Is My Financial Advisor a Fiduciary? A 5-Minute Verification (Do Not Just Ask)

Guides › Vetting a Financial Advisor

Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: asking produces a yes from almost everyone, because almost everyone believes it. The verification is short and documentary. Form CRS — the relationship summary SEC-registered advisers and broker-dealers must give retail investors — is required to cover services, fees and costs, conflicts of interest, the legal standard of conduct, and whether the firm and its financial professionals are dually registered. That last item is usually the real answer: an investment adviser owes a fiduciary duty under the Advisers Act, a broker-dealer is subject to Regulation Best Interest, and a dually registered professional can act in either capacity depending on the transaction.

Why “are you a fiduciary?” is the wrong question

Because the honest answer for a great many professionals is “sometimes,” and nobody says that out loud. Regulation Best Interest is not nothing — the SEC describes it as a standard that substantially enhances broker-dealers’ obligations beyond the older suitability requirement and requires them to act in the best interest of retail customers without placing their own interest ahead of the customer’s. But it is a different standard, applied at the point of a recommendation rather than across an ongoing relationship. So the useful question is not are you but “in which capacity are you acting for me, on which accounts, and is that in writing?” The background: fiduciary vs suitability and worked examples of the difference.

The five-minute verification

1. Look them up. adviserinfo.sec.gov (IAPD) for investment advisers and their representatives; brokercheck.finra.org for brokers. If someone appears in both, they are dually registered and the capacity question is live. 2. Read Form CRS — the standard of conduct section and the dual-registration statement. 3. Read Form ADV Part 2A Item 10.A, which requires disclosure of registration as a broker-dealer or as a registered representative of one, and Item 5.E, which requires disclosure of compensation from selling investment products — why Item 5.E is the fee-only test. 4. Read Item 9 for disciplinary history. 5. Ask for it in writing — the step below. To request the documents: the ADV and Form CRS request email, and the fuller version of this workflow, the fiduciary checklist.

The acknowledgment to ask for, in writing

Send this and keep the reply. A fiduciary adviser will confirm it in a sentence; anyone who cannot has told you something useful without meaning to.

“Please confirm in writing: (1) whether you and your firm act as an investment adviser subject to a fiduciary duty with respect to all of my accounts, at all times, and not only when making a specific recommendation; (2) whether you or your firm are also registered as a broker-dealer or as a registered representative of one, and if so, which of my accounts are handled in that capacity; and (3) whether you or your firm receive any compensation from anyone other than me in connection with my accounts, including commissions, asset-based sales charges, insurance commissions or referral payments.”

Ask for the answer by email rather than in a meeting. The point is not distrust — it is that a written answer is specific in a way a spoken one never is, and you will want it later if anything is ever disputed.

If the answer is not what you hoped

It may still be fine. Dual registration is common and disclosed, and a commissioned product is sometimes the right one. What matters is that you now know which capacity applies to which account and what else is being paid. If the answer changes your mind, take the next step deliberately: the twelve red flags and the check that confirms each, a second-opinion review of the advice you already have, or, if you are done, the exit, which is paperwork rather than a conversation. Hiring the next one: the twenty-minute vet and the fifteen questions.