection with your engagement with the relevant CSI Entity. Uploading alone does not constitute consent to any use or disclosure beyond the purpose for which you furnished it.
9. Legal Services, Privilege, and Confidentiality
CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. is a law practice. Communications between you and attorneys or legal staff through the Portal in connection with a legal engagement are intended to be confidential and privileged to the fullest extent permitted by law. The Portal segregates legal matter workspaces so that Legal Matter Content is accessible only to CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. personnel and to individuals you authorize. Legal Matter Content is not surfaced by Ask Peter outside the legal workspace and will never be used to train AI models, including under any future training program described in Section 10.
You should not treat general Portal features, including Ask Peter, as a channel for legal advice. Legal advice is provided only by attorneys within an engagement. Placing a document in a shared, non-legal area of the Portal, or authorizing non-legal CSI personnel to access legal matter materials, may waive privilege. If you are unsure where to place a sensitive document, ask your attorney before uploading.
10. Ask Peter and AI Features
The Portal includes AI-assisted features. Ask Peter can answer questions about your accounts, documents, and CSI's services, and CSI personnel use AI-assisted tools to prepare for and follow up on your meetings.
10.1 No Model Training on Your Data
CSI does not use your Member Content, your personal information, or your interactions with Ask Peter to train or fine tune any AI model. This applies to CSI's own systems and to CSI's technology vendors: member data is processed by our AI infrastructure providers for inference only (that is, to generate a response to a request) and is not used by them to train their models.
10.2 Personalization Within Your Environment
To improve the quality of its responses over time, Ask Peter maintains a working knowledge base and refines its own instructions based on how you and CSI personnel use it. This personalization data resides within CSI's own environment, is used only to serve CSI members, does not modify any underlying AI model, and is deleted when the associated member data is deleted. It is configuration and memory, not model training.
10.3 If Training Is Ever Introduced
CSI may in the future decide to use member interactions to train or fine tune AI models internal to CSI. If it does, all of the following will apply before any member data is used for training:
- Advance notice and affirmative acceptance. CSI will notify you in advance and will not use your data for training unless you affirmatively accept updated terms describing the training use. Continued use of the Portal alone will not constitute acceptance.
- Tax Return Information excluded absent a 7216 consent. Your Tax Return Information will not be used to train any model unless you have signed a separate consent under IRC Section 7216 specifically authorizing that use.
- Legal Matter Content excluded permanently. Content from legal engagements with CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. will never be used to train any model, with or without consent.
- Opt-out. You will be able to decline or opt out of training use without affecting your services or Portal access.
CSI does not sell your data and does not permit its technology vendors to use your data to train their own models for other customers.
10.4 Outputs and Responsibility
AI outputs are drafting and informational aids. Professional advice, recommendations, and filings are the responsibility of the licensed professionals serving you. AI technologies can produce inaccurate or incomplete outputs. Do not act on an Ask Peter response about a tax, legal, investment, or retirement matter without confirming it with your CSI professional. Ask Peter does not provide legal advice, tax advice, or investment advice, and its outputs are not a substitute for the judgment of the professionals engaged under your Engagement Agreements.
11. Electronic Communications and E-Sign Consent
You consent to receive communications from CSI electronically, including through the Portal, email, and text message, and you agree that agreements, notices, disclosures, tax organizers, engagement letters, Form ADV and Form CRS deliveries, and other communications we provide electronically satisfy any legal requirement that they be in writing. You may withdraw this consent, or request paper copies, by contacting us as described in Section 20; withdrawing consent may limit Portal functionality. Signatures you provide through the Portal's e-signature features are intended to be valid and enforceable under the federal E-SIGN Act and applicable state electronic transactions laws.
12. Payments
The Portal may allow you to pay invoices of CSI Entities by card or bank transfer. Payment processing is handled by third-party payment processors; CSI does not store full card numbers or bank credentials on the Portal. Your use of a payment feature is also subject to the processor's terms. You authorize the amounts you approve in the Portal, and you are responsible for keeping your payment method current. Fees for Professional Services are governed by your Engagement Agreements, not by these Terms; advisory fees of CSI Group Advisors, LLC are described in its Form ADV Part 2A.
13. Third-Party Services and Links
The Portal may link to or interoperate with third-party services, such as your custodian's website, e-signature providers, or scheduling tools. Those services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. CSI is not responsible for third-party services, and a link is not an endorsement. Account information displayed in the Portal from third-party sources, including custodial balances, may be delayed or inaccurate; official records are those of the custodian or issuer.
14. Intellectual Property and Feedback
The Portal and all software, designs, text, and other materials embodied in it, and all intellectual property rights in them, are and remain the exclusive property of CSI or its licensors. CSI's names, logos, and marks may not be used without our prior written consent. If you provide feedback or suggestions about the Portal, you grant CSI a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free license to use them without obligation to you.
15. Term, Suspension, and Termination
These Terms apply while you have a Portal account. You may close your account at any time by written request. We may suspend or terminate Portal access for breach of these Terms, for security reasons, upon conclusion of your engagements with the CSI Entities, or upon reasonable prior notice for any other reason. Termination of Portal access does not by itself terminate any Engagement Agreement, and termination of an engagement is governed by that Engagement Agreement and applicable professional rules.
For a period of at least 60 days following closure of your account, or such longer period as applicable law or professional rules require, we will provide you a reasonable means to obtain copies of your Member Content and client records to which you are entitled, including your client file held by CSI Group Law Firm, P.C., which will be handled in accordance with the applicable Rules of Professional Conduct. Sections 6, 8, 9, 10.3, 14, and 16 through 19 survive termination.
16. Disclaimers
EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY STATED IN THESE TERMS OR IN AN ENGAGEMENT AGREEMENT, THE PORTAL IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, CSI DISCLAIMS ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE PORTAL ITSELF, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE PORTAL WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR SECURE.
Some jurisdictions, including New Jersey, limit or do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties or certain damages. In those jurisdictions the exclusions and limitations in Sections 16 and 17 apply only to the extent permitted by law. Nothing in this Section disclaims or limits any warranty, duty, or standard of care owed to you in connection with Professional Services.
17. Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, AND SOLELY WITH RESPECT TO THE PORTAL AS A TECHNOLOGY SERVICE, IN NO EVENT WILL CSI BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, PUNITIVE, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE THE PORTAL, AND CSI'S AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING FROM THE PORTAL WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($500) AND THE PORTAL-SPECIFIC FEES, IF ANY, PAID BY YOU IN THE TWELVE MONTHS PRECEDING THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM.
This Section does not apply to, and does not limit CSI's liability for, (a) claims arising from Professional Services, which are governed by the applicable Engagement Agreement and applicable law, (b) liability that cannot be limited under applicable professional responsibility rules, including rules limiting an attorney's ability to prospectively limit malpractice liability, (c) gross negligence, willful misconduct, or fraud, or (d) CSI's obligations under Sections 8, 9, and 10.3.
18. Indemnification
You will indemnify and hold harmless CSI and its members, officers, employees, and agents from third-party claims, losses, and expenses, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of your violation of these Terms, your Member Content infringing or violating the rights of a third party, or your unlawful use of the Portal. This Section does not require you to indemnify CSI for CSI's own negligence or misconduct.
19. Governing Law; Venue; Changes; Miscellaneous
Governing law and venue. These Terms and any dispute arising out of the Portal are governed by the laws of the State of New Jersey, without regard to conflicts of law principles. Exclusive venue lies in the state and federal courts located in or serving Monmouth County, New Jersey, and each party consents to their jurisdiction. Nothing in this paragraph changes the law governing any Engagement Agreement.
Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms from time to time. For material changes we will provide at least 30 days' advance notice through the Portal or by email and, where required, ask you to accept the updated Terms before continued use. Changes do not apply retroactively. Any introduction of the training uses described in Section 10.3 will require your affirmative acceptance.
Assignment. You may not assign these Terms. CSI may assign them to an affiliate or in connection with a merger, reorganization, or sale of the applicable business, subject to the Data Privacy Policy and applicable professional rules.
Entire agreement; severability; waiver. These Terms, the Data Privacy Policy, and any consents you execute through the Portal are the entire agreement regarding the Portal itself and do not supersede any Engagement Agreement. If any provision is held unenforceable, the remainder remains in effect. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver.
Force majeure. CSI is not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control.
20. Contact
Questions about these Terms or the Portal: CSI Group Business Solutions, LLC, Attn: Portal Administrator, 1599 NJ-34, Suite 2, Wall Township, NJ 07727, or inquiry@csicpa.com. Legal notices must be sent to the same address, Attn: Legal Notices.
21. Important Disclosures
Securities offered through LPL Financial LLC, a FINRA/SIPC member broker/dealer. Advisory services offered through CSI Group Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. LPL Financial LLC and CSI Group Advisors, LLC are unaffiliated separate legal entities. Contents are for information purposes and do not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities nor is it investment advice. All investments involve the risk of loss including the entire principal amount invested. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Prior to investing, please consult with a qualified professional who is familiar with your financial objectives, risk tolerance, and investment time horizon. CSI Group Advisors, LLC does not provide tax or legal advice, such services are provided through separate affiliated entities under common control. An engagement with CSI Group Advisors, LLC does not establish a privileged attorney-client relationship.
CSI Retirement Services LLC is a licensed insurance agency offering insurance and annuity products; guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurer. Annuities are not FDIC/NCUA insured, are not bank guaranteed, are not a deposit, are not insured by any federal government agency, and may lose value.
CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. is a separate legal entity providing legal services only in jurisdictions where its attorneys are properly licensed. No attorney-client relationship exists unless a written retainer agreement is executed. If you are a client of an affiliated CSI entity, you are not a client of CSI Group Law Firm, P.C. unless you have signed a retainer agreement. Legal information is stored separately and is not shared with other CSI entities.
Each of the aforementioned entities utilizes the trade name “CSI Group” in its marketing; however, each entity is legally and operationally separate, maintains separate books and records, and requires a separate engagement agreement. Engaging one CSI entity does not require or imply engagement of any other CSI entity. The use of the term “member” in marketing materials is descriptive only and does not create any obligation to engage additional services, nor make you part of any program or collective club or organization. You are free to use any professional or service provider of your choosing. “CSI” is a trade name and stands for Confidence, Service, Integrity. CSI Group® is a registered trademark. CSI Group® and its associated logo are protected intellectual property. Unauthorized use is prohibited.