Methodology & Data Sources

Data Sources

PlainAdvisorCheck aggregates and organizes data from two official regulatory sources that together provide the most comprehensive picture of broker and firm disciplinary history available to the public:

• FINRA BrokerCheck - The primary source for broker and broker-dealer firm disciplinary records in the United States, maintained by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Available at brokercheck.finra.org
• SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) - The SEC's official source for registered investment advisor records, Form ADV filings, and advisor disciplinary history. Available at adviserinfo.sec.gov
• SEC EDGAR - Enforcement actions, litigation releases, and administrative proceedings from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, available at sec.gov/edgar. SEC enforcement data supplements FINRA disclosures with federal regulatory actions.
• SEC Division of Enforcement Annual Report - Aggregate statistics on enforcement actions, sanctions, and litigation outcomes published yearly by the SEC at sec.gov/page/secs-enforcement-results.

How We Process the Data

Our automated ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipeline ingests raw regulatory data from FINRA and the SEC, normalizes it for consistent search and display, and loads it into a structured SQLite database optimized for fast lookup by broker name, firm name, CRD number, and geographic location. The pipeline follows this sequence:

1. Download broker and firm data from FINRA's public BrokerCheck data export, which includes registration records, disclosure events, and employment history
2. Parse disciplinary disclosures, regulatory actions, customer disputes, arbitration awards, and employment history from structured data fields
3. Normalize broker names and firm identifiers for searchability, handling name variations, abbreviations, and legal entity suffixes
4. Cross-reference with SEC enforcement actions where applicable, matching by company name and CIK identifiers
5. Load into our search-optimized database organized by broker name, firm, state, and disclosure type

How the Source Agencies Collect Data

FINRA BrokerCheck data originates from the Central Registration Depository (CRD), the securities industry's registration and licensing database. Every registered broker-dealer and their associated individuals must file Form U4 (registration) and Form U5 (termination) through the CRD system. Disciplinary disclosures, customer complaints, arbitration awards, and regulatory actions are reported by firms and regulators as they occur.

SEC enforcement data comes from publicly filed administrative proceedings, civil lawsuits, and litigation releases published through the EDGAR system. These represent formal enforcement actions taken by the SEC, not preliminary investigations.

Data Currency

FINRA updates BrokerCheck data on a rolling basis as new registrations, disclosures, and disciplinary actions are filed. We update our database periodically when new FINRA data becomes available. For the most current status of any broker or firm, always verify directly at brokercheck.finra.org.

Firm Grading Methodology

Underlying disclosure counts and categories are displayed exactly as reported to FINRA. On top of that raw data, PlainAdvisorCheck computes one analytical layer, a size-normalized A–F firm grade, to help investors compare firms fairly. The method:

• Grade A is assigned to any firm with zero reportable BrokerCheck disclosures, regardless of size.
• For firms that carry disclosures, we compute a disclosure-severity score weighting regulatory events most heavily (regulatory × 1.0 + arbitration × 0.6 + civil × 0.4), then divide by the firm's branch-office count to get disclosure intensity per branch.
• Each disclosing firm is ranked by that intensity against same-size peers (size class derived from FINRA's firm-size classification and branch footprint). Grade B = below the 50th percentile, C = 50th–80th, D = 80th–95th, F = top 5%.
• We normalize by branch footprint rather than advisor headcount because FINRA's public firm API publishes a branch-office count for every firm but does not publish a firmwide registered-representative count.

The grade is an editorial screening signal, not a regulatory determination. Weights are an editorial choice; we publish them here for transparency. Always review the underlying disclosure detail on FINRA BrokerCheck before acting.

Data Accuracy Commitment

PlainAdvisorCheck presents regulatory data exactly as published by FINRA and the SEC. Disciplinary records, disclosure counts, and employment history are displayed as reported; the only value we add is the transparent, size-normalized firm grade described above. If you believe any information is inaccurate, please contact us and we will verify against the source data.

Limitations

• PlainAdvisorCheck may not reflect disclosures or status changes filed after our last data update
• Some broker records are expunged from BrokerCheck by FINRA arbitration order, these do not appear in our data
• Investment advisers registered only with state regulators (not FINRA) may not appear in this database
• A disclosure on a broker's record does not necessarily indicate wrongdoing, disclosures include settled customer complaints, pending matters, and regulatory inquiries that may have been resolved favorably
• This site is for informational research purposes only, not investment advice
• FINRA BrokerCheck focuses on registered broker-dealers; registered investment advisers (RIAs) who are not also broker-dealers should be checked through the SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) database

Data Availability & Reuse

The derived figures on our research pages (grade distributions, disclosure-intensity breakdowns, state-level comparisons) are published under a CC0 (public domain) dedication and are free to cite or embed with attribution to PlainAdvisorCheck and the underlying FINRA/SEC source; each research page carries a stable citation string in its "Cite this page" box. The underlying regulatory data itself remains the property of FINRA and the SEC, PlainAdvisorCheck's only original contribution is the size-normalized grade and the derived aggregate statistics.

We do not currently offer a bulk data export, API, or licensed data feed. This is a readiness note, not an announcement, no such product exists today and none is planned without further evaluation.