Introducing Certified Advisor Reviews™: The first advisor review platform built for SEC Marketing Rule compliance

Clients and other acquaintances write a review on the Wealthtender profile of an advisor who has turned the reviews feature on. Before a review is publicly displayed, the advisor provides Wealthtender with important information about their relationship with the reviewer, so consumers gain the transparency they deserve when their life savings could be at stake. These disclosures also help advisors satisfy compliance with industry regulations.

Once Wealthtender receives the requested information, we complete the certification process and publish the review with the Certified Advisor Review™ mark. Advisors in good standing are authorized to display the Certified Advisor Reviews™ badge on their website, email signature, and social media accounts.

There are two easy, compliant ways to display reviews on your site.

1) A rotating carousel. This is how Abundo Wealth, an SEC-registered investment advisor, publishes reviews on its homepage. To stay compliant they display the three required disclosures clearly and prominently (client or non-client, compensated or not, any material conflicts), and because only a sample of reviews is shown, they link to their Wealthtender profile where every review is available. Since each rotating review shares the same disclosures (each reviewer is a current client, not compensated, no conflicts), the disclosure can be written once and applied to the set.

2) An embeddable widget. Wealthtender can provide simple HTML you can place anywhere on your site, below your bio, within an article, or on your homepage. Each review is packaged with its required disclosures, so nothing extra needs to be coded. You can see a live example on the Abundo Wealth article. Learn how to display testimonials on advisor websites.

Editing: if a review contains language not permissible by the SEC or another regulator, Wealthtender works with the advisor and, or their compliance officer to redact the disallowed language (or remove it if doing so does not affect the integrity of the review).

Anonymity: all reviewers must provide a valid email address, shared only with the reviewed advisor to confirm identity. Reviewers may choose to display their full name, an abbreviated name, or remain anonymous.

Removal: advisors may request a review be removed or not published if it is disallowed by a regulator, for example if the reviewer meets the SEC definition of a bad actor. Wealthtender also removes spam automatically and may remove profane or indiscernible reviews lacking substance.

Optional: reviews are always optional. Advisors can turn them on or off at any time and still enjoy all other platform benefits.

For doctors and lawyers, online reviews are already a fact of doing business, a useful preview of where advisor reviews are heading. In a BrightLocal survey, 89% of consumers said they look at reviews of medical professionals and 81% look at lawyer reviews. A 2018 NRC Health study of 3,000+ patients found 37% used online reviews as their very first step in finding a new doctor, 83% trust online ratings more than personal recommendations, 75% want to see at least 7 ratings, and 60% are suspicious of only-positive reviews. A 2018 Martindale-Avvo survey of 6,300 consumers found 47% used review sites and directories to find an attorney, more than any other resource.

We also asked several doctors, lawyers, and review experts what they would tell a financial advisor getting started:

Max Meinerz, DDS

Honest Teeth Dentistry

“Most patients are happy to write reviews and love sharing their chosen professional with others. You simply have to make a practice to ask. And spread your reviews across multiple platforms; only focusing on Google can hurt you if their algorithm changes.”

Jason Stern

Law Offices of Jason Stern

“Online reviews are critical in this digital age. They provide marketing support, differentiation, and validation before a client ever calls. But have a strategy: when I declined to advertise, Yelp buried all of my five-star reviews under ‘Reviews Not Recommended.’”

Melanie Jayashankar

Owner, MJ Law Firm

“I always ask prospective clients to Google me and form their own opinions. My reviews speak for themselves, and most feel more comfortable hiring me after seeing them. Your former clients can sell you better than you can sell yourself.”

Kris Ruby

CEO, Ruby Media Group

“Google is now your digital front door. How you respond to reviews matters more than the reviews themselves: make the person feel heard, validate with genuine empathy, and know when to stop. People measure a business by how the owner replies.”

David Reischer, Esq.

Attorney & CEO, LegalAdvice.com

“My most important advice is to work hard to prevent bad reviews before they happen. Consumers scan reviews looking for consistency; a mostly-negative pattern signals a problem. Be proactive: ask what can be done to satisfy a client before they post a negative review.”

E-E-A-T is Google’s shorthand for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (Google added the extra “Experience” to its Quality Rater guidelines in late 2022). YMYL refers to “Your Money or Your Life” topics that could affect a person’s financial stability, health, or safety. Financial advisor websites are already held to higher E-E-A-T and YMYL standards.

Google’s guidelines instruct raters to look for independent reputation information: “When the website says one thing about itself, but reputable external sources disagree, trust the external sources.” By earning reviews on a high-authority third-party platform like Wealthtender, you strengthen those signals and can improve how prominently you appear in search and AI answers.

Wealthtender’s 2025 study of 500 U.S. adults earning $100K+ found that 96% will research an advisor online even after a referral, and reading online reviews and awards is their most popular next step (83%). 61% consider positive reviews on an independent site essential to trust, and 50% want to read reviews before they even reach out. Yet the 2025 Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot shows only about 9.3% of advisors use testimonials or reviews in their marketing, so publishing compliant reviews is one of the highest-leverage ways to stand out and become a prospect’s first call.

Yes. Certified Advisor Reviews™ are designed to be fully compliant with the SEC Investment Adviser Marketing Rule, developed with the guidance of securities attorney Leila Shaver and maintained against the SEC Marketing Compliance FAQ page, which Wealthtender monitors daily.

Yes. In addition to the SEC Marketing Rule, Certified Advisor Reviews™ are designed to be fully compliant with FINRA Rule 2210 and Regulatory Notice 17-18. Wealthtender believes the SEC Marketing Rule generally sets a higher disclosure bar than current FINRA regulations, so all reviews align to the SEC requirements. That gives a consistent experience across Investment Adviser Representatives, Registered Representatives, Dually Registered professionals, and state-registered advisers in states that have conformed, and gives consumers a consistent basis to weigh reviews.

To earn the mark, a review publicly displays information known to the advisor that a consumer writing a review usually would not provide. At a minimum, the advisor must disclose:

• Whether compensation in any form was provided for the review
• Whether conflicts of interest may have influenced the review
• Whether the review was written by a client or another acquaintance of the advisor

These are displayed clearly and prominently alongside the review, along with any supplemental disclosures the advisor provides to meet federal or state requirements. Per the SEC, a written agreement must be in place between advisor and reviewer unless the reviewer receives less than $1,000 (in cash or otherwise) within a 12-month period, and these requirements apply even to short posts such as a tweet.

Editing: if a review contains language not permissible by the SEC or another regulator, Wealthtender works with the advisor and, or their compliance officer to redact the disallowed language, or to remove it when doing so does not affect the integrity of the review.

Anonymity: all reviewers must provide a valid email address, shared only with the reviewed advisor to confirm identity. A reviewer may be displayed with their full name, an abbreviated name, or anonymously.

Advisors may request a review be removed or not published if it is disallowed by the SEC or another regulator. For example, if the reviewer meets the SEC definition of a “bad actor,” the advisor can submit a form attesting to the disqualification and Wealthtender will promptly remove the review.

Wealthtender also abides by the FTC Consumer Review Fairness Act and may, alone or in coordination with advisors and their compliance officers, prohibit or remove reviews deemed inappropriate or irrelevant. Spam is deleted automatically, and profane or indiscernible reviews lacking substance may be removed.

Optional: reviews are never required. Advisors may turn them on or off at any time and keep every other platform benefit. Federal or state regulations may also restrict or prevent an advisor from collecting reviews.

Republishing: under the FTC Consumer Review Fairness Act, review sites cannot claim copyright over consumer reviews, so reviews posted anywhere may be republished elsewhere with permission from the review writer. Advisors can display Certified Advisor Reviews™ on their own website via a compliant carousel or an embeddable widget.

Reviews on Google and Yelp lack the disclosures required for them to be used as advertisements under the SEC Marketing Rule, so advisors cannot direct prospects to them. The bigger risk is solicitation. In FINRA Regulatory Notice 17-18, FINRA treats only unsolicited third-party comments as outside Rule 2210, which means the act of asking for a review can trigger disclosure requirements those platforms do not support. Securities attorney Max Schatzow has noted that asking clients to leave a Google review may be deemed an advertisement by the SEC.

We also continue to hear from firm leaders who invited clients to review them on Google and later realized their Google Business Profiles had become toxic, containing promissory language and content prohibited by the Marketing Rule. Add to that: Google prohibits compensating reviewers (the SEC permits it with disclosure), Yelp penalizes businesses that ask for reviews, and removing a bad actor on Google requires a formal legal filing.

Wealthtender designed its platform for full compliance with the SEC Marketing Rule. We could enable Google submissions tomorrow; that is not the point. We are not in the business of doing it anyway and asking forgiveness later. Learn more about Google Business Profiles and Google Reviews for advisors, or how to import Google Reviews to Wealthtender.

Reviews have become central to how people choose local businesses and professionals. In a BrightLocal survey, 87% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, up from 67% a decade earlier. In a Podium survey of 1,543 consumers, 88% said reviews played a role in discovering a local business and 41% ranked reviews among the three most important factors when choosing one. Other findings advisors should note:

• 58% would travel farther to a business with better reviews.
• 47% are willing to pay more at a business with higher reviews.
• Over 60% are likely to leave a review after a good experience when the business follows up with a link by email.

As technology writer David Pogue observed in Scientific American, the era of one-way marketing is over now that the masses are conversing with one another.

It depends. In Wealthtender’s 2025 study of 500 U.S. adults earning $100K+, 17% consider “no online reviews” a red flag and 33% are concerned about negative reviews. Newer advisors, or those who recently moved from a large firm, may simply have fewer reviews so far, and some advisors are prohibited by their state from asking clients to write reviews through no fault of their own. That said, if an advisor has practiced for several years and has no online presence or reviews at all, it may signal less focus on client satisfaction or digital sophistication.

A great deal, and increasingly so. In Wealthtender’s 2025 study of adults earning $100K+ who plan to hire an advisor, researching an advisor’s reputation by reading online reviews and awards was the single most popular next step after a referral (83%). Even when an advisor came highly recommended, 96% said they would still research that advisor online, 61% consider positive reviews on an independent website essential to judging reputation, and 50% want to read reviews before they even make contact.

Most people think so. In the same study, 61% consider positive reviews on an independent website essential to evaluating an advisor, while only 36% place similar weight on testimonials shown on the advisor’s own site, since businesses tend to display only their most flattering ones. Independent reviews offer unfiltered perspectives, and on a platform like Wealthtender every review also carries the SEC-required disclosures (client or non-client, compensated or not, any conflicts), so you can judge how much weight to give each one.

Mostly the human side of the relationship. Wealthtender’s 2025 Voice of the Client Study found that nearly 90% of client reviews focus on relationship quality, planning advice, and emotional factors like reduced stress and peace of mind, while only about 1 in 10 center on investment or portfolio performance. Reviews reveal how an advisor communicates, follows through, and supports clients through life’s transitions, the kind of insight you cannot get from marketing materials alone.

A helpful review gives future clients real insight into what it’s like to work with an advisor. Here are our tips for writing one: