You're handing someone your retirement savings. Verify before you sign.
A neighbor recommended an advisor. A bank introduced you to a wealth manager. An old colleague is now selling annuities. Before you transfer the IRA, the rollover, or the family trust, you want to know: is this person actually registered, free of regulatory bars, transparent about fees in their ADV Part 2 brochure, and absent from a pattern of customer complaints? Public records hold all of that. We synthesize them into a brief you can read in five minutes.
Why this is harder than it should be
If you have ever tried to vet a financial advisor on your own, you already know the experience. You start at the advisor's website, which lists credentials but offers no way to confirm them. You move to a directory site like NAPFA or XY Planning Network, which tells you about service models and minimums but not whether the advisor has open customer complaints. You search BrokerCheck on FINRA, which works well for registered brokers but does not cover pure RIAs. You pivot to the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure portal, which covers the RIAs but is a separate site with a separate search. You wonder whether you should also pull the firm's ADV Part 2 brochure, which is filed publicly but buried inside a PDF dropdown nobody knows to click.
Each step takes ten or twenty minutes. Each one returns a fragment. Stitching the fragments together into a coherent picture takes hours, and even then you may have missed the obvious thing. The state securities-registration portals add another fifty potential lookups. The expungement-request history sits inside FINRA arbitration records and the IAPD record but is not surfaced as a primary search facet — you have to know where to look. Most prospective clients have never heard of any of this.
The harder problem is interpretation. A single customer complaint settled for a small amount fifteen years ago is different from a pattern of complaints in the past three years. A regulatory consent decree about late filings is different from a fraud bar. A denied expungement request is a stronger signal than most people realize. A high disclosure count is a flag, but a clean record can also mean a young career or a small book of business that has not had time to generate complaints. A report has to give you the records and a framework that says what each one means and what it does not mean.
And then there is the fee disclosure question. Form ADV Part 2 is required to disclose every conflict of interest, every fee that the advisor or the advisor's firm receives from third parties, and every soft-dollar arrangement. Most prospective clients never read it. The full Vetting Report extracts the relevant sections and presents them in plain English so the conflicts that the advisor must disclose actually reach the prospective client before they sign.
What MentionFox brings to this job
The Wealth Advisor Vetter is the workhorse. The methodology page explains how every record is sourced and what each one means. The Verification Vetter methodology is the trust spine that runs through every report on the platform.
Wealth Advisor Methodology
The full methodology behind every Wealth Advisor Vetting Report. Four-class source taxonomy: Federal-Primary (SEC IAPD, FINRA BrokerCheck), Authoritative-Secondary (state securities regulators, CFP Board, CFA Institute), Aggregator (advisor-rating sites), and Unverified. Suitability score on a 0-100 scale with four sub-scores: regulatory cleanliness, disclosure transparency, customer-complaint history, professional credential strength. Defamation guardrails preserve the report's defensibility. Read this if you want to understand exactly what the report does and does not assert.
Use Case: Finding a Financial Advisor
A walkthrough for the most common scenario: you have a referral, a candidate, or a shortlist, and you want a neutral second opinion before the first meeting. Covers when to use the Snapshot tier versus the full report, what BrokerCheck disclosures actually mean, how to read an ADV Part 2 fee schedule, and the questions to bring to the first conversation once the public record has been verified. The use-case page complements the methodology page with the practical workflow.
Specific Fund Methodology
For prospective clients evaluating not just the advisor but the specific fund or model portfolio they are being recommended into. Covers SEC EDGAR fund filings, prospectus parsing, expense ratios from N-PORT and N-CSR filings, sub-advisor relationships, and the interest-and-fee disclosures the fund itself must make. Useful when the advisor's recommendation routes assets into a proprietary fund or a sub-advised vehicle where the advisor's compensation depends on which fund is chosen.
Counterparty Methodology
For wealth-advisor relationships that involve a private placement, a syndication, or any non-public investment offered through the advisor. Covers SEC Form D filings, accredited-investor disclosure regimes, sponsor track-record assessment, and the bad-actor disqification provisions of Rule 506(d). Reads the public record on the deal sponsor and any affiliated principals, surfacing prior litigation, regulatory actions, and disqification triggers.
Verification Vetter Methodology
The trust spine that runs through every vetter on the platform. Explains the source-class taxonomy, the confidence framework, the citation discipline, the defamation guardrails, and the disambiguation hard-gate. If you want to understand the methodology behind every report on every subject type before trusting any specific report, this is the document. It is what an investigative journalist or an expert witness would read first.
Credit Packs and Subscription
Reports run on credits. A Wealth Advisor Snapshot at 50 credits is the right tier for fast confirmation that the basics check out. A full Wealth Advisor Vetting Report at 250 credits is the right tier when you are about to transfer a meaningful share of household assets. Credit packs are sold in bundles and via monthly subscription. The pricing page lists current pack tiers and per-credit cost.
A typical workflow — what a prospective client actually does
A retiree has been introduced to a wealth advisor by a friend at her church. The advisor works at a regional firm and has proposed taking over her IRA, her late husband's rollover, and a small taxable account. Before the next meeting, she opens the Wealth Advisor Vetter, types the advisor's name and the firm name into the search field, and selects the right candidate from the chooser when two advisors with similar names appear. The disambiguation gate confirms the right CRD number before any credits are charged.
She runs a Snapshot for 50 credits. In about two minutes, she has the verified registration status from SEC IAPD and FINRA BrokerCheck, a 0-100 fiduciary suitability score with four sub-scores, the top three reasons to trust based on credentials and disclosure record, the top three risks or open questions surfaced from the record, and a headline recommendation. The advisor is registered, has no regulatory actions, has one settled customer complaint from twelve years ago, and holds a current Certified Financial Planner certification verified against the CFP Board database. She decides to upgrade to the full report before the next conversation.
Five minutes later she has twelve sections. The full BrokerCheck disclosure history shows the one customer complaint with the resolution outcome, no expungement request was filed for it, and no other disclosures appear. The fee structure section pulls from the firm's ADV Part 2 brochure: 1.0 percent on assets under management with a stated tiered schedule, no third-party revenue-sharing arrangements disclosed, and one conflict-of-interest disclosure related to the firm's proprietary model portfolios. The credential verification section confirms the CFP certification, a Series 7 and Series 66, and verifies them against the issuing authorities. The state-registration footprint section confirms the advisor is registered in her state.
What she did not do: spend three hours toggling between FINRA BrokerCheck, SEC IAPD, the state securities regulator portal, the CFP Board's public database, and the firm's website looking for the ADV Part 2 brochure. The report did the assembly. She did the reading.
What data sources the report draws from
Every claim in a Wealth Advisor Vetting Report is anchored to a named, public, federal-or-state source. The methodology page lists every source class and how it is weighted. For people-choosing-a-financial-advisor specifically, these are the sources that drive the report.
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) — the canonical SEC database for registered investment advisers. Provides verified identity, firm affiliation, CRD number, current registration status, ADV Part 1 and Part 2 filings, disciplinary history, and assets-under-management figures at firm level.
- FINRA BrokerCheck — the canonical FINRA-maintained database for registered brokers and broker-dealer firms. Customer complaints, regulatory actions, civil judgments, criminal disclosures, financial disclosures, and the resolution outcomes for each. Quoted verbatim from the FINRA record.
- Form ADV Part 2 disclosure brochures — the plain-English disclosure brochure every registered investment adviser must give clients before signing. Filed publicly via IAPD. Fee schedule, conflicts of interest, disciplinary history, educational and business background of key personnel.
- State securities regulators — fifty state administrators plus the District of Columbia. Each maintains its own registration database and may surface additional regulatory actions not aggregated into BrokerCheck or IAPD. The relevant state lookup URL is surfaced directly so the verification of record is one click away.
- CFP Board — the certification authority for Certified Financial Planner credentials. Public verification of current certification status, history of disciplinary actions, and the CFP Board's own complaint record on the certificant.
- CFA Institute — for advisors holding the Chartered Financial Analyst credential. Verifies current charterholder status, disciplinary record, and any sanctions imposed by the institute.
- NASAA — the North American Securities Administrators Association. Aggregates state-level enforcement actions and Series-65 examination data for the investment-adviser-representative population.
- Expungement-request history — surfaced from the FINRA arbitration record and the underlying customer-dispute filings. Denied requests are flagged as a separate signal because they tell you what a clean BrokerCheck disclosure alone cannot.
- SEC EDGAR — for advisors recommending specific funds, the SEC EDGAR system surfaces the fund's prospectus, expense ratios from N-PORT and N-CSR filings, sub-advisor relationships, and any related-party arrangements.
- Public news and litigation aggregators — court dockets and reputable financial-press archives. Treated as Authoritative-Secondary or Aggregator depending on source class. Always cited; never paraphrased away from the original record.
The four-class source taxonomy is explicit. Federal-Primary sources carry the highest weight. State securities regulators, the CFP Board, and the CFA Institute are Authoritative-Secondary. Aggregator sites are signal, not verdict. Unverified claims are tagged, not laundered.
Sample report walkthrough
The canonical sample is Warren Buffett. The full Wealth Advisor Vetting Report runs the public record on Buffett through the same twelve sections any other subject would face: career and firm history at Buffett Partnership Limited and Berkshire Hathaway, credential verification, regulatory record at the SEC, customer-complaint and shareholder-litigation surface, fee structure and disclosure across the Berkshire reporting structure, and red-flag severity ranking.
For a comparison sample on a registered investment adviser with a public regulatory record, see the Ken Fisher Vetting Report. Both reports were generated from public records only, with full source citations and the same defamation guardrails that apply to every report on the platform.
Pricing for this use case
Wealth Advisor Snapshot
50 credits. Returns in roughly two minutes. One-page fiduciary brief: 0-100 suitability score with four sub-scores, top three reasons to trust, top three risks, and a headline recommendation. The right tier when you have a referral or a candidate and want a fast neutral check before the first call.
Wealth Advisor Vetting Report
250 credits. Returns in five to eight minutes. All twelve sections, 2,500-5,500 words, paginated PDF. Career and firm history, credential verification, full BrokerCheck disclosure history, customer-complaint pattern analysis, expungement-request history, regulatory action history, AUM signals, fee structure and disclosure, severity-ranked red flags, and full source citations. The right tier when you are about to transfer a meaningful share of household assets.
Credits are sold in packs and via monthly subscription. See the full pricing page for credit-pack options.
Mini case studies
The retiree consolidating into a single advisor
She is sixty-eight, recently widowed, and consolidating four accounts spread across two banks and a former employer's plan. A nephew in finance recommended a fee-only RIA in her town. She runs a Snapshot. The advisor is verified on IAPD with seventeen years of registration history, holds the CFP credential verified against the CFP Board, and has zero customer complaints, zero regulatory actions, and zero denied expungement requests. The fee structure pulled from ADV Part 2 is 0.85 percent on the first million, with no third-party revenue-sharing. The Snapshot recommendation is engage with confidence. She walks into the first meeting with a one-page brief and a list of questions that go beyond the public record.
The small business owner choosing a 401(k) advisor
He runs a fifteen-person company and is looking for an advisor to manage the company's 401(k). A broker his accountant referred has proposed a plan with a stated 0.5 percent advisor fee. He runs a full Vetting Report for 250 credits. The disclosure history shows three customer complaints in the past five years, two of which involved 401(k) plans, and one denied expungement request. The ADV Part 2 surfaces a third-party revenue-sharing arrangement with a record-keeper that is not disclosed in the proposal he was given. The severity-ranked red flags section flags the pattern as MEDIUM and recommends additional vetting before signing. He passes and goes back to the search.
Frequently asked questions
Why would an individual run a verification report on a financial advisor?
Because the cost of handing your retirement savings to the wrong advisor is enormous, and the public records that would tell you the answer are scattered across the SEC IAPD database, the FINRA BrokerCheck site, ADV Part 2 disclosure brochures, and fifty separate state securities-registration portals. A single report stitches all of those together with a plain-English suitability assessment.
What is the difference between BrokerCheck and IAPD?
BrokerCheck is the FINRA-maintained free public lookup tool for registered brokers and broker-dealer firms. IAPD is the SEC-maintained Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database for registered investment advisers and the firms they work for. Many advisors are dual-registered. The vetting report queries both, plus state securities registrars, and presents a unified disclosure view.
What is ADV Part 2 and why does it matter?
Form ADV Part 2 is the disclosure brochure every SEC-registered or state-registered investment adviser must give clients before signing. It states services offered, fees, conflicts of interest, disciplinary history, and educational and business backgrounds of key personnel. The brochure is filed publicly and is an under-read disclosure document. The full Vetting Report parses the relevant sections and surfaces what most prospective clients miss.
Will the advisor know I ran a report?
No. Reports are private to the buyer unless explicitly marked shareable. The advisor and their firm are not notified that a report was generated about them.
What does it cost?
A Wealth Advisor Snapshot is 50 credits and gives a one-page fiduciary brief. A full Wealth Advisor Vetting Report is 250 credits and runs across twelve sections. See the pricing page for credit-pack options.
What is an expungement request and why does the report flag denied ones?
An expungement is a formal request to remove a customer-complaint disclosure from BrokerCheck. Granted expungements are invisible by design. Denied expungement requests, however, remain visible in the underlying record and are a strong signal: the advisor wanted a complaint hidden, an arbitrator declined to allow it. The report surfaces denied requests because they tell you something a clean disclosure cannot.
Does the report tell me if an advisor will give good advice?
No. No public-record report can. What it tells you is whether the advisor is currently registered, free of regulatory bars, transparent about fees and conflicts, and absent from a pattern of customer complaints, regulatory actions, and denied expungements. Quality of advice requires direct conversation, a fit assessment against your situation, and a fee structure you understand.
Does this work for fee-only fiduciaries and registered investment advisers?
Yes. Fee-only RIAs are exactly the population where ADV Part 2 disclosure parsing matters most. The full Vetting Report extracts fee schedule, conflict-of-interest disclosures, disciplinary history, and assets under management figures from the firm-level and individual-level filings on IAPD.