About FiduciaryListings

Finding a trustworthy financial advisor is unnecessarily difficult. The biggest sites in the space are lead-generation platforms that sell your information to advisors who pay for access. The regulatory databases (SEC, FINRA) contain excellent data but are designed for compliance officers, not consumers.

FiduciaryListings bridges the gap. We take the same data that regulators use to oversee the industry and present it in a way that helps you make informed decisions: who charges what, who has a clean record, and who is truly fee-only vs. who just claims to be.

Fiduciary verification

An advisor is classified as a “verified fiduciary” if they are registered as an investment adviser with the SEC or a state regulator. Under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, registered investment advisers owe a fiduciary duty to their clients. This is a legal obligation, not a marketing claim.

Fee-only classification

We classify an advisor as “fee-only” based on a multi-point analysis of their Form ADV data. Specifically, we check:

• Item 5E (compensation methods) — must indicate only client-paid fees
• Item 6A (other business activities) — must not indicate insurance sales, broker-dealer registration, or other commission-generating activities
• Item 8 (financial industry affiliations) — must not disclose affiliations with broker-dealers, insurance companies, or entities that could create compensation conflicts

An advisor who meets all three criteria is classified as “fee-only verified.” This is stricter than most self-reported directories, which typically rely on the advisor's own claim.

Clean record assessment

A “clean record” means the advisor has zero Disclosure Reporting Pages (DRPs) in their Form ADV filing. DRPs cover criminal disclosures, regulatory actions, civil judicial actions, customer complaints, and termination events. The absence of DRPs does not guarantee ethical behavior, but the presence of multiple DRPs is a meaningful signal.

Conflict of interest flags

We flag any advisor who discloses activities or affiliations that could create conflicts of interest: insurance product sales, broker-dealer affiliations, proprietary fund management, or compensation from non-client third parties. These are not necessarily disqualifying — but consumers should be aware of them.

FiduciaryListings is an informational tool, not a recommendation engine. We do not endorse, recommend, or certify any financial advisor. The data shown here comes from public regulatory filings and is subject to the following limitations:

• Data is updated monthly. An advisor's current status may differ from what was filed at the time of their last ADV update.
• Fee extraction from Part 2 PDFs uses automated parsing. Some fee schedules are complex and may not be fully captured.
• We only cover SEC-registered advisers. State-only registered advisers (typically managing less than $100M) are not included.
• A clean disciplinary record does not guarantee future behavior. The absence of disclosures may simply mean no complaints have been filed.

Always verify information independently using the SEC and FINRA resources linked on our Verify an Advisor page before making any financial decisions.

FiduciaryListings was created by Marcus Ridley, a former compliance data analyst who spent six years working with SEC filing systems at a mid-size RIA custodian in Austin, Texas.

During that time, the same pattern kept showing up: advisors who marketed themselves as “fee-only fiduciaries” while their Form ADV told a different story — insurance licenses, 12b-1 fee arrangements, broker-dealer affiliations buried in Item 6A. Retail investors had no practical way to catch these discrepancies without reading regulatory filings line by line.

After leaving the custodian side, Marcus built the data pipeline that powers this site: a system that ingests the full SEC IARD dataset, parses Part 2 brochure PDFs for fee schedules, and cross-references compensation disclosures against fee-only marketing claims. The goal was always the same — give ordinary people the same view into advisor compensation that compliance officers have.

FiduciaryListings is published by Tharaa Media and is editorially independent. We do not accept payment for reviews, rankings, or placement in search results. The site is funded through optional premium listings that advisors purchase to add verified logos and custom descriptions to their profiles. No paid listing receives preferential treatment in how data is displayed or how compliance flags are shown.

Every advisor profile on this site is generated from regulatory filings, not from the advisor themselves. We do not accept self-reported data for any compliance-related field: fiduciary status, fee-only classification, disciplinary history, and conflict flags are all derived from official SEC and FINRA records.

Advisors who claim their listing may add a custom bio, logo, and website link. These additions are clearly separated from regulatory data and do not alter, hide, or override any government-sourced information. A claimed listing with 18 disclosures will display all 18 disclosures — paying for a listing does not buy a clean page.

State and city editorial introductions are written by our team based on local market research, Bureau of Labor Statistics data, and state-level regulatory context. These are not auto-generated from templates.

If you are an advisor and believe your listing contains inaccurate information, email [email protected] with your CRD number and a description of the error. We will verify against current SEC records and publish a correction within 5 business days.

If the data on your listing is accurate but unflattering, we will not remove it. FiduciaryListings displays what advisors have disclosed to regulators. Our role is to make that information accessible, not to curate it on behalf of any firm.

Consumers who notice factual errors — wrong phone numbers, outdated addresses, or mismatched CRD records — can also report them using the same email address.

For data questions, press inquiries, or partnership proposals, contact us at [email protected].

Tharaa Media
3801 N Capital of Texas Hwy, Ste E240-3769
Austin, TX 78746