Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Digital Advisory¶

Effective Date: January 1, 2025
Last Revised: August 1, 2025
SLA Version: 3.0
Service Owner: Apex Digital Platform Engineering

This Service Level Agreement ("SLA") establishes the service availability commitments, performance standards, incident management procedures, and remedies applicable to Apex Financial Partners' Digital Advisory Platform (the "Platform"), including the Apex Client Portal, Apex Mobile Application, Apex Concierge AI, and associated application programming interfaces (APIs). This SLA forms part of the Terms of Service & Client Agreement and is incorporated therein by reference.

1. Service Availability¶

1.1 Uptime Commitment¶

Apex commits to maintaining 99.95% monthly uptime for the Digital Advisory Platform, measured as the percentage of total minutes in a calendar month during which the Platform is operational and accessible to authenticated users.

Uptime Calculation:

Monthly Uptime % = ((Total Monthly Minutes - Downtime Minutes) / Total Monthly Minutes) x 100

Where "Downtime Minutes" is the total number of minutes during which the Platform is materially unavailable, excluding Scheduled Maintenance Windows and Exclusions defined in Sections 2 and 7 of this SLA.

1.2 Service Availability Tiers¶

Apex classifies Platform components into the following availability tiers:

1.3 Measurement Period¶

Uptime is measured on a calendar month basis (first day of the month at 00:00:00 UTC through the last day of the month at 23:59:59 UTC). A new measurement period begins at the start of each calendar month.

2. Scheduled Maintenance Windows¶

2.1. Apex performs routine maintenance during the following standard windows:

• Primary Window: Sundays, 02:00 AM - 06:00 AM Eastern Time
• Secondary Window: First Saturday of each month, 11:00 PM - 03:00 AM Eastern Time (for major releases and infrastructure updates)

2.2. Scheduled maintenance will be communicated to clients via email notification and in-platform banner at least seventy-two (72) hours in advance. Emergency maintenance required to address critical security vulnerabilities or regulatory mandates may be performed outside standard windows with a minimum of four (4) hours' advance notice.

2.3. Scheduled Maintenance Windows are excluded from Downtime Minutes in the uptime calculation, provided that maintenance does not exceed the communicated duration by more than thirty (30) minutes.

3. Incident Classification & Response Times¶

Apex classifies service incidents by severity and commits to the following response and resolution targets:

Response time is measured from the moment Apex's monitoring systems detect the incident or a client reports the issue through an official support channel (whichever occurs first) to the time a qualified engineer acknowledges the incident and begins diagnostic procedures.

4. Escalation Procedures¶

4.1. Tier 1 (L1) - Platform Operations: Initial triage, incident logging, and known-issue resolution. Staffed 24/7/365 via the Apex Operations Center.

4.2. Tier 2 (L2) - Engineering: Complex technical investigation requiring application-level debugging, database analysis, or infrastructure reconfiguration. Engaged automatically for P1 and P2 incidents; on-demand for P3.

4.3. Tier 3 (L3) - Architecture & Security: Incidents requiring architectural changes, vendor escalation, or security incident response. Includes the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Security Officer for P1 incidents.

4.4. Executive Escalation: Clients may request executive escalation for unresolved P1 or P2 incidents exceeding resolution targets by contacting their dedicated relationship manager or emailing escalations@apexfinancialpartners.com. Executive escalations are reviewed by the Managing Director of Technology within one (1) hour of receipt.

5. Service Credits¶

5.1 Eligibility¶

Clients enrolled in Apex Premier or Apex Institutional service tiers are eligible for service credits when the Platform fails to meet the monthly uptime commitment specified in Section 1.1.

5.2 Service Credit Calculation¶

Service credits are calculated as a percentage of the client's monthly advisory platform fee based on the actual uptime achieved during the affected measurement period:

Example Calculation:

If the monthly platform fee is $500 and uptime for the month is 98.50%, the service credit equals $500 x 25% = $125, applied as a credit to the following month's invoice.

5.3 Credit Request Process¶

To receive service credits, clients must submit a written request to sla-credits@apexfinancialpartners.com within thirty (30) days of the end of the affected month. The request must include the client's account number, the dates and times of observed downtime, and a brief description of the impact. Apex will validate the claim against internal monitoring data and issue approved credits within fifteen (15) business days.

5.4 Maximum Credit¶

The maximum aggregate service credit for any single calendar month shall not exceed 100% of the client's monthly platform fee for that month. Service credits are the sole and exclusive remedy for failure to meet SLA commitments and shall not be construed as a refund, penalty, or liquidated damages.

6. Performance Metrics¶

Apex commits to the following performance benchmarks under normal operating conditions (defined as traffic volumes within 200% of the trailing 30-day average):

Performance metrics are published monthly in the Apex Platform Status Report, available to all clients through the Client Portal dashboard.

7. Exclusions¶

The following events are excluded from Downtime Minutes and do not count against uptime commitments:

• Scheduled Maintenance performed within communicated windows as defined in Section 2.
• Force Majeure events including natural disasters, acts of war or terrorism, pandemics, government actions, or widespread internet or power infrastructure failures beyond Apex's reasonable control.
• Third-Party Service Failures including outages of upstream data providers (e.g., NYSE, NASDAQ market data feeds), cloud infrastructure provider outages (where Apex has implemented contractual redundancy), and client-side ISP or DNS failures.
• Client-Caused Issues including attacks originating from the client's network, exceeding published API rate limits (1,000 requests per minute per client), or use of unsupported browsers or operating systems.
• Regulatory Halts including SEC-mandated trading halts, market circuit breakers, or regulatory-required system modifications.

8. Data Backup & Recovery¶

8.1 Recovery Point Objective (RPO)¶

Apex maintains a Recovery Point Objective of one (1) hour, meaning that in the event of a catastrophic failure, data loss shall not exceed one hour of transactions. Continuous database replication to geographically separated data centers ensures near-real-time data redundancy.

8.2 Recovery Time Objective (RTO)¶

Apex maintains a Recovery Time Objective of four (4) hours for full platform restoration from a disaster recovery site. Annual disaster recovery testing is conducted to validate RTO compliance, with results summarized in the Apex Business Continuity Report.

8.3 Backup Schedule¶

• Transaction Data: Continuous replication with point-in-time recovery capability for the trailing 90 days.
• Client Documents: Daily incremental backups, weekly full backups, retained for 7 years in compliance with SEC Rule 17a-4.
• Configuration & Infrastructure: Infrastructure-as-code with version control; hourly state snapshots.

9. Reporting & Transparency¶

9.1. Apex publishes a real-time Platform Status Page at status.apexfinancialpartners.com, displaying current operational status for all Platform components, active incidents, and historical uptime data for the trailing twelve (12) months.

9.2. Monthly SLA Compliance Reports are generated within ten (10) business days of each month-end and made available through the Client Portal. Reports include: actual uptime percentage per service component, incident summary with root cause analysis for P1 and P2 incidents, performance metric trends, and maintenance activity log.

9.3. Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) for Apex Institutional clients include a dedicated SLA performance section with trend analysis, improvement initiatives, and forward-looking capacity planning.

10. Term & Termination¶

10.1. This SLA is effective for the duration of the client's active service agreement with Apex Financial Partners. Upon termination of the underlying service agreement, this SLA shall automatically terminate.

10.2. If Apex fails to meet the 99.95% uptime commitment for three (3) or more consecutive calendar months, the client may terminate the service agreement without penalty upon thirty (30) days' written notice, provided that the client has submitted timely service credit requests for each affected month.

10.3. Apex reserves the right to modify this SLA upon sixty (60) days' prior written notice. Modifications that materially reduce service commitments shall entitle the client to terminate the service agreement without penalty within thirty (30) days of receiving notice of the modification.

Apex Financial Partners, LLC
Platform Engineering & Operations
One Financial Center, Suite 4200
New York, NY 10004
SLA Inquiries: sla-credits@apexfinancialpartners.com
Platform Status: status.apexfinancialpartners.com