How every record is built

Fee-only, checked

Wellspent lists fee-only advisors: paid only by their clients, with no commissions, product revenue, or trailing fees. Listings start from fee-only professional organizations, and every advisor page shows which one. We then check SEC records. An advisor who is also registered as a broker, or whose firm reports commission pay, is labelled a financial advisor rather than fee-only and left out of fee-only lists. In Canada we do the same for advisors affiliated with an investment or mutual fund dealer.

Where the facts come from

• SEC records. Registration, exams passed, disclosures, and the firm's Form ADV.
• The firm's own website. Specialties, the clients they serve, and published fees. We keep a fact only when the exact words stating it appear on the page, and we show the date we checked.
• Professional organizations. Name, firm, location, and credentials.
• The advisor. Members can add and edit their own details, which are labelled as provided by the advisor.

Each advisor page lists its sources at the bottom.

Nobody pays to rank

An advisor appears on a specialty, location, or list page because their record matches it. There is no paid placement and no sponsored slot, and order reflects fit, not payment. When a broad search returns more advisors than we can show at once, records kept up to date by the advisor come first, because they carry the specialty and client details that matching depends on.

How often it updates

The public graph rebuilds every week. Each fact shows the date it was last checked, and member records show when the advisor last updated them.

Corrections

Any advisor, member or not, can ask for a correction, and we review every request within seven days. Fixes carry into every future update.

Email [email protected].