Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Guides › Vetting a Financial Advisor
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: vetting an adviser is four steps and takes about twenty minutes, and every input is free and public. (1) Confirm they are registered and find out as what. (2) Read the disclosure history — and read what the entries mean, not just how many there are. (3) Read Form ADV Part 2A Item 5, which is where the fee schedule has to be. (4) Get fiduciary status in writing, because asking out loud produces a yes from almost everyone. Nobody is going to stop you doing any of this, and no adviser worth hiring will mind.
Step 1: registration, and in what capacity
Two databases, both free. BrokerCheck (brokercheck.finra.org) covers registered securities brokers and firms. IAPD (adviserinfo.sec.gov) covers investment adviser firms and their representatives. Search both, because the capacity matters more than the title on the business card: an investment adviser owes a fiduciary duty under the Advisers Act, while a broker-dealer is subject to Regulation Best Interest — and a great many professionals are dually registered and act in both capacities depending on the transaction. Form CRS, which SEC-registered advisers and broker-dealers must give retail investors, has to state exactly that: services, fees and costs, conflicts of interest, legal standard of conduct, and whether the firm and its professionals are dually registered. How to pin the standard down in writing.
Vetting is the cheap half. Meeting people is the slow half.
Run the checks above on whoever you meet. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you — which is a reason to vet them, not a reason to skip it.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here — you stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions — age, investable assets, location — then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button.
Step 2: read the disclosure history properly
A disclosure count is not a verdict. Registered individuals must report customer complaints and arbitrations, regulatory actions, employment terminations, bankruptcy filings, and criminal or civil judicial proceedings — and the reporting thresholds matter: a criminal event is only reportable once a law enforcement agency has filed formal charges, and a customer dispute is only reportable where the allegations involve conduct violating industry rules and damages of at least $5,000. Events also carry a status: a “pending” event, in FINRA’s words, “involves allegations that have not been proven or formally adjudicated.” What each disclosure type actually tells you, and which ones are noise.
Step 3: Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5
This is the highest-yield document in the whole exercise, and advisers must give it to you. Item 5.A requires them to “provide your fee schedule” and to “disclose whether the fees are negotiable.” Item 5.B says whether fees are deducted from your assets or billed, and how often. Item 5.D covers refunds of prepaid fees if you leave mid-period. Those item numbers are Part 2A numbers, and a wrap programme renumbers them: the brochure a wrap-fee sponsor owes you “must be a wrap fee program brochure containing all the information required by Part 2A, Appendix 1 of Form ADV” (17 CFR 275.204-3(d)(1)), and in Appendix 1 the headings run Item 4 Services, Fees and Compensation, then Item 5 Account Requirements and Types of Clients — so in a wrap brochure Step 3 is Item 4, not Item 5. Item 5.E is the one that settles the fee-only question: an adviser whose supervised persons accept compensation for selling investment products has to say so there. Why Item 5.E is the whole distinction, and the seven lines to Ctrl-F in any Form ADV. To request the current documents: the ADV and Form CRS request email.
Step 4: the questions, and the paperwork
Now you interview. The fifteen questions are the checklist for that conversation and this page does not repeat them. Score the answers side by side with the proposal scorecard, check the paperwork before you sign with the contract checklist, and know the twelve red flags and the check that confirms each before you get there. Credentials are a smaller signal than most people expect: what CFP, CFA and ChFC actually mean for hiring.
Ask for one more document while you are arranging the meeting: the brochure supplement for the person who will actually advise you. The delivery rule entitles you to it “before or at the time that supervised person begins to provide advisory services to the client” (17 CFR 275.204-3(b)(3)), and for an SEC-registered firm it is the one Form ADV document you cannot look up yourself. The instructions are explicit: “If you are registered or are registering with the SEC, you are not required to file your brochure supplements through the IARD or otherwise.” (General Instructions for Part 2, instruction 5). Asking is the only route to it, and a firm that will not produce it has told you something.
Two things vetting will not tell you
Whether the price is fair. A clean record says nothing about cost. Our benchmark of published adviser fee schedules found that at $250,000 only 28.4% of firms publish a fee you can actually price, another 16.8% publish an “up to” ceiling and 25.7% are unpriceable — 42.5% combined — and 18.9% would not take the account at all at that size. The benchmark. Whether you should be hiring at all. That is a separate question with a separate answer: the complexity checklist. And if you are vetting because you are leaving someone, the mechanics of switching.
Before and after the vet. Which service tier and price you should be shopping for in the first place: the ladder by net worth. Whether to hire anyone at all: the break-even math by situation. And if you are vetting because you are leaving someone, the exit is paperwork rather than a confrontation: switching financial advisors.
Two more services, read from their filings: Wealthramp discloses that advisers “pay us different levels of fees”, creating “an incentive to refer you to” the ones paying more, and requires no account minimum. Money Pickle states advisers pay it $200–$5,000 and that this “does result in a material conflict of interest” — and its standard is licensing, not fiduciary status.
The questions people actually ask
These come from what people actually search and ask in public threads on this topic. Each answer is a short summary of a page on this site that works the question through properly, with its sources; follow the link when the detail matters, which on most of these it does.
Is my financial advisor actually a fiduciary?
Do not take the answer verbally — the standard is stated in writing on the firm’s Form CRS, which every retail firm must file and publish. Read that document and you have the answer in the firm’s own words rather than a salesperson’s. How to find and read it.
What is the difference between fee-only and fee-based?
One word, and it changes the economics completely: fee-based advisors may also earn product commissions. The distinction is not marketing — it is visible in Item 5.E of the firm’s Form ADV, which lists exactly how the firm is compensated. The Item 5.E test.
How do I run a background check on an advisor?
The records are free and public; the skill is interpretation, not retrieval. A disclosure is not automatically disqualifying and a clean record is not automatically reassuring — what matters is which type of disclosure appears. Reading the record properly.
What are the real red flags?
Every red flag worth acting on has a check you can actually perform, which is the test we apply: if a warning sign cannot be verified against a public record or a document, it is a feeling rather than a flag. Each flag paired with its verification.
Where do I start if I am comparing services rather than individuals?
The matching services all run the same basic economics — free to you, paid by the advisor — so the useful comparison is what each one screens for and how plainly it discloses its own incentives. Every service, side by side.
What should I actually ask on the first call?
Five questions settle most of it: are you a fiduciary at all times in writing, are you fee-only or fee-based, what is the all-in annual cost in dollars, who custodies my assets, and what is on your BrokerCheck record. Every one has a verifiable answer, which is the point — you are collecting documents, not impressions. The full list, with the follow-ups.