Plain-language answers to the questions that come up when you're evaluating an investment adviser.
Choosing someone to help manage your money is a consequential decision. The vocabulary surrounding the choice (RIA, IAR, fiduciary, dual registration, AUM) is a bunch of industry jargon. Generally not helpful for the people who actually have to make the decisions. You. This is a plain-language reference to those terms, to the Transparency Grade methodology that powers AdviserReport, and to the company behind the site.
A registered investment adviser (RIA) is a firm in the business of giving investment advice for a fee. Registration is with the SEC if the firm manages more than a specific threshold in client assets, or with state securities regulators if smaller than that threshold. Registration is a legal status, not a quality endorsement: it means the firm has filed the required public disclosures and submitted to the regulatory regime that governs investment advisers in the United States.
RIAs operate under a fiduciary duty, a legal obligation to put their clients' interests first. That fiduciary obligation is the central feature that distinguishes how RIAs are regulated from how broker-dealers (BD) are regulated. This is the reason "RIA" is a designation worth knowing.
An investment adviser representative (IAR) is an individual who gives investment advice on behalf of an RIA. The firm is registered; the person is also registered. An IAR is the human you actually interact with, who you talk to, and ultimately trust with the details of your financial situation. The RIA is the legal entity behind the IAR.
To become an IAR, an individual has to pass a qualifying exam or exams and be registered in the state or states where they conduct business.
The RIA is the firm; the IAR is the person.
If you imagine walking into a small advisory firm, the company itself (the legal entity that signs your advisory agreement, holds the registration, and files Form ADV with regulators) is the RIA. The individual who actually sits across the table from you, asks about your goals, and gives you advice on behalf of that firm is the IAR.
A firm can have one IAR (the founder, running a solo practice) or thousands (a national wealth manager). One person, one company.
Some IARs are also registered as representatives of a broker-dealer. They wear an investment-adviser hat for some situations and a broker hat for others. That arrangement is covered below under "What is dual registration?"
A broker-dealer (BD) is a firm in the business of buying and selling securities (stocks, bonds, mutual funds) on behalf of clients. The individuals who work at broker-dealers are technically called registered representatives, often shortened to "registered reps."
Broker-dealers earn money primarily on transactions: commissions when you buy or sell, distribution fees from product sponsors (such as mutual fund companies), and sometimes spreads (the difference between the price they sell at vs. the price they buy at) on the securities themselves. BDs operate under a different regulatory framework than RIAs (Regulation Best Interest, administered by FINRA), which requires recommendations to be in your "best interest" at the moment the recommendation is made. Regulation Best Interest does not impose the ongoing fiduciary duty that applies to RIAs.
The same person might work at a firm that is both an RIA and a BD. The individual may switch hats depending on the service being provided. That arrangement, common in the United States, is called dual registration or "Fee-based."
The two differ in three main ways that can impact you differently.
Standard of care. Investment advisers (RIAs and their IARs) owe you a fiduciary duty. They are legally required to put your interests ahead of their own at all times during the advisory relationship. Broker-dealers (BDs) operate under Regulation Best Interest, which requires recommendations to be in your best interest at the moment the recommendation is made. The distinction has narrowed, however, the underlying legal structure remains different. That difference is seen most clearly in ongoing relationships and is why conflicts of interest must be understood and managed.
Compensation. RIAs typically charge a fee: a percentage of the assets they manage, an hourly rate, a flat retainer, or some combination. Broker-dealers typically earn commissions on transactions and distribution payments from product sponsors. Neither model is inherently good or bad. They just create different incentives. An RIA charging on assets makes more money when your portfolio grows or when you rollover your 401k into an IRA that they manage. A broker earning commissions makes more money when there are transactions to execute.
Continuity. An investment-adviser relationship is generally ongoing. You hire the firm and the individual to provide continuous advice and to monitor your situation. A broker-customer relationship can be ongoing but doesn't have to be. Historically, brokers executed individual transactions rather than carrying continuous monitoring obligations.
Does it matter? Yes, because the way someone is paid shapes what they will instinctively suggest. Many professionals successfully manage the incentives created by their compensation structure, and most do so honorably. But understanding which model you are in is the starting point for understanding the advice you're receiving and the conflicts that each model has.
In the United States, the same firm can be registered as both an RIA and a broker-dealer, and the same individual can be registered in both capacities. That is called dual registration.
It is extremely common. A substantial share of the largest financial-services firms in the country are dual registrants, and many of the people who advise retail clients hold both an investment-adviser and a broker-dealer registration.
It matters for one practical reason. You can be sitting across the table from your adviser and they can change hats (from investment adviser to broker, or vice versa) without you knowing, depending on the advice they're giving or the products they're recommending. When they're acting as an investment adviser, the fiduciary duty applies. When they're acting as a broker, Regulation Best Interest applies. Same person, same conversation, possibly different obligations to you.
Regulators require dual registrants to disclose which capacity they're operating in. In practice, everything is disclosed to you, but the line can be hard to see from your seat at the table. The constructive question to ask, simply and directly: "Are you acting as my investment adviser, or as a broker, on this particular recommendation? And how are you being paid for it?" These questions are absolutely fair game to ask.
A CRD number is a unique identification number assigned to investment-adviser firms, broker-dealer firms, and the individual professionals who work at them. CRD stands for Central Registration Depository, the database (maintained by FINRA) that holds the official registration and disciplinary record for the U.S. securities industry.
CRD numbers are useful because firm and individual names are not unique. Many advisers share names, many firms have similar names, and people change firms over time. A CRD number doesn't change. If you have it, you can pull a person's or firm's complete public regulatory record across their entire career.
Throughout AdviserReport, when we display a CRD number next to a firm or person's name, that's the unique identifier you can use to verify them on FINRA BrokerCheck or the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) site, which are linked from every report.
Financial advice, broadly, is recommendation or guidance about your money: what to invest in, when to invest, how to allocate among different account types, how to manage risk, what insurance to carry, what to do with a windfall, when to retire, how to draw down savings.
The legal definition is narrower. Under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, "investment advice" specifically means advice about securities (stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and similar instruments) provided for compensation. That is the activity that triggers registration as an investment adviser. Advice about insurance, real estate, banking, or tax strategy is regulated separately or not at all, depending on the topic and the jurisdiction.
In everyday conversation, "financial advice" gets used in the broader sense. When this site uses the term, we usually mean the broader sense.
Financial planning is the practice of looking at your full financial picture (income, expenses, goals, time horizons, taxes, insurance, debts, investment portfolio, retirement readiness, estate considerations) and developing a coordinated approach across all of it.
The CFP Board, which administers the Certified Financial Planner credential, frames financial planning as "a collaborative process" for integrating a client's personal and financial circumstances toward their life goals. The collaborative part matters. A planner who hands you a plan without understanding your situation, or without your input, isn't really doing financial planning. They're producing a document.
Financial advice tends to be specific and transaction-shaped: should I buy this stock, should I roll over my 401(k), should I refinance my mortgage. Financial planning tends to be holistic and process-shaped: given everything happening in your life (your goals, your other money, your time horizon), what should the coordinated approach look like, and how should we adjust it as circumstances change?
The two are connected. Good planning produces specific advice. Specific advice without underlying planning can end up working against itself, answering individual questions correctly while missing the larger pattern.
Not every adviser does both. Some firms focus on portfolio management (the implementation of investment advice) and refer planning to specialists. Some firms focus on planning and delegate portfolio management. Some do both. When you're considering working with a firm, asking which they do, and which they don't, is a useful early question.
A fiduciary is a person or firm legally required to put your interests ahead of their own. It is one of the oldest concepts in Anglo-American law, older than the securities industry, older than the United States. The word comes from the Latin for "trust."
In financial services, the fiduciary standard is what applies to registered investment advisers. An RIA (and the IARs who work for it) owes you a duty of care and a duty of loyalty. Duty of care means giving you advice that's appropriate for your situation, based on a real understanding of it. Duty of loyalty means not putting the firm's interests, or anyone else's interests, ahead of yours.
Practically: a fiduciary must disclose conflicts of interest, and where a conflict cannot be eliminated, must manage it in a way that doesn't compromise your interests. They cannot quietly profit from your account in ways you don't know about. They cannot recommend something because it pays them more, unless they have a reasonable basis to believe it's also genuinely in your interest.
The fiduciary standard is not a guarantee of good outcomes. A fiduciary can still make bad calls, and acting in good faith doesn't immunize anyone from being wrong. But it is the strongest standard of care available in U.S. retail financial services, and it's why "Is this person a fiduciary?" is one of the most useful questions you can ask before hiring an adviser.
AUM stands for "assets under management." An AUM fee is what most registered investment advisers charge when they are managing a portion of your assets on your behalf. It is, generally, a percentage of the dollar value of the assets the firm manages for you, billed quarterly or monthly.
A typical AUM fee for a retail investor (someone managing personal savings, retirement accounts, and after-tax brokerage assets) runs between 0.50% and 1.50% of assets per year, with rates that often step down as account size grows. On a $300,000 portfolio at 1.00%, that's $3,000 per year; at 1.25%, $3,750.
A few things worth knowing about how AUM fees work in practice:
An AUM fee aligns the adviser's compensation with the growth of your account. They make more when your portfolio is larger, less when it's smaller. Whether that alignment is the right incentive for your situation is its own question, and it's worth discussing with the adviser openly before you sign anything. Do you really need to do that rollover?
A commission is what a broker earns when you buy or sell a financial product. Where an AUM fee is ongoing and tied to the size of your account, a commission is one-time and tied to the transaction. The broker is paid by the firm or product sponsor when the trade goes through.
Commissions take a few forms in practice. On a mutual fund purchase, the most visible commission is a front-end load, a percentage taken off the top before any money is invested. Front-end loads on A-share mutual funds run between 2.00% and 5.75%, decreasing at larger investment amounts. At a $300,000 mutual fund purchase, a typical load is around 2.50%, or $7,500 paid to the broker and the firm before the remainder is invested. On stock and bond transactions, the commission is usually built into the price, a markup on the way in and a markdown on the way out. On insurance products like annuities, the commission is paid by the insurance company, often 4% to 8% of the contract value, and isn't deducted from your account directly, but the cost is reflected in the product's internal fees and surrender charges.
Brokers operate under Regulation Best Interest rather than the fiduciary standard. Reg BI requires recommendations to be in the customer's best interest at the moment they're made, and requires conflicts of interest to be disclosed. It does not impose the ongoing duty that applies to RIAs. The two regimes can coexist in the same person at firms that are dually registered: the same individual might recommend a fee-based portfolio under fiduciary duty and sell you a commissioned product under Reg BI on the next call.
The conflict commissions create is straightforward: the broker is paid when transactions happen. Whether that incentive distorts the advice depends on the broker, the firm, and the situation, and many brokers are thoughtful professionals who manage the conflict honorably. But it is a structurally different incentive than an AUM fee, and the difference is worth understanding before you sign anything.
Hourly and flat fees are the alternatives to charging on assets. Both decouple the adviser's compensation from the size of your portfolio. That is useful when your situation isn't proportional to your investable assets, which is more common than the industry usually acknowledges. A younger couple with high incomes, modest investments, and a complex tax situation may benefit more from a few hours of planning than from handing assets over for ongoing management.
Hourly fees work as you'd expect. An adviser charges a stated rate (commonly $200 to $500 per hour) for time spent on your matters. Useful for one-off questions, second opinions, or project-shaped engagements like a one-time financial plan. The conflict is small but real: an hourly adviser has a financial incentive to take longer on tasks. Most professional planners manage this through clear scope agreements upfront.
Flat fees are a pre-agreed total for a defined scope of work, regardless of how long it takes or how large your assets are. A standalone financial plan might run $1,500 to $5,000 depending on complexity. The pricing is set in advance, so there's no hourly-rate ambiguity at the end.
A newer variation of the flat-fee model is the subscription fee, a recurring monthly or annual charge for ongoing access to planning advice, often targeting younger clients whose asset base doesn't yet justify a traditional AUM relationship. The subscription model is becoming more common, but it isn't permitted everywhere. Some state securities regulators allow it, some don't, and the rules vary by state.
A wrap fee bundles two things into a single charge: the advisory fee, and the trading costs (commissions, execution) that would otherwise be billed separately. You pay one annual percentage (typically 1% to 3% of assets), and the firm handles everything inside that.
The appeal for the client is simplicity: one fee, no per-trade billing, no monthly statements with commission line items to parse. The appeal for the firm is recurring predictable revenue.
The conflict is the inverse of a commission model. Where a commission-paid broker has an incentive to trade more (each trade generates revenue), a wrap-fee firm has an incentive to trade less. Trading volume doesn't change the fee, but it does change the firm's costs. That isn't necessarily bad. For a long-term buy-and-hold portfolio, less trading may be exactly the right approach. But it is a structural incentive worth knowing about, particularly if the firm is recommending a strategy that justifies low trading volume.
Wrap fees aren't always called wrap fees. Some firms package them as "all-inclusive" programs, "platform fees," or "managed account programs." Form ADV asks specifically whether a firm participates in wrap programs: either as a sponsor (the firm designs the program) or as a portfolio manager (the firm manages assets inside someone else's program). If you see this on a report, the firm is in at least one of those roles.
Soft dollars are an arrangement in which an adviser directs client trades to a particular broker in exchange for research, data, or other services provided by that broker. The cost of those services is paid indirectly out of the trading commissions clients are charged, "soft" (in-kind) rather than "hard" (cash) dollars. The adviser gets research; the client pays the trading commissions that fund it.
The arrangement is permitted under SEC safe-harbor rules, and many firms use it. The conflict is structural: the adviser receives a benefit, and the client pays for it: not directly, but indirectly, through trading costs that would otherwise be lower.
For a retail client on an AUM-fee arrangement, soft dollars are typically invisible. They don't show up as a line item on your statement; they're embedded in the commission rates the firm negotiates with the executing broker. You may pay them and never know it.
The question to ask isn't usually whether the firm uses soft dollars (many do), but what kind of research and services it pays for with them. Arrangements limited to investment research that benefits the firm's overall investment process are different in character from arrangements that pay for general office overhead, marketing, or other items that would otherwise be the firm's own business expense. The SEC's safe harbor draws lines about what kinds of services qualify; legitimate firms operate well within those lines.
Both are real fee structures, but they're walled off from the retail public by regulation. You'll likely never see them as a client with a $300,000 portfolio.
A performance fee is a fee tied to investment performance, for example, 20% of returns above a stated benchmark. The SEC restricts performance fees to "qualified clients," generally individuals with at least $1.1 million in assets managed by the firm or $2.2 million in net worth. The thresholds exist because performance fees create an incentive for the adviser to take outsized risk to chase performance, and regulators reserve those arrangements for clients deemed sophisticated enough to evaluate the risk. Performance fees are most common at hedge funds and other private vehicles.
A pooled investment vehicle, commonly called a private fund, is a single investment entity that pools capital from many investors and is managed as a single portfolio. Hedge funds, private equity funds, venture funds, and private real estate funds all fall in this category. Pooled vehicles are typically restricted to "accredited investors," generally individuals with at least $200,000 in annual income ($300,000 jointly) or $1 million in net worth excluding their primary residence.
If you look at a firm's report and see private-fund management or performance-fee disclosures, the firm isn't doing that work for you specifically. They're operating a separate line of business serving wealthier or institutional clients. The conflict architecture matters because the firm is splitting its attention between business lines with different economics, not because the products themselves will be offered to you.
When you're considering trusting someone with your savings, you deserve to know the shape of their business model: how they get paid, what else they do for a living, who else profits when you do business with them. That's what the Transparency Grade describes.
The grade is our editorial opinion about the conflict-of-interest architecture a registered investment advisory firm has disclosed in its own regulatory filings, specifically Form ADV Part 1A, the form every registered RIA files annually and updates when material facts change.
It's a structural read on the firm's business model: how the firm earns its revenue, what other businesses it operates, whether affiliated companies can profit from the same client transactions, what custodial arrangements exist, and how the layering of those choices impact revenue model complexity. Grades range from A (the cleanest conflict architecture we observe) to D (the most complicated).
Same inputs, same grade. Every time. The scoring engine is deterministic and rule-based. We apply the same rules to every firm in our database. No firm gets special treatment, in either direction.
Important enough to be explicit about. The grade does not measure:
In one line: the grade measures architecture, not behavior. Complexity, not judgment.
Most advisers are professionals doing real work for real clients. The grade isn't asking whether they're good people. It's describing what kind of business they operate, so that you and they can have a clearer conversation about it.
We start with Form ADV Part 1A (the public regulatory filing every registered RIA submits) and derive a set of signals from it: flags for specific business activities, affiliations, custody arrangements, compensation methods, and layering of those structures. Some signals add points, some subtract. The total maps to a letter grade on a fixed scale.
A summary of the methodology (the categories of signals we consider, the high-level structure of the scoring approach, and the regulatory sources we draw from) is published on our Methodology page. The full specification, including specific scoring weights and engine internals, is treated as confidential business information; it's available on written request subject to a non-disclosure agreement (see Terms of Use, §2.3).
The split is deliberate. A published summary tells you what kind of thing the grade is measuring, so you can decide whether you trust the approach. The confidential detail helps protect the integrity of the grade for the people relying on it.
A "B−" means the firm's regulatory filings show a moderate level of conflict-of-interest complexity. It is not a warning. It is not an alarm. It is a structural description.
Most registered RIAs in the United States grade between A− and C. That is the normal range based on our deterministic scoring engine. An A is rarer. It typically represents a pure fee-only firm that doesn't manage assets, with no broker-dealer affiliation, no insurance business, and no related parties earning compensation from the same clients. Most firms operate a more complicated business than that, and they disclose it on their filings, which is exactly what the regulatory system is designed to require.
A "B−" doesn't mean your adviser is acting against your interests. It means the firm operates a business model with structural elements that could create incentives misaligned with yours. Whether they actually do (in your specific relationship, on your specific portfolio) is a conversation, not a calculation. The constructive next step is to bring the report to your adviser and ask them to walk you through what it flags. What they say, and how clearly they say it, will tell you more than the grade alone.
Because the A through D scale describes what we actually observe in the registered RIA population. Firms with extreme regulatory problems are generally not operating. When a regulator pulls a registration, the firm is gone. The firms in our database are firms in current good regulatory standing, and the A–D scale describes structural complexity within that population.
If the grade were a punishment scale, an F would mean "this firm is bad." That's not what the grade is doing. The grade describes what kind of business each firm runs, so you can decide whether that kind of business is one you want to entrust with your money.
A "BD" tag indicates a registered broker-dealer that doesn't have a corresponding registered investment adviser arm. Broker-dealers operate under a different regulatory framework (Regulation Best Interest, rather than the fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisers Act), and the public disclosures available to evaluate are structurally different.
Rather than force a comparison on the A–D scale that isn't apples-to-apples, we tag these firms "BD" and provide the underlying disclosure information without a letter grade.
This is a coverage choice, not a quality judgment. A "BD" tag does not mean a firm is worse, or better, than a graded RIA. It means the data available to compare them is structurally different.
The grade isn't built to answer that question, and we're not going to pretend it is.
What the grade does is summarize what the firm disclosed about how its business is structured: its compensation methods, its affiliations, its custody arrangements, and the number of layers in the model. That information is one input into a broader conversation you should have with your adviser, the person who actually knows you and your situation.
If the grade surfaces questions, ask them. If the answers satisfy you, the grade has done its job. It gave you the information to have an informed exchange. If the answers don't satisfy you, that's a different signal entirely. But it's the answers, not the grade, that warrant action.
We are a publisher, not an adviser. We don't know your goals, your circumstances, or your relationship with the person you've trusted with your savings. Those are decisions only you can make, and the people best positioned to help you make them are the people who know you. Your adviser, if the conversation goes well. A second opinion from another adviser, if it doesn't.
All of the data behind a Transparency Grade comes from public regulatory filings: primarily Form ADV Part 1A, which every registered RIA in the United States is required to file with the SEC or with state regulators, and to update when material facts change. Form ADV is in the public domain and is published through the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) system.
For broker-dealer firms, we use the public registration data available through FINRA. For individual advisers (whether they're IARs at an RIA, registered representatives at a broker-dealer, or both), we use FINRA BrokerCheck and IAPD's individual records.
We don't use proprietary data. We don't buy data from brokers or list-sellers. We don't ask the firms we publish about for information, and they don't provide any to us. Every input that goes into a grade is something the firm itself filed with a regulator, and that any member of the public can pull directly from the same sources we use. We're showing you what's already there. We're just doing the assembly work.
Form ADV must be updated annually within 90 days of the firm's fiscal year-end, and amended within 30 days when certain material facts change (such as a change of control, an address change, or a new regulatory disclosure). For most firms, the result is at least one update per year, with several additional amendments scattered through the year as circumstances change.
We refresh our database from the SEC's bulk feeds at least monthly. We rescore firms on the same cadence. Individual adviser records on IAPD and FINRA BrokerCheck are pulled live each time you view a report, so the individual-level information is as current as the regulators themselves publish.
If a firm has very recently amended its filing (within the last 30 days, say) and you're looking at a report that was generated before the amendment, the underlying grade may reflect the prior version.
A few possible reasons, in rough order of likelihood:
If none of these explanations fits (and you're confident the firm is currently registered and we don't show them), please let us know at support@adviserreport.com. We'd genuinely like to know about gaps.
FINRA BrokerCheck and the SEC's IAPD site are the official, public regulatory databases. They are excellent sources for the underlying facts: registration status, employment history, disclosures, exam history, the full Form ADV filing. They are free, comprehensive, and authoritative. We use them as our data sources.
What they don't do is interpret. BrokerCheck and IAPD will show you that a firm files custody disclosures, has affiliated broker-dealer entities, charges performance fees, and has three regulatory disclosures from the past decade. They will not tell you what to make of that combination. They are reference systems, not analytical ones.
AdviserReport is the analytical layer on top. We take what the regulators publish (assembled, scored, and synthesized into a single letter grade and a structured report) and translate it into a form that doesn't require regulatory expertise to read.
There's no competition between us and the regulators. We are downstream from them, dependent on their work, and we link to their records throughout the site. If you want the raw record, you go to BrokerCheck or IAPD. If you want a synthesized read on what's in that record, you come to us.
AdviserReport is operated by Transparent LLC, a Washington limited liability company. The company was founded to make conflict-of-interest information about investment advisers accessible to the people who actually hire them.
The founder spent roughly two decades in the financial-services industry, including running a registered investment adviser, working as a senior operations executive at a major asset manager, teaching personal finance and investing classes, and holding multiple industry credentials typical of the people who work inside the system AdviserReport publishes about. The grading methodology and the architecture of the reports reflect that experience.
We are independent. We are not affiliated with the SEC, FINRA, or any other regulator.
Yes. The founder of AdviserReport is also the principal of NW Straits Financial Services LLC, a separately registered investment adviser. NW Straits appears in the AdviserReport database and is graded by the same scoring engine applied to every other registered RIA.
The founder cannot influence the grade of any single firm (his own, or anyone else's) because grades are mathematical functions of public regulatory filings, not editorial judgments about specific firms. The only way to move one firm's grade is to change the methodology, which affects every firm in the same structural category and is published with version history.
Beyond NW Straits, Transparent LLC operates at arm's length from the firms it publishes about. We take no compensation from them for grades, we receive no information directly from them, and we have no other direct affiliations with graded firms.
No. Categorically and structurally, no.
Inclusion in our database is automatic. We ingest the SEC's bulk filings and grade every registered RIA in the population. There is nothing for a firm to pay for, because being listed isn't a service we offer. The grade itself is determined by the firm's own regulatory filings run through a grading algorithm, and no firm has the ability to influence either the inputs or the rules.
We're aware that other letter-grade systems in the US, most visibly the Better Business Bureau, operate a model in which the graded businesses themselves pay accreditation fees to the rating organization. We chose deliberately not to build that way. Our revenue comes from consumers purchasing reports. That's a deliberate structural choice about who we're working for.
Consumers pay for reports. We work for you. We sell two things: individual firm reports and packs of credits that consumers can redeem for multiple firm reports. We don't run advertising on the site. We don't sell user data. We don't take payment from firms in exchange for visibility on the site, ranking, or grade modification.
There is one revenue stream involving graded firms: a firm that chooses to, may license the right to display a Transparency Grade badge on its own marketing materials, in the same way that a restaurant might license a graphic indicating it received high marks in a published guide. Badge licensing does not affect a firm's grade. Grades are determined by the grading methodology before any licensing conversation happens.
We've thought hard about a revenue stream connected to firms. It is the place where, in principle, an outside revenue source could create pressure on the integrity of the grading system. Our protection against that pressure is the deterministic methodology. A firm cannot pay to earn a better grade because grades are mathematical functions of regulatory filings, and the methodology is fixed before any licensing transaction is possible. If we ever opened the door to firms paying for grades or for grade revisions, we'd have given up the one reason we started AdviserReport: a conflict free, objective, consumer facing method to evaluate registered investment advisers.
Please reach out.
Our process for handling factual-error corrections (wrong principal office, wrong number of employees, wrong registration status, wrong filing date, anything along those lines) is described in our Terms of Use, §4.3. The short version: email corrections@adviserreport.com with the specific item in dispute, the proposed correction, and a citation to the regulatory source supporting the correction (Form ADV item number, IAPD URL, or similar). We review valid correction requests within a reasonable time and update displayed data where the correction is supported.
A note on what the corrections process is for and what it isn't:
Beyond that, if you've read your report and want to talk through what it says, you're also welcome to email. We read what comes in.