How We Score

The Fidelon TransparencyScore is a 0–100 measure of how clearly and completely a financial advisory firm or individual adviser discloses its services, fees, conflicts of interest, and regulatory history — computed exclusively from public regulatory records. The criteria framework on this page is public. The analytical model that implements it is proprietary — the same posture as institutional rating methodologies, which publish their criteria while protecting their models.

What a TransparencyScore Measures

Two things, and we are explicit about both:

1. Disclosure quality — how clearly the public filings communicate what an investor needs to know: what services are offered, what everything costs, what conflicts of interest exist, and how they are managed. Clear, specific, complete disclosure scores well. Boilerplate, vagueness, and gaps score poorly.
2. The regulatory record itself — what the public record documents actually happened: customer complaints, regulatory actions, disciplinary events, and their severity. A firm or adviser with serious documented misconduct scores lower than one without, regardless of how clearly the events are disclosed. Severe conduct findings cap the score — clear writing does not offset a serious disciplinary history.

A TransparencyScore is not a measure of investment performance, and it is not a prediction. It is a structured reading of the public record.

The Four Dimensions

Every score is displayed as four dimensions. Firms and individual advisers are measured on slightly different sets, because different things are knowable about each.

Firms

• Disclosure Record — the firm's documented history of customer complaints, regulatory actions, and disciplinary events (Disclosure Reporting Pages in Form ADV and BrokerCheck), weighted by severity and recency.
• Filing Quality — how clear, specific, and complete the firm's Form ADV filings and client relationship summary (Form CRS) are: services, fees, plain language.
• Conflict Disclosure — how openly the firm explains who pays it, what it is incentivized to sell, and whether those conflicts are identified and explained — or buried in boilerplate. Conflicts aren't inherently disqualifying; hiding them is. A firm with significant but clearly disclosed conflicts can outscore a firm that obscures minor ones. This includes the other businesses the firm runs alongside advising, as the firm reports them on Form ADV Item 6 — insurance, brokerage, real estate, or other product sales. A firm that can earn money selling you a product, not just advising you, carries a conflict that never appears on an advisory invoice, so its score reflects that regardless of how it bills for advice. Professional practices that don't sell products, such as accounting or law, are shown on the firm's profile but don't affect the score.
• Enforcement History — past actions taken by regulators, the firm's supervision record, and regulatory disclosure flags (Form ADV Item 11; FINRA regulatory actions for broker-dealers). This is a record of what has happened, not a statement about whether the firm is currently registered.

Individual Advisers

• Disclosure Record — the adviser's own complaint and disciplinary history, weighted by severity and recency.
• Credentials & Experience — industry experience, examinations, and recognized professional designations. Designations are weighted by the rigor of the credential, not by how many an adviser has collected: an adviser holding one demanding credential is not scored below an adviser holding several narrower ones. Where we hold no designation record for an adviser, this component is excluded from the score rather than counted against them — a blank field is missing data, not a missing credential.
• Conflict Exposure — the conflict structure the adviser operates under, including outside business activities and, where verified, active insurance sales licenses.
• Enforcement History — past regulatory events from the adviser's public record.

An adviser's score also reflects their firm. An adviser operates inside their firm's compliance culture, fee structure, and conflict architecture, so the firm's score is a meaningful component of the adviser's composite. The firm–adviser connection is always visible on the profile.

Dual registration is scored. Advisers registered as both investment adviser representatives and broker-dealer representatives operate under two different legal standards — a fiduciary standard when advising, a suitability standard when selling. That structural opacity carries a disclosed scoring adjustment.

How We Read the Client Relationship Summary (Form CRS)

SEC-registered advisers and broker-dealers serving retail investors must provide a Form CRS — a short, plain-language summary the SEC requires precisely because investors were not getting a clear answer to basic questions: what services do you offer, what will I pay, and how are you paid in ways that could work against me. The SEC has been explicit about the kind of writing that defeats that purpose: boilerplate language copied from a template instead of describing the firm's actual practice, exaggerated or unsubstantiated claims, and disclosure that is vague and imprecise where the form calls for a specific answer. Filing Quality and Conflict Disclosure on a firm's profile are measured against that same standard — the SEC's own instructions for the form, not our own house style preference. State-registered advisers are generally not required to file a Form CRS, and a firm is never penalized for a filing it is not required to make — these checks simply do not apply.

Four things we check, in plain terms:

• Is everything the form requires actually there? Required sections, the standard headings, and the prescribed “conversation starter” questions investors are supposed to be able to ask their advisor.
• Are conflicts of interest actually explained, not just named? A firm can disclose that a conflict exists and still leave an investor no wiser about how it affects them. We look for whether the summary states what the firm gains and what behavior that reward encourages — not just that an arrangement exists.
• Can a reader tell what they would actually pay? A fee rate, a range, or a clear basis for the cost — not just that fees exist.
• Is it written so a retail investor can understand it? Sentence length, jargon, hedging language, and marketing superlatives all work against comprehension, whatever the form's stated word or page limit allows.

Every firm's summary is measured by the same checklist, built from the SEC's own instructions for the form. We do not publish the point values behind each check — the same policy as the rest of the methodology — but the checklist itself, and what it is checking for, is exactly what is described above. Where a finding cites a specific defect, it quotes the firm's own filing so you can read the sentence yourself, not our characterization of it.

Score Scale

Labels describe disclosure and record quality within Fidelon's published framework. Scores are whole numbers; each profile shows the composite and all four dimension scores.

How the Composite Is Built

Each dimension aggregates multiple underlying components — for firms, between 8 and 19 depending on registration type (investment adviser, broker-dealer, or dual). Components are normalized to a 0–100 scale, weighted, and combined; severity caps apply for serious conduct findings, and older events receive published time-based treatment (administrative events age out of scoring; serious events — fraud, criminal matters, industry bars — remain permanently). The scoring model is versioned, and material methodology changes are logged.

We do not publish the numeric component weights. They are tuned across versions, and publishing them would invite gaming the score rather than improving disclosure. The criteria — what is measured, from which filings, in which direction — are all on this page.

Data Sources

Every data point traces to a public regulatory record: SEC Form ADV (Parts 1, 2, and 3), SEC IAPD, FINRA BrokerCheck, Disclosure Reporting Pages, state regulatory filings, and state insurance license registries. The complete list, with what each source contains and how it feeds scoring, is on the Data Sources page.

How AI Is Used in Scoring

Narrative filings (Form ADV Part 2A brochures, Form CRS) are read and analyzed with AI language models: extracting fee structures, locating conflict disclosures, and assessing clarity. Profile summaries are AI-drafted from the same public records. Every AI-assisted output is traceable to the underlying filing, the same analysis applies to every firm, and errors are correctable through the Dispute & Correction Policy.

The Integrity Firewall

Structural, not aspirational:

• Firms and advisers cannot pay to change a TransparencyScore.
• Data submitted through any paid Fidelon service is never an input to public scoring.
• Scores change only when the underlying public regulatory record changes — or when a published methodology version changes, applied to everyone at once.
• The same criteria apply to every firm and adviser regardless of size, brand, or commercial relationship with Fidelon.

Fidelon's independence is what makes the score worth anything. It is not for sale.

Update Cadence

Scores refresh on a rolling cycle as regulatory filings are re-ingested; each profile shows its most recent scoring date. Profiles may lag new filings by 30–90 days. Advisers and firms that have materially amended their filings may request a priority rescore: scoring@fidelon.com.

When We Correct Our Own Data

Scores can change for two different reasons, and we distinguish them.

A score changes because the record changed — a new filing, a resolved matter, a fresh disclosure. That is the system working as intended.

A score also changes because we were reading the record wrong. When we find that, we fix it and the score moves. We publish what we corrected rather than quietly restating the number.

July 2026 — disclosure amounts and resolution status. A review found that our parser was misreading monetary sanctions in some Form ADV Disclosure Reporting Pages: it captured a numbered form item instead of the fine, so a small number of firms displayed a penalty far below what the filing actually recorded. Separately, our record of whether a matter was resolved or still open was unreliable across sources — many concluded matters were displayed as ongoing.

Both are corrected. Affected firms will see disclosure amounts increase to the filed figures, and matters that were closed will show as closed. Because these errors understated penalties and left resolved matters looking open, most corrections move scores down. The standards did not change; the facts we were reading are now right.

Where a filing records a sanction we cannot read with confidence, we now show “amount not available from this filing” rather than a number we do not trust or a zero. An unreadable amount is not the same as no penalty, and we will not present it as one.

If you believe a corrected figure on your profile is wrong, the Dispute & Correction Policy applies — and a correction to our reading is exactly the kind of dispute we want.

Corrections and Disputes

Advisers and firms can see what Fidelon publishes about them and challenge anything that misstates the public record. We investigate within 30 days and correct or remove what we cannot verify. These are commitments we make as a publisher — the way a newsroom commits to correcting its reporting. See Your Rights on Fidelon.

Methodology Feedback and Disputes

The scoring methodology represents Fidelon's editorial judgment and is not something the dispute process can change — but the underlying data is. If any factual data in your file is inaccurate, file a dispute through the Fidelon Advisor Portal or per the Dispute & Correction Policy. Substantive methodology feedback from advisers, compliance professionals, academics, and regulators is welcome: methodology@fidelon.com.

What Scores Are Not

• Investment advice or a recommendation to hire or avoid anyone
• A prediction of returns, performance, or future conduct
• A legal determination of compliance, misconduct, or liability
• A certification, endorsement, or accreditation
• A substitute for your own due diligence

See Not Financial Advice.