Marketing to financial advisors and RIAs

This guide is for companies that sell to adviser firms: software, custody and platform providers, asset managers, marketing agencies, compliance services and acquirers. It covers who decides, how firms are sized, the rules that apply to advisers' own marketing, and what to look for in a list.

Who buys from you at an adviser firm?

At most firms the founder or a managing partner signs, because most firms are small. The IAA Snapshot found that the median SEC-registered adviser had 8 non-clerical employees in 2025, and 92.8% had 100 or fewer (IAA and Comply, Investment Adviser Industry Snapshot 2026). At a firm of that size, the owner usually chooses the custodian, the planning software and the marketing agency, often with the operations lead or the chief compliance officer in the room.

Larger firms split the decision:

• Technology and operations pick portfolio, CRM, planning and reporting software.
• The chief compliance officer reviews anything that touches client communications or recordkeeping.
• Investment teams decide which funds, models and separately managed accounts go on the platform, which is who an asset manager's distribution team talks to.
• The CEO or a corporate development lead handles acquisitions and succession.

Advisor ("financial advisor") is usually a job title, while adviser ("investment adviser") is a registered firm. A list of advisers is a list of firms, which is the level most of these buyers sell at.

How many adviser firms are there, and how big are they?

The SEC Form ADV file of 2026-10-02 lists ~15,000 SEC-registered adviser firms with a main office in the 50 states or DC. That is an undercount: the SEC withholds the address of ~1,400 firms whose main office is a private residence, so they can't be placed in a state. State-registered firms, usually the smaller ones, are in a different register and not in this count.

SEC-registered adviser firms by regulatory assets under management

The median firm in our file reports $454.5 million in regulatory assets under management. The asset band hints at budget and buying process. Firms under $500 million tend to be run by their owners, while firms above $10 billion usually have their own operations and compliance staff, and a longer sales cycle.

SEC-registered adviser firms by employees (Form ADV Item 5A)

These are register counts from the SEC Form ADV file of 2026-10-02. Firms that report no employees are left out of the employee table. The exact figures are in ria-firms-register-2026-10.csv.

Where are the firms?

New York has the most SEC-registered adviser firms, ~2,600, followed by California with ~1,900. The ten states with the most firms:

Per resident, Connecticut leads with 13.7 firms per 100,000 people, most of them around Greenwich and Stamford. State-registered firms are spread differently: NASAA's largest home states at the end of 2024 were California (2,641), Texas (1,370) and Florida (1,222) (NASAA, Investment Adviser Section 2025 Annual Report). The full table by state is on how many RIAs are in the US.

Which marketing rules apply, and to whom?

The SEC Marketing Rule and FINRA's communications rule govern what advisers and brokers say to their own clients and prospects. They don't govern a vendor emailing an adviser firm to sell it software or services. Your email to the firm is covered by CAN-SPAM, like any commercial email.

• SEC Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1). It applies to "any investment adviser registered or required to be registered" with the SEC, and to the advertisements that adviser disseminates (17 CFR 275.206(4)-1). The SEC adopted it on 22 December 2020, replacing the old advertising and cash solicitation rules (SEC, Release IA-5653), and advisers had to comply by 4 November 2022 (SEC, Marketing FAQ).
• FINRA Rule 2210. It covers "communications with the public" by FINRA member firms, meaning broker-dealers. A retail communication is one sent or made available to more than 25 retail investors within 30 calendar days (FINRA Rule 2210).
• CAN-SPAM. Your cold email to an adviser firm needs accurate headers, an honest subject line, a postal address and a working opt-out, and the FTC says the law "makes no exception for business-to-business email" (FTC). Our guide is buying an email list legal? covers the rules in full.

The rules matter to you in another way. If you sell advisers anything they use to reach their own clients, such as content, a website, social posts, reviews or a referral program, the adviser's compliance officer will check it against the Marketing Rule before signing. Say up front how your product helps them comply, and expect a compliance review in the sales cycle.

Build your list from firm records. Every firm row should come from the SEC's Form ADV data, not from scraped profiles of individual representatives.

What a good adviser firm list contains

A useful list has one row per firm, keyed to its registration number, with the fields that let you size and route the firm:

Firms registered in the last year are worth a separate look. ~1,300 firms in the file of 2026-10-02 have an SEC registration that took effect in the previous 12 months. Not all are new businesses, because a state-registered firm that grows past the SEC threshold also gets a new effective date. Either way, a firm that has just registered with the SEC is often choosing new providers.

Our RIA firm database has one row per SEC-registered firm with these fields, and each email carries the page where the firm published it. You can order it nationwide or by state.

What this guide can't tell you

• Whether a firm is a good prospect for you. Assets and headcount are a start; the firm's clients and services decide fit.
• Anything about state-registered firms in our file. They aren't in the SEC data, and our counts leave them out.
• How the Marketing Rule applies to a specific product you sell to advisers. Ask a securities lawyer or the firm's compliance officer.

This is general information, not legal advice.