What is a TransparencyScore?

What is a TransparencyScore, in one sentence?

A TransparencyScore is a number from 0 to 100 that tells you how clearly and completely a financial advisor or firm discloses the things you need to know before you trust them with your money — their fees, their conflicts of interest, and their history with regulators. The higher the number, the better the public record reads. A lower number means there is less to go on, or that the record contains things worth a closer look.

Every advisor and firm in the United States files paperwork with regulators. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) collects a document called Form ADV, where investment advisers describe how they work, what they charge, and where their interests might pull against yours. FINRA, the body that oversees brokers, keeps a public record called BrokerCheck that lists complaints and disciplinary actions. These filings are public, but they are long, technical, and scattered across different government websites. Almost no investor reads them.

The TransparencyScore reads them for you. We take the same public filings, run every advisor and firm through the same scoring method, and turn the result into one plain number you can understand in a few seconds. It is the same idea behind a credit score or a restaurant health grade: take a complicated record that already exists and make it easy to compare at a glance.

Where does the score come from?

The TransparencyScore is built entirely from public regulatory data. We do not interview advisors, take their marketing materials at face value, or ask them to fill out a survey. We read what they have already told the government and the public.

The two main sources are the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system, known as IAPD, and FINRA's BrokerCheck. IAPD holds the Form ADV filings for investment advisers — Parts 1, 2, and 3. BrokerCheck holds the records for brokers, including any complaints customers have filed and any action a regulator has taken. Both are free for anyone to look up. We pull from the same well; we just read all of it, consistently, for everyone.

Because the data is public and the method is published, the score is something you can check. We explain exactly how it is calculated on our methodology page, and every score traces back to a specific filing. Nothing about a TransparencyScore is a secret or a hunch.

What are the four things a TransparencyScore measures?

A single number is easy to read but hard to learn from, so every TransparencyScore is built from four parts. Each one answers a different question about how open the public record is. When you look at a profile, you can see all four and how each one contributed to the total.

• Disclosure Record — the advisor's or firm's history with customers and regulators. This covers customer complaints, regulatory actions, and fines that appear in the public filings. A clean record reads well here. A pattern of complaints or actions pulls the number down, because it is exactly the kind of history an investor would want to know about up front.
• Filing Quality — how complete and well-prepared the required paperwork is. Regulators expect certain forms to be filed clearly and on time, including the Form ADV brochure and the plain-language Form CRS relationship summary. Strong, thorough filings score well. Sparse or sloppy ones score lower.
• Conflict Disclosure — how openly the firm explains the ways it might make money that work against your interests. Form ADV Part 2 is where a firm is supposed to spell out conflicts: commissions, revenue from outside companies, in-house products it is paid more to recommend. The score rewards firms that name these things plainly and marks down ones that bury or skip them. Every advisor has some conflicts; the transparent ones say so.
• Enforcement History — what regulators have already done about the advisor or firm. For brokers this looks at past enforcement actions and supervision history. For investment advisers it looks at compliance disclosures in Form ADV. It is a record of what has happened, not a prediction of behavior and not a statement about whether they are registered today.

What does a TransparencyScore NOT tell you?

This is the most important part of the page, so it is worth being blunt. A TransparencyScore measures one thing: how transparent the public regulatory record is. It does not measure several other things people sometimes assume it does.

It is not a measure of investment skill. The score says nothing about whether an advisor picks good investments, builds smart portfolios, or has a track record of strong returns. Those questions matter, but they are not what this number answers.

It is not a prediction of returns. Nothing in a TransparencyScore forecasts how your account will perform. Past disclosure quality and future market results are two unrelated things, and no honest number could promise otherwise.

It is not a verdict on whether someone is a good or bad advisor as a person. A skilled, caring advisor at a firm with a thin public record may have a lower score than a less impressive one at a firm that files beautifully. The score reads the filing, not the human being behind it. A low score is a signal to ask more questions — not a reason to write someone off, and not proof of wrongdoing.

Think of it the way you would think of a home inspection report. The report tells you what is documented about the house. It does not tell you whether you will be happy living there. It gives you the facts you need to ask the right questions before you decide.

How do you read the grades?

To make the 0-to-100 number easier to use, each score also carries a plain-English label. There are four:

• Strong (80-100) — the public record is clear and complete, with little or nothing of concern.
• Fair (60-79) — the record is reasonable but has gaps or items worth a closer look.
• Weak (40-59) — the record has real gaps or disclosed issues that deserve direct questions.
• Poor (0-39) — the public record is thin, unclear, or carries significant disclosed history.

Can an advisor pay to raise their score?

No. No one — no advisor, no firm, no marketer — can pay to change a TransparencyScore. We do not sell better scores, accept advertising that touches the rating, or let anyone buy their way up the list. The score is set by the public filings and the published method, full stop.

An advisor can improve their score, but only one way: by being more transparent. A firm that rewrites a confusing brochure in clear language, names its conflicts more specifically, files the required forms completely, or resolves an outstanding issue will see its score rise at the next data refresh. That is the whole point. The score rewards disclosure, so the way to earn a better one is to disclose better.

This independence is what makes the number worth anything. A rating you can buy is a rating you can ignore. Because the TransparencyScore is built only from public data and a public method, it stays on your side.

How do the four dimensions add up to one number?

The TransparencyScore blends the four dimensions into a single 0-to-100 number, but they are not weighted equally — the things that matter most to your money count for the most. An advisor's disclosure record (their complaints, regulatory actions, and disciplinary history) carries the heaviest weight, because a pattern of customer harm tells you more than a tidy brochure does. The quality of an advisor's filings, how clearly they disclose conflicts of interest, and the standing of the firm they work under each add to the picture from there.

The firm an advisor works for is built into the score on purpose. Even a clean advisor inherits the environment around them — the supervision, the incentives, the products they are encouraged to sell. A spotless individual at a firm with a troubled record is not in the same position as the same person at a transparent, conflict-free firm, and the score reflects that. This is why you will sometimes see two advisors with similar personal records land at different scores: their firms are different.

The way the score is calculated is published, not hidden. You can read how each dimension is measured and combined on our methodology page. We would rather show the recipe and let you judge it than ask you to trust a black box — a score you cannot inspect is just another opinion.

How is this different from credentials, awards, or 'top advisor' lists?

Most advisor rankings measure the wrong thing. 'Top advisor' lists are often built on how much money an advisor manages, which tells you they are good at gathering assets — not that they are transparent, conflict-free, or right for you. Many 'best of' badges are paid placements, or come from directories that earn a fee when you contact the advisor, so the advisor's interests rather than yours shape who shows up.

Credentials and designations matter, but they are a floor, not a guarantee. A license or certification tells you someone met a minimum bar at some point; it does not tell you whether they have customer complaints, how they get paid, or what conflicts sit behind their advice. Two advisors with identical letters after their names can have very different public records.

The TransparencyScore measures something those do not: how openly an advisor's public regulatory record holds up, scored the same way for everyone, with no one able to pay for a better result. It will not tell you who is the most skilled investor — no honest score can — but it will tell you who has been transparent about fees, conflicts, and history, which is the part you can actually check before you hand someone your savings.

How should you actually use it?

Use the TransparencyScore as a starting point, not a final answer. It is the first question, not the last word.

We have scored more than 747,000 advisors and over 48,000 firms from public SEC and FINRA data. The average TransparencyScore is 75.8, about one in four advisors scores 80 or above, and roughly 65,000 advisors have at least one disclosure event on their record. Those numbers give you a sense of what is normal, so you can see where any particular advisor stands against the field.

A practical way to use it: look up the advisor or firm you are considering, read the four dimensions to see what is driving the number, and turn anything that looks low into a question you ask in your next meeting. If the Conflict Disclosure dimension is weak, ask how they get paid and what conflicts they have. If the Disclosure Record shows complaints, ask what happened and how it was resolved. A transparent advisor will answer plainly; that conversation often tells you more than the number itself.

You can browse advisors and see their scores on our advisors page, look up any individual profile to see the full breakdown, or run your own statement through our fee check to see what you are paying today. And because every score is built from public records, you can always verify it yourself against SEC IAPD and FINRA BrokerCheck. We show our work so you do not have to take our word for it.