Active (free)
26 sourcesFINRA's public registry of every securities-licensed individual in the United States. Per-CRD JSON returns the person's full career history, exam dates, branch office locations, designations, and any…
A bridge endpoint that lists IARs currently registered at a given firm. Used to seed the person roster — gives us names and CRDs but minimal per-person detail. The deeper individual-CRD endpoint…
Public directories from professional designation issuers (CFP Board, Garrett Planning Network, NAPFA, IWI). Confirms credentials advisors claim on their ADV brochures and adds the credential as a…
Department of Labor Form 5500 is the annual disclosure every employer-sponsored retirement plan must file. The Schedule C inside lists the plan's service providers and their compensation — useful for…
FDIC Summary of Deposits is the annual census of every bank branch in the US. Deposit concentration in a ZIP, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index of banking competition, and which banks dominate locally…
Federal Election Commission contribution database. Individual political donations are public and searchable by name + state. An unusually large contribution to a retirement-themed campaign or an…
Provides primary_custodian for firm targets.
Form ADV Schedule A lists every direct owner and executive officer of an RIA along with their ownership percentage. The single most important signal for acquisition targeting: it tells us whether a…
GovInfo is the federal government's official publication archive. We search congressional legislation and regulations for early signals of industry-impacting rule changes (custody rules, fiduciary…
The Investment Adviser Association's annual industry snapshot. Aggregate statistics on the RIA industry's size, growth, and composition. Pure context, not per-firm data.
IRS Statistics of Income publishes anonymized ZIP-level tax data: how many returns reported income over $200k, total capital gains, business income, charitable deductions. The cleanest public signal…
The National Futures Association's BASIC system lists firms and individuals registered for commodity and futures activities. Dual NFA/RIA registration suggests a more sophisticated…
Death record aggregators (Legacy.com, Echovita). The most morbid negative filter in the system: if an advisor's name appears in recent obituaries, we mark the person as deceased and stop scoring them.
ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer indexes every 501(c)(3)'s annual Form 990 filing, including the board roster. When an advisor steps down from charitable board seats, that's a leading indicator of…
Industry rankings from CNBC, Barron's, Forbes, and the Financial Times. Being on a top-100 list is a moat signal (named recognition, lead inflow); falling off one is a soft warning.
RDAP is the modern successor to WHOIS for domain registration data. We pull domain registration date, registrar, and nameserver configuration to estimate firm vintage and infrastructure…
Free quarterly M&A summary PDFs from DeVoe & Company, Echelon Partners, and Fidelity. Provides deal-count trends and average multiples paid by acquirer. Not as deep as their paid subscriptions but…
Public location pages and portfolio listings from the big aggregator firms (Wealth Enhancement, Focus Financial, Mercer, Mariner). Used as a negative filter — if a firm is already on one of these…
Schwab Advisor Services publishes annual benchmarking and compensation studies. Used for cohort-level reference numbers (median operating margin, average revenue per advisor) so the dossier can show…
The SEC's quarterly bulk file of every registered investment adviser's Form ADV Part 1A. This is the closest thing the industry has to a master list of all RIAs — their AUM, employee counts, client…
The same SEC ADV Part 1 data, but as a series of yearly snapshots reaching back to 2020. Lining up each year's regulatory AUM and advisory headcount produces a multi-year trajectory for every firm —…
ADV-W is the form a firm files when it withdraws SEC registration — usually because it's being acquired, has shut down, or is dropping below the AUM threshold. A recent ADV-W filing is a strong…
SEC EDGAR is the centralized repository for all securities filings. For RIAs we care about it for 13F holdings reports (which show portfolio composition), Schedule 13D/G filings (large equity…
US Census Bureau ZIP-level demographic and economic data. We use median household income, share of population over 65, education levels, and density of financial-services NAICS codes as…
The US Patent and Trademark Office's trademark database. Live trademarks on a firm name suggest active brand investment; abandoned or dead trademarks can indicate retreat.
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine snapshots websites over time. We use it to compute how often a firm updates its website — a firm whose website hasn't changed in 18 months is statistically more…
Paid candidates
19 sourcesVendor-curated RIA database with proprietary intelligence on every firm and IAR — including soft data we can't scrape (firm pricing models, custodian relationships, advisor satisfaction surveys). Subscription tier; would replace roughly…
Industry-standard cohort benchmarks on RIA economics, succession trends, fee compression curves, and growth percentiles by AUM band. Required for computing relative scoring ("this firm is at the 80th percentile for organic growth in its…
Beyond the free quarterly PDF DeVoe publishes, the full subscription gives multi-year deal history with acquirer detail, multiples, and seller-side characteristics. Would let us compute realistic comp-set valuations for any target firm…
Lead-generation feed showing which advisors are paying for client acquisition. A non-obvious succession-risk signal — solo principals about to wind down typically stop buying leads 12-18 months before transition.
Echelon Partners' subscription deal database covers RIA M&A transactions back to 2010 with full multiples, acquirer types, and seller-side characteristics. Their thesis-driven research (succession waves, PE entry, mega-rollups) complements…
Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions publishes a paid M&A intelligence report covering deal-flow trends, average AUM transferred, multiples paid, and acquirer behavior. Premium tier includes per-acquirer breakdowns and forecast modeling…
Private-market deal tracking platform — every PE-backed RIA roll-up (Wealth Enhancement, Focus, Mariner, Hightower, Captrust, etc.) has its full funding history, portfolio companies, and exits visible here. Critical for understanding which…
Wealth-screening service that infers net worth, asset composition, and giving capacity for individual people. For our use case: applied to advisors themselves, it identifies the ones whose personal wealth profile (mid-career multi-million…
Recruiter intelligence on advisor-team transitions. Diamond places senior advisors and brokerage teams; their movement database (private to clients) is a leading indicator of which firms are losing top talent — often a precursor to…
Compliance + M&A advisory firm with proprietary visibility into RIA breakaway, registration, and acquisition activity. Subscriber-tier reports flag firms in transition (compliance reviews, registration changes, broker-to-RIA moves) ahead…
B2B contact and firmographic platform. For sourcing teams: gives verified direct phone/email for every advisor and firm officer, plus intent signals (web behavior, hiring patterns, technology footprint) that can suggest a firm is preparing…
Contact + intent-data platform. Cheaper than ZoomInfo with comparable coverage of small RIAs. Particularly useful for the outreach step — given a list of CoachFilter-flagged targets, Apollo provides current direct lines and an intent score…
InvestmentNews's premium M&A tracker publishes announced and confirmed RIA transactions on a weekly cadence with named buyers/sellers, AUM transferred, and deal terms when disclosed. The fastest-publishing source for completed-deal news in…
Bain & Company and Advice Period each publish paid annual studies on RIA economics by cohort (revenue per advisor, EBITDA margin distribution, AUM per client, recurring vs transactional revenue mix). Used for relative-percentile scoring on…
National Insurance Producer Registry. Per-advisor cross-reference of NPN to CRD, first insurance license date (independent corroboration of career start), and carrier appointments (reveals annuity book mix). Gated to firm credentials.
Advisor post-history trends (8 posts/yr in 2018 → 1/yr today = disengagement signal), verified education with class-year for age corroboration, and tone profile for outreach personalization. Paid LinkedIn enterprise tier.
County recorder filings: primary residence value, second property (mountain home / beach condo), and mortgage payoff year. Mortgage payoff year is a retirement-ready signal — advisors typically clear their personal debt 2-4 years before…
US Coast Guard vessel registry + FAA pilot/aircraft registry. Boat or plane ownership is a high-confidence lifestyle/wealth indicator — particularly useful when an advisor acquires their first one (the "I'm spending more time on the boat"…
National Association of Personal Financial Advisors member roster includes succession-eligible flag and fee-only confirmation. Headless-browser scrape gated behind member login; reliable only with member credentials. Highly precise…