Form ADV for data users
What Part 1A asks, item by item, and how the answers turn into data.
Column dictionary
All 448 columns in the SEC's monthly investment adviser file, mapped to Form ADV items.
Regulatory adviser data
Public data about US investment advisers comes from the SEC and FINRA. Here's what each source holds, how to get it, and what its fields mean.
Sources
| Source | Run by | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Form ADV Our reference | SEC | The registration form investment advisers file with the SEC or the states, and that exempt reporting advisers file in part. Part 1A is structured answers; those answers become data. |
| SEC monthly investment adviser data file Our reference | SEC | A file of Form ADV Part 1A answers, one row per firm, for SEC-registered and exempt reporting advisers. |
| IAPD (Investment Adviser Public Disclosure) Our reference | SEC | The public search site for adviser firms and representatives, with downloadable compilation feeds. |
| EDGAR Our reference | SEC | The SEC's filings database, with free JSON APIs that need no key. |
| FINRA API platform Our reference | FINRA | FINRA's developer platform for some FINRA datasets, with a free Public credential. |
API access to these sources
What we publish, and what we don't
We publish firm-level fields only. We don't publish records about individual representatives, home addresses, or any label of our own derived from the data. The underlying SEC data is a US government work; the SEC doesn't warrant its accuracy, and neither do we. Check a firm's current filing on IAPD before relying on any value.
A monthly firm-level dataset download is planned. It will appear here with checksums when it's ready.