Legal & Disclosures
Everything about how Fidelon works, in one place — organized by who you are. Click any disclosure to read it here.
For Investors
You're using Fidelon to research advisors and firms.
Terms of Use — the rules for using the platform, including registered report access
Effective date: July 8, 2026. Material changes are versioned; your acceptance record references the version you accepted.
These Terms of Use govern your access to and use of Fidelon's website, data, scores, reports, and services (collectively, the "Platform"). By accessing or using the Platform, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Platform.
About Fidelon
Fidelon is operated by Fidelon, Inc., a Delaware corporation ("Fidelon").
Fidelon publishes evaluations of financial advisory firms and individually registered financial professionals — investment adviser representatives and broker-dealer registered representatives — derived from public regulatory records maintained by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and state regulators. The complete list of sources is on the Data Sources page.
Fidelon's scores and findings are our editorial opinion, formed by applying a published methodology to the public record. They are not a consumer report, a credit report, a background check, or a regulatory determination.
Two Levels of Access
The Platform has two levels of access.
Public preview. Anyone may view the public layer of the Platform: search and summary-level profile information. This layer exists so investors can find and identify advisers and firms.
Full reports (registered access). Detailed evaluations of individual advisers and representatives are available to registered users who have accepted these Terms and told us why they're looking. We record that, along with the Terms version and date.
We ask because it helps us build the right thing for each kind of reader — not because any law requires it. Your answer does not change what you see.
Why We Ask What You're Researching
When you register and access full reports on individual advisers, you tell us which best describes your goal:
- Reviewing your own information — you are the adviser or representative the report is about, or their authorized representative
- Prospective client — you are evaluating an adviser you are considering hiring
- Current adviser — you are reviewing the record of an adviser you already work with
- Professional review — attorney, compliance, or other professional capacity
- Industry research — you are researching the profession generally
Hiring and recruiting is different. Fidelon's public profiles are not set up to be used for employment, hiring, or affiliation decisions, and full reports are not unlocked for that purpose. Using background information about a person to make a hiring decision triggers obligations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act — including a standalone written disclosure, written authorization, and an adverse-action process — that fall on the party making the decision. If that is your use case, contact institutional@fidelon.com rather than using the public Platform.
Prohibited Uses
You may not use the Platform to:
- Use Fidelon reports on individual advisers to make employment, hiring, promotion, retention, or affiliation decisions
- Use Platform data for credit decisions, tenant screening, or insurance underwriting
- Compile, resell, or redistribute Fidelon data or scores without a written data licensing agreement
- Scrape, reverse-engineer, or systematically extract data from the Platform
- Harass, threaten, or target any individual adviser or firm based on Platform data
- Violate any applicable law, including the FCRA and state data privacy laws
Scores and Reports Are Not Financial Advice
TransparencyScores, reports, and all Platform content are information, not advice. They are not a recommendation to hire or avoid any adviser or firm, a prediction of investment performance, or a legal determination of compliance or misconduct. See Not Financial Advice.
Accuracy, Disputes, and Limitations
Getting this right is the product, so we work at it. All report data derives from public regulatory records; Fidelon reports what regulators have published and does not independently audit the underlying filings. Every score and finding is traceable to a specific source record, and each profile displays the date of its most recent scoring cycle.
If we have misread the public record, we want to know. Advisers and firms can challenge anything we publish about them — see Your Rights on Fidelon and the Dispute & Correction Policy. These are commitments we make as a publisher about how we handle corrections, in the way a newsroom commits to correcting its reporting. They are editorial standards, not statutory obligations, and we hold ourselves to them because our work is worthless if it is wrong.
Intellectual Property
The Fidelon scoring methodology, algorithms, software, and Platform design are proprietary to Fidelon. Public regulatory data is not claimed as Fidelon's property; Fidelon's analytical outputs — scores, reports, and derived findings — are.
Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability
THE PLATFORM IS PROVIDED "AS IS." FIDELON MAKES NO WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OF ANY DATA, SCORE, OR REPORT. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, FIDELON'S LIABILITY FOR ANY CLAIM ARISING FROM USE OF THE PLATFORM IS LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF $100 OR THE AMOUNT YOU PAID FIDELON IN THE PRECEDING 12 MONTHS. NOTHING IN THESE TERMS LIMITS RIGHTS THAT CANNOT BE LIMITED BY LAW, INCLUDING RIGHTS UNDER THE FCRA.
Changes to These Terms
Fidelon may update these Terms. Material changes are posted with a new version and effective date, and registered users are notified. Continued use after notice constitutes acceptance; your consent record is updated to the version you accept.
Contact
Email: legal@fidelon.com Phone: (904) 297-2591 Mail: Fidelon, Inc., 390 NE 191st St., STE 90522, Miami, FL 33179
Privacy Policy — what we collect about you and how we use it
Effective date: July 8, 2026.
This Privacy Policy describes what information Fidelon, Inc. ("Fidelon") collects, how we use it, and the choices you have. It covers two distinct populations: people who use the Platform (investors and other readers) and people the Platform reports on (advisers and firms).
We describe our actual practices here, specifically. If a practice changes, this policy changes with it.
Information We Collect from Platform Users
Account information. Name and email address when you create an account. If you register for full report access, we also record your acceptance of the Terms of Use and your permissible-purpose certification — the version, the date, and the purpose you certified. Federal law requires us to keep this record.
Usage and analytics data. We use PostHog, a product analytics service, with automatic event capture. This records pages viewed, clicks, searches, and navigation, associated with a persistent visitor identifier stored in a first-party cookie and a per-visit session identifier. We also log product events (for example, running a fee check or viewing an advisor profile) to our own database, with the page URL and referrer. We use this data to understand and improve the product. We do not sell it, share it with advertising networks, or use it for cross-site behavioral advertising.
Documents and financial information you choose to submit. Some Fidelon tools work on information you provide:
- Fee Check: you may upload a brokerage or advisory account statement (PDF). The document is analyzed by an AI service provider (currently Anthropic) to extract fees and holdings. The PDF itself is not retained. We do retain the resulting analysis record, which can include the account holder's first name as it appears on the statement, the firm and adviser named on it, account type, portfolio value, holdings, and computed fee figures, plus a one-way hash of your IP address used for rate limiting.
- Scout and chat tools: the questions and descriptions of your situation that you type, and the email address you provide.
- Investor account features (saved advisers, conversation and audit history): the records you create are stored in your account so you can return to them. They are yours; they are never used to score advisers, and they are never published.
Payments. Processed by Stripe. Fidelon does not store full payment card numbers.
Communications. Support requests, dispute submissions, and other messages you send us.
Information We Compile About Advisers and Firms
Fidelon compiles reports on advisory firms and individually registered financial professionals using public regulatory records only: SEC Form ADV filings, SEC IAPD records, FINRA BrokerCheck records, Disclosure Reporting Pages, state regulatory filings, and state insurance license registries. The full list is on the Data Sources page.
Fidelon does not use privately submitted information to generate TransparencyScores. Data submitted through any paid Fidelon service is structurally separated from the scoring pipeline. We do not collect Social Security numbers, credit history, or private financial data about the advisers we report on.
How We Use Information
- To provide, secure, and improve the Platform
- To compile reports and calculate TransparencyScores (public regulatory data only)
- To record what readers tell us they're researching, so we can build the right thing for each audience
- To process transactions and send receipts
- To respond to support requests and investigate disputes
- To send product updates you can unsubscribe from at any time
- To comply with legal obligations
Service Providers and Sharing
Fidelon does not sell personal data. We share data only with:
- Service providers operating under agreements that prohibit unauthorized use — including hosting and infrastructure (AWS, Supabase), payment processing (Stripe), analytics (PostHog), and AI processing (Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI) for document analysis, chat features, and report generation. Documents and text you submit to AI-powered features are processed by these providers to deliver the feature.
- Registered users — detailed evaluations of individual advisers are available to readers who have accepted our Terms.
- Legal process — in response to valid subpoenas, court orders, or government requests.
- You — anything else, only with your explicit consent.
Your Rights If We Report On You
If you are an adviser or representative whose information appears in Fidelon's system, Fidelon gives you the right to see what we hold about you, challenge anything you believe misstates the public record, and add your own statement to your file. These are commitments we make as a publisher, not statutory entitlements. See Your Rights on Fidelon and the Dispute & Correction Policy.
California Residents (CCPA/CPRA)
California residents have the right to know what personal information we collect, to request deletion, to opt out of sale or sharing (Fidelon does not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising), and to non-discrimination for exercising these rights. Note that information compiled from public government records is handled under that framework. To submit a request: privacy@fidelon.com.
Data Retention
- Platform account data: retained while your account is active and up to 3 years after closure.
- Terms acceptance and research-purpose records: retained while your account is active.
- File requests and dispute records: retained a minimum of 5 years.
- Fee Check analysis records: retained to power your reports; the uploaded PDF is not retained.
- Report data from public filings: retained and refreshed on each scoring cycle.
Security
Encrypted transmission (TLS), encrypted storage for sensitive data, access controls, and regular security review. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you, we will notify you as applicable law requires.
Changes to This Policy
Material changes are posted here with a new effective date and communicated to registered users by email.
Contact
Email: privacy@fidelon.com Phone: (904) 297-2591 Mail: Fidelon, Inc., 390 NE 191st St., STE 90522, Miami, FL 33179, Attn: Privacy Officer
Not Financial Advice — what our scores are — and what they aren't
Everything on Fidelon is information, not advice. This page explains exactly what that means.
What Fidelon Is
Fidelon is a transparency platform. We compile, analyze, and publish information derived from public regulatory filings about financial advisory firms and individually registered financial professionals. Our TransparencyScores measure disclosure quality and the documented regulatory record — how clearly the public filings communicate services, fees, conflicts, and history, and what that history contains.
We are not a registered investment adviser. We are not a broker-dealer. We do not manage money, and we do not tell you what to invest in or whom to hire.
What Fidelon Is Not
Fidelon scores, reports, profiles, tools, and all related content:
- Are not investment advice
- Are not a recommendation to hire or avoid any specific adviser or firm
- Are not a guarantee of future performance or of the absence of misconduct
- Are not a legal determination of compliance, misconduct, or liability
- Are not a certification, accreditation, or endorsement
- Are not a substitute for your own due diligence
A high TransparencyScore means the public filings disclose clearly and the documented record is clean or well-managed. It does not mean the firm will generate good returns, avoid future regulatory issues, or be right for your situation. A low TransparencyScore means we found disclosure gaps, conflicts, or documented regulatory history in the public record. It does not mean the firm has committed fraud, will harm you, or is legally non-compliant.
About Fidelon's Analysis Tools
Some Fidelon tools analyze information you provide — a fee check on an account statement you upload, a question you ask about an adviser, an audit of advice you received elsewhere. These tools do one thing: they compare what you gave us against public filings and published benchmarks, and show you what the documents say — fees identified, conflicts disclosed, gaps between what you were told and what was filed.
That output is personalized information — it is about your documents and your questions — but it is not a recommendation. Fidelon's tools will not tell you to buy, sell, hold, switch advisers, or take any financial action. Decisions are yours, ideally made with more information than you had before.
What to Do With What You Find Here
Fidelon is a starting point, not a conclusion. Use it to:
- See what an adviser's filings actually disclose about services, fees, and conflicts
- Compare what an adviser tells you against what their regulatory filings say
- Ask better questions before you hire — or keep — an adviser
- Understand what you are paying, in dollars
Before making any financial decision:
- Read the adviser's full Form ADV Part 2A brochure at adviserinfo.sec.gov
- Check their FINRA BrokerCheck report at brokercheck.finra.org
- Consult your own independent financial, legal, or tax adviser
- Ask the adviser directly about anything the filings raise
Limitation of Liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, FIDELON IS NOT LIABLE FOR ANY FINANCIAL LOSS, INVESTMENT DECISION, OR OTHER HARM ARISING FROM RELIANCE ON FIDELON SCORES, REPORTS, TOOLS, OR CONTENT. YOU ARE SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FINANCIAL DECISIONS. FIDELON'S SCORES AND ANALYSES ARE ONE INPUT AMONG MANY THAT A PRUDENT INVESTOR WOULD CONSIDER.
Questions
If you're unsure how to interpret a Fidelon score or report: support@fidelon.com.
About Our Scores & Content
How the TransparencyScore works and where the data comes from.
Data Sources & Attribution — every public regulatory source we use, and how AI is used
Every TransparencyScore is derived exclusively from public regulatory records — documents filed with, and published by, government and self-regulatory agencies. No purchased data sets. No user reviews. No social media. This page lists every source, what it contains, and how it feeds scoring.
Regulatory Filing Sources
SEC Form ADV (Parts 1, 2, and 3)
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission What it is: The registration and disclosure document every registered investment adviser must file. Part 1 is structured data — registration, ownership, business activities, disciplinary flags (Item 11). Part 2A is the narrative brochure where firms describe their services, fees, and conflicts of interest in their own words. Part 3 (Form CRS) is the client relationship summary. How it feeds scoring: Part 1 flags and structure, Part 2A disclosure quality, and Form CRS clarity all feed the Filing Quality and Conflict Disclosure dimensions. Citations include the specific Item number and filing date.
SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD)
Source: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — adviserinfo.sec.gov What it is: The SEC's public database of registered advisers and individual representatives: registration status, employment history, and disclosure events. How it feeds scoring: Individual registration histories, examination records, and disclosure events feed the Disclosure Record and Credentials & Experience dimensions.
FINRA BrokerCheck
Source: Financial Industry Regulatory Authority — brokercheck.finra.org What it is: FINRA's public record of broker-dealers and registered representatives: registrations, customer complaints, regulatory actions, and disciplinary history. How it feeds scoring: Primary source for the broker-dealer side of the industry — firm regulatory actions, arbitrations, and individual representative records. Fidelon uses BrokerCheck data for investor-protection purposes consistent with FINRA's stated mission for the system. Where BrokerCheck data appears: "This information was obtained from FINRA BrokerCheck. For the most current information, visit brokercheck.finra.org."
Disclosure Reporting Pages (DRPs)
Source: Within Form ADV and BrokerCheck records What it is: The structured records documenting specific events — criminal matters, regulatory actions, civil judicial actions, customer complaints, terminations, and financial disclosures. In plain English: the individual complaint and disciplinary records. How it feeds scoring: A primary input to the Disclosure Record and Enforcement History dimensions. Citations include event type, filing date, and case reference where available.
State Regulatory Filings
Source: State securities regulators What it is: Form ADV filings for state-registered investment advisers (firms below the SEC registration threshold). How it feeds scoring: Same dimensions as SEC filings. State filing requirements vary, so data for state-registered firms can be less complete — a limitation we disclose rather than paper over.
State Insurance License Registries
Source: State departments of insurance and the NAIC's public licensee databases What it is: Public records of active insurance producer licenses. How it feeds scoring: When an adviser holds an active insurance sales license, that is a structural conflict-of-interest signal — commissions on insurance products can compete with advisory duty. Verified active licenses appear in the Conflict Audit and are reflected in advisor scoring.
How AI Is Used
Some filings are narrative documents, not structured data — a Form ADV Part 2A brochure can run over 100 pages. Fidelon uses AI language models to read and analyze narrative filings at scale: extracting fee structures, identifying conflict disclosures, assessing disclosure clarity, and drafting the plain-English profile summaries that appear on adviser and firm pages.
Three constraints govern this:
- AI reads filings; it does not invent facts. Every AI-assisted output is generated from, and traceable to, the underlying public record.
- The same analysis is applied to every firm and adviser. No manual overrides, no exceptions by size or brand.
- Errors are correctable. If an AI-generated summary misstates what a filing says, that is a data error and the Dispute & Correction Policy applies to it like any other.
What We Do Not Use
- Paid or purchased third-party data sets
- User-submitted reviews, ratings, or testimonials
- Social media
- Private client records or account information
- Anything submitted through Fidelon's paid services — profile claims, coaching, document uploads — to influence public TransparencyScores
The separation between the scoring pipeline and everything commercial is structural. See How We Score for the integrity firewall.
Data Currency and Limitations
- Scores reflect regulatory filings as of the most recent scoring cycle, displayed on every profile. Profiles may lag filings by 30–90 days.
- Form ADV brochures are self-prepared by firms. We analyze what firms disclose; we do not audit whether the underlying claims are true. We score what firms actually disclose, not what they should disclose.
- DRPs capture formal regulatory records. Informal complaints or private settlements that never reach a public filing are not visible to us — or to anyone reading the public record.
- State-registered adviser data is less uniform than SEC-registered data.
Reporting a Data Error
If a Fidelon profile misstates what the public record says, tell us. Individual advisers have a formal dispute process; firms have a correction process. Both are described in the Dispute & Correction Policy. Investigations complete within 30 days.
Editorial Policy — sourcing standards, independence, and corrections
Fidelon publishes TransparencyScores, profile summaries, analytical reports, and educational content about the financial advisory industry. This page documents the standards that content is produced under, how it is attributed, and how it gets corrected.
Editorial Independence
Fidelon's scores and content are produced independently of any commercial relationship with the firms and advisers we cover. No advertiser, sponsor, firm, or adviser can pay to change a score, suppress a finding, or alter published content. This is not a policy preference — it is a structural constraint: the scoring pipeline has no input path from Fidelon's commercial operations. See the integrity firewall.
Sourcing
Every factual claim in Fidelon content traces to a public regulatory record — a Form ADV item number, a Disclosure Reporting Page, a BrokerCheck record, an IAPD entry, a state registry. Where we cite a filing, we identify the document, the item, and the filing date. We do not publish findings we cannot source. Where a filing is ambiguous, we say it is ambiguous rather than drawing an unsupported conclusion.
No anonymous sources. Fidelon does not publish claims from tips, user submissions, or unverified reports. If it isn't in the public record, it isn't on Fidelon.
How Content Is Produced
Fidelon operates at the scale of the full registered industry — hundreds of thousands of profiles — so most profile content is generated by an automated pipeline, including AI-drafted plain-English summaries of what each adviser's or firm's public filings contain. Quality is enforced at the pipeline level, not by a human reading each page:
- Generation is constrained to the underlying public record — summaries describe what filings say, with the source data attached to the profile
- The same generation and scoring logic applies to every profile; there are no manual overrides
- Automated validation checks outputs against the structured source data
- Every profile carries a correction path, and corrections feed back into the pipeline
Editorial content that is written rather than generated — research reports, methodology explainers, educational guides — is reviewed before publication against the standards below.
What We Say and What We Don't
Fidelon content presents verifiable facts from regulatory filings and analytical conclusions derived from the published scoring framework — clearly labeled as such. We do not:
- Offer investment advice or recommend hiring or avoiding any adviser
- Make character judgments about individuals
- Publish unsourced allegations
- Use language implying legal conclusions only a court can reach
Fidelon's analytical framework operates under the same principles that protect institutional ratings: the criteria are published, consistently applied, and independent, and the underlying data is public and verifiable. That protection depends on the sourcing discipline above, which is why it is enforced structurally.
Corrections
Fidelon corrects factual errors promptly.
- Email corrections@fidelon.com with the URL, the specific error, and the corrective information with a source.
- Fidelon investigates within 10 business days.
- Warranted corrections are made with a notice identifying what changed and when.
- Errors in the underlying report data follow the Dispute & Correction Policy — that process governs factual corrections; this page governs editorial content.
Standards Checklist
All Fidelon content is held to these standards:
- Every factual claim traces to a specific, verifiable public record
- No investment advice; no character judgment
- Plain English — technical terms defined on first use
- Analytical conclusions labeled as such and connected to their evidence
- Material limitations of data and methodology acknowledged
For Advisors & Firms
Fidelon publishes a report about you. You can see it, challenge it, and errors get fixed.
Dispute & Correction Policy — how to fix inaccurate information on your profile, with timelines
Fidelon maintains a formal dispute process for individual advisers and representatives and a separate correction process for advisory firms.
Both processes exist for the same reason: if a Fidelon profile misstates what the public record says, it gets fixed.
These are editorial commitments — the corrections policy of a publisher, in the way a newsroom commits to correcting its reporting. Fidelon is not a consumer reporting agency and these are not statutory dispute rights. We hold ourselves to the timelines below because getting the record right is the entire product.
Individual Advisers — Dispute Process
Any individually registered financial professional (or their authorized legal representative) may dispute information in their Fidelon file.
What can be disputed:
- Factual data errors — wrong CRD number, wrong registration status, wrong licensing information
- Disciplinary or complaint records that do not appear in the underlying public regulatory filing
- Records attributed to you that belong to someone else
- Information that was accurate when recorded but has since been updated in the underlying public filing
What cannot be disputed:
- Fidelon's scoring methodology or analytical weighting — that is framework design, not data (send it to methodology@fidelon.com instead)
- Information that accurately reflects the current state of your public regulatory filings
- A score correctly derived from accurately reported data
How to file:
- Online: the Fidelon Advisor Portal, or
- Email: disputes@fidelon.com, subject "Dispute — [Full Legal Name] — CRD# [Number]", including: the specific information disputed, why you believe it is inaccurate, supporting documentation (e.g., the regulatory filing showing the correct information), and your contact information.
What happens next:
| Step | Timeframe |
|---|---|
| Acknowledgment of receipt | 3 business days |
| Investigation completed | 30 days (45 if you provide additional information during the investigation) |
| Written notice of outcome | Within the investigation period |
| Correction implemented, if warranted | 5 business days after resolution |
Information that cannot be verified as accurate is corrected or deleted. If your dispute is resolved against you and you still disagree, you may add a statement of dispute (up to 100 words) to your file, which is included wherever we publish that record.
Advisory Firms — Correction Process
Firms may request correction of factual errors on their profile: wrong firm CRD, wrong AUM, wrong registration status, data belonging to another entity, or information since updated in the underlying filing. Requests: disputes@fidelon.com, subject "Firm Correction — [Firm Name] — CRD# [Number]", reviewed within 30 days as Fidelon operating policy.
Firms may not request removal of accurately reported regulatory or disciplinary history, or of scores correctly derived from accurate data. The record is the record.
After a Regulatory Filing Changes
Fidelon re-ingests public filings on a rolling cycle, so a correction made at the source (SEC, FINRA, or a state regulator) flows through automatically — but with a lag of up to 30–90 days. If you have amended a filing and want the profile updated ahead of the cycle, say so in your dispute or email scoring@fidelon.com for a priority rescore.
Contact
Online: Fidelon Advisor Portal Email: disputes@fidelon.com Phone: (904) 297-2591 Mail: Fidelon, Inc., 390 NE 191st St., STE 90522, Miami, FL 33179
For Institutions
Platforms and teams accessing Fidelon data at scale.
Questions about any of these pages: legal@fidelon.com · (904) 297-2591 · Fidelon, Inc., 390 NE 191st St., STE 90522, Miami, FL 33179