What is Form ADV? A Complete Guide for Asset Managers & Service Providers

What is Form ADV?

Form ADV is the uniform disclosure document that investment advisors must file with the SEC and state securities authorities. It’s designed to provide transparency for investors while giving regulators insight into a firm’s structure, practices, and potential conflicts.

Every SEC-registered investment advisor, and many state-registered firms, are required to complete this filing annually. The form is made publicly available through the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) database, ensuring investors and industry professionals can review details about a firm’s operations.

The Two Key Parts of Form ADV

Form ADV is broken into two main sections:

• Part 1: A fill-in-the-blank form that provides structured data about a firm’s ownership, employees, business practices, clients, affiliations, and disciplinary history.
• Part 2 (Brochure): A narrative written in plain English where firms explain their services, fee schedules, conflicts of interest, and investment strategies.

Together, these parts create a comprehensive profile of an advisory firm, offering deep insights into who they are and how they operate.

• Assets Under Management (AUM): How much capital the firm manages, and how it’s allocated.
• Client Types: Breakdown of whether clients are high-net-worth individuals, institutional investors, pension plans, or retail investors.
• Custodians: Which custodial platforms (e.g., Schwab, Fidelity, Pershing) the RIA uses to custody assets.
• Business Practices: Compensation structures, affiliations, and any conflicts of interest.
• Investment Strategies: Information on how assets are allocated across equities, ETFs, mutual funds, alternatives, and private funds.
• Disciplinary Information: Disclosure of any regulatory or legal actions against the firm or its advisors.

• Targeted Prospecting: Instead of guessing which RIAs are aligned with your offering, Form ADV helps identify firms that fit your ideal client profile.
• Competitive Intelligence: Learn what custodians, funds, or service providers are already using.
• Risk Assessment: Spot red flags before engaging with a potential client.
• Market Mapping: Build a clearer picture of the RIA landscape in a specific region or AUM range.

• Lengthy & Complex: Filings can run dozens of pages, packed with legal and compliance-heavy language.
• Fragmented: Each firm’s filing lives as a separate PDF or XML file. There’s no easy way to search across multiple firms at once.
• Time-Consuming: Sifting through hundreds of filings to find firms that meet your criteria can take weeks.
• Limited Tools: The SEC’s IAPD website allows access but offers only basic search and no enrichment.

In other words, while Form ADV is full of gold, it’s buried under layers of complexity.

How FINTRX Makes Form ADV Accessible

This is where FINTRX transforms the landscape. By ingesting, structuring, and enriching Form ADV data, FINTRX makes it not only accessible but actionable.

1. Structured, Searchable Data: Instead of guessing which RIAs are aligned with your offering, Form ADV helps identify firms that fit your ideal client profile.

• “Show me RIAs with $500M–$2B in AUM.”
• “Find firms custodying with Schwab or Fidelity.”
• “Identify RIAs allocating more than 20% to ETFs.”

2. AI-Powered Search: With natural language capabilities, users can simply type a query like:

• “Which RIAs in New York have over $300M in AUM and allocate to alternatives?”

 FINTRX instantly surfaces the most relevant firms, saving hours of manual research.

3. Contextual Enrichment: FINTRX goes beyond the filing itself by layering on:

•  Verified Contacts: Names, emails, and phone numbers for decision-makers.
•   Holdings Data: ETF, mutual fund, and private fund allocations.
•  Historical Tracking: Year-over-year AUM growth, custodian changes, and strategy shifts.
•  Relationship Insights: Shared backgrounds, alumni networks, and personal interests for warm introductions.

4. Time Savings: What once took days or weeks, manually reviewing and compiling ADV filings, can now be done in minutes with powerful filters and AI queries.

Practical Use Cases

1. Asset Managers Launching a New Fund

An ETF issuer can quickly identify RIAs already allocating to competitor funds, narrowing outreach to the highest-probability prospects.

2. Fintech & Wealthtech Vendors

Technology providers can map out which firms use specific custodians or competitive platforms, allowing for targeted sales pitches based on existing workflows.

3. M&A Teams & Aggregators

By filtering on AUM size, client mix, and growth history, buyers can spot attractive RIA acquisition targets.

4. Consultants & Service Firms

Marketing agencies, compliance firms, and other service providers can segment the market to focus on the RIAs most aligned with their offerings.

Conclusion

Form ADV is one of the most powerful datasets in the RIA ecosystem. It provides unmatched transparency into how advisory firms operate, from assets under management to custodial relationships and investment strategies. For asset managers, fintech providers, and service firms, it offers the roadmap to more targeted and effective distribution.

The problem? On its own, Form ADV is dense and difficult to use at scale. FINTRX solves this by making Form ADVs structured, searchable, and enriched with AI-driven insights.

If you’re serious about targeting RIAs, winning new business, and accelerating growth, FINTRX turns regulatory filings into a competitive advantage.

Request a demo today to see how FINTRX transforms Form ADV data into actionable intelligence.