Is a financial advisor's blog an advertisement under the Marketing Rule?

Often it can be, depending on content and purpose, so ask compliance to review your approach. Educational content that doesn't promote advisory services is treated differently from posts that pitch your firm or discuss results. Most firms route every post through the same approval workflow as other marketing, which is simpler than deciding case by case and reduces the chance of a mistake.

Can we show client logos or names on an RIA website?

Listing clients can work as an implied endorsement and may raise confidentiality and cherry-picking concerns, so treat it carefully. Many advisers avoid naming individual clients entirely and describe the types of clients they serve instead. If you do name anyone, get written consent, have compliance decide what disclosures apply, and record the approval in your files.

Do we need a cookie banner or privacy policy as an advisor?

You need a privacy policy that reflects how you collect and use data, and financial privacy rules may add requirements on top of general web privacy law. Whether you need a cookie banner depends on your tools and where your visitors are. Keep tracking minimal on pages with forms, and have counsel review both the policy and your analytics setup.

Which CMS works best for compliance review?

Choose a CMS with draft and publish states, user roles, revision history and scheduled publishing. Those features let marketing draft, compliance approve, and nobody publish regulated content alone. Headless CMS setups with Next.js give fine control over roles and locked components. Visual builders can work too, if their permissions are strict enough for your team.

How often should an advisor website be reviewed?

Review it whenever fees, services, team members or regulatory status change, and on a regular schedule your compliance team sets, often at least annually. Put a visible owner and review date on each regulated component in the CMS. Stale bios, outdated fee tables and old performance data are common problems that a simple calendar reminder prevents.

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Wealth Management and RIA Website Design Under the SEC Marketing Rule

Financial advisor website design under the SEC Marketing Rule: testimonials, performance, Form CRS, BrokerCheck links and archiving treated as design constraints.

By Mehdi HassanOct 29, 20267 min read

The short answer

A financial advisor website under the SEC Marketing Rule needs fair and balanced claims, testimonials shown with their required disclosures beside them, net performance as prominent as gross, a prominent link to Form CRS where it applies, a BrokerCheck link for FINRA-registered firms and reps, and a way to archive every version. Treat each rule as a design component.

Key takeaways

The SEC Marketing Rule (Rule 206(4)-1) treats most of your website as an advertisement. Design with that in mind.
Testimonials are allowed, but their disclosures must sit with them, clearly and prominently, not in a footer.
Show net performance with at least equal prominence to gross. That's a layout rule as much as a legal one.
FINRA members need a readily apparent BrokerCheck link on retail-facing pages and rep profiles.
Archive every published version. Pick a CMS and process that make recordkeeping automatic.

Part of Fintech Website Design: Building Trust Before the First Click

What should a financial advisor website include under the SEC Marketing Rule?

A financial advisor website should include clear, fair and balanced descriptions of services and fees, testimonials and endorsements only with their required disclosures attached, performance shown net of fees with equal prominence to gross, required regulatory links such as Form CRS and BrokerCheck, and an archive of every published version. Each of those is a design decision, not just a legal one.

Most RIA and wealth management website advice is either generic web design or a compliance memo with no layout guidance. This guide turns the main rules into components and page patterns you can brief a designer on. It sits within our broader guide to fintech website design, which covers trust patterns across financial products.

How does the SEC Marketing Rule change financial advisor website design?

The SEC Marketing Rule changes RIA website design by making most public pages advertisements that must meet its general prohibitions: no untrue or unsubstantiated material claims, no misleading implications, and benefits balanced with risks. That shifts the job from writing impressive copy to writing copy you can prove.

In practice, three habits change. Superlatives need substantiation or have to go. Benefit claims need a nearby, readable statement of risks or limits. And anything that implies results, from a chart to a case story, gets the same review as a performance table. You can read the rule itself on the SEC's website, and your compliance team will map it to your firm.

Rule area	Design constraint	Component it becomes
General prohibitions	Claims need proof; benefits need balance	Claim block with nearby risk or limit line
Testimonials and endorsements	Disclosures must sit with the quote	Testimonial card with built-in disclosure fields
Third-party ratings	Rating details must be disclosed	Award badge with date, source and basis
Performance	Net at least as prominent as gross	Performance table with paired net and gross columns
Hypothetical performance	Only for suitable audiences, with policies	Gated page, not public marketing
Recordkeeping	Keep copies of advertisements	CMS versioning plus a website archive

Can financial advisor websites use testimonials?

Yes. Under the SEC Marketing Rule, registered advisers can use testimonials and endorsements, but each one must carry clear and prominent disclosures: whether the person is a client, whether they were compensated, and any material conflicts of interest. On a website, that means the disclosure belongs inside the testimonial component.

Build disclosure fields into the card: client or non-client, paid or unpaid, conflicts. The card shouldn't publish without them.
Match the size and contrast: a disclosure in tiny gray text under a large quote is unlikely to read as prominent.
Track the agreement: paid promoters may need written agreements and oversight. Record who approved each quote and when.
Avoid cherry-picking by layout: rotating only the most glowing quotes, with no context, can create a misleading impression.

How should performance appear on a wealth management website?

Performance on a wealth management website should show net returns with at least equal prominence to gross returns, for the time periods the rule prescribes, alongside the disclosures compliance requires. Hypothetical performance generally doesn't belong on public pages, because the rule requires policies ensuring it's relevant to the audience's financial situation.

As a layout rule, that means net and gross sit side by side, in the same type size and weight, covering the same period. Avoid charts that highlight gross returns in color and net returns in a footnote. Many advisers decide performance is better shared one-to-one than on public pages at all, which removes a whole class of risk.

Performance table checklist for your designer

Columns: period, net return, gross return, benchmark if used. Net and gross share the same font size, weight and color.

Rows: the periods compliance specifies, all shown together, not a single best year.

Attached text: a disclosure block directly under the table, at body-text size, written by compliance. It is a locked CMS component that marketing can't edit.

State: a visible "as of" date that updates with the data. If the data goes stale, the component should flag it rather than quietly show old numbers.

Where do Form CRS and BrokerCheck links go?

Form CRS should be posted prominently on your public website if your firm is required to deliver one, and FINRA rules require member firms to include a readily apparent BrokerCheck link on their initial retail-facing page and on registered reps' profile pages. Treat both as fixed parts of the layout, not footer afterthoughts.

FINRA explains the BrokerCheck requirement in Regulatory Notice 15-50. For dual registrants, place the Form CRS link in the header or a persistent site-wide strip, and put a BrokerCheck link on every advisor bio. Build the bio template so the link field is required, so a new hire's profile can't publish without it.

Confirm what applies
Ask compliance whether you're SEC-registered, state-registered, FINRA-registered or dual, and which links each requires.
Make links global components
Form CRS and firm-level BrokerCheck links live in one component that appears site-wide.
Require fields on bios
Advisor profile templates require a BrokerCheck link before they can publish.
Test visibility on mobile
Check that each link is readily apparent on a phone, not buried in a collapsed menu.

How do you archive a financial advisor website?

You archive a financial advisor website by keeping a retrievable copy of every published version, because recordkeeping rules require advisers to retain copies of advertisements. CMS revision history helps, but most compliance teams also use a dedicated website archiving service that captures pages as published.

Design choices affect how archivable a site is. Personalised content, heavy client-side rendering and pop-ups that only appear in certain conditions are harder to capture accurately. Server-rendered pages with stable URLs, which is how we build in Next.js, are easier to archive and easier for search engines to read. Our platform comparison for marketing sites covers the trade-offs.

What pages does an RIA website need?

An RIA website usually needs a home page, a services and approach page, a fees page, a team page with advisor bios, an insights or blog section, a contact page, and the required regulatory pages and links. Fees deserve their own page, because clear fee disclosure is one of the strongest trust signals in wealth management.

If you're a one- or two-person practice, our guide to consultant website design shows how to look established without padding pages. For pages that work across financial products, see must-have pages for a fintech website and our notes on fintech website compliance and footer language.

Frequently asked questions

Is a financial advisor's blog an advertisement under the Marketing Rule?: Often it can be, depending on content and purpose, so ask compliance to review your approach. Educational content that doesn't promote advisory services is treated differently from posts that pitch your firm or discuss results. Most firms route every post through the same approval workflow as other marketing, which is simpler than deciding case by case and reduces the chance of a mistake.
Can we show client logos or names on an RIA website?: Listing clients can work as an implied endorsement and may raise confidentiality and cherry-picking concerns, so treat it carefully. Many advisers avoid naming individual clients entirely and describe the types of clients they serve instead. If you do name anyone, get written consent, have compliance decide what disclosures apply, and record the approval in your files.
Do we need a cookie banner or privacy policy as an advisor?: You need a privacy policy that reflects how you collect and use data, and financial privacy rules may add requirements on top of general web privacy law. Whether you need a cookie banner depends on your tools and where your visitors are. Keep tracking minimal on pages with forms, and have counsel review both the policy and your analytics setup.
Which CMS works best for compliance review?: Choose a CMS with draft and publish states, user roles, revision history and scheduled publishing. Those features let marketing draft, compliance approve, and nobody publish regulated content alone. Headless CMS setups with Next.js give fine control over roles and locked components. Visual builders can work too, if their permissions are strict enough for your team.
How often should an advisor website be reviewed?: Review it whenever fees, services, team members or regulatory status change, and on a regular schedule your compliance team sets, often at least annually. Put a visible owner and review date on each regulated component in the CMS. Stale bios, outdated fee tables and old performance data are common problems that a simple calendar reminder prevents.

Mehdi Hassan · CEO & Design Director

Copywriter, designer and developer, and founder of Designify Studio. Over five years, 60+ projects across 14+ industries, for startups that have raised $300M+.

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