Form Adv Investment Adviser Database Data: Dataset Structure and Field Coverage

It is SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) - the SEC/FINRA-run disclosure system at adviserinfo.sec.gov for firms regulated by the SEC and/or state securities regulators. The front end is an Angular single-page app backed by an Elasticsearch-style JSON service at api.adviserinfo.sec.gov, and every record keys to a firm, not to a filing document. That grain distinction matters: [SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search API (EFTS)](#efts), the slice's other SEC dataset at quality 10, indexes the full text of filing documents back to 2001; IAPD answers "which adviser firms exist, how big are they, what do they charge, and who has disclosed discipline?"

Scale sits in the tens of thousands: about 15k-plus SEC-registered RIAs and exempt reporting advisers (ERAs) plus state-registered firms. Datadory scores it 8 out of 10 on its rubric - above the 7.81 catalog-wide average across the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs - and tracks 12 named fields for it, all with verified definitions. It is also the only SEC/FINRA entry among the 19 primary diversified-financial-services datasets, which makes it the single entity-level registry in an otherwise statistics-heavy slice.

A firm-search hit already carries the identifiers most pipelines join on:

Enrichment goes deeper. A detail call returns the full iacontent document: basicInformation (firmId, firmName, iaScope, isIAFirm, advFilingDate, iaSECNumber, iaSECNumberType, CRS file reference), accountantSurpriseExams, compilationData editions, registrationStatus, noticeFilings, exemptReportingAdvisers and brochures. Regulatory assets under management, fee schedules, client types, custody arrangements, related-person affiliations and disciplinary history live in the published documents themselves - the site links Form ADV Parts 1 and 2A brochures and Client Relationship Summary (Form CRS) PDFs next to each structured record.

Six Datadory personas tag this dataset at relevance 2 or higher, ranked by recorded relevance:

For the diligence workflow specifically, IAPD pairs naturally with FINRA BrokerCheck - FINRA's separate index of roughly 274,000 individual broker records and about 31,715 firms, served through its own keyless JSON search at api.brokercheck.finra.org - which covers the broker-dealer side of the same regulators' remit when an organization is dual-registered.

Ranked by how often an adviser-focused workflow reaches for them alongside IAPD:

Within the industry slice these five plus IAPD span the whole regulatory surface - the 19 primary diversified-financial-services datasets average 8.37 on Datadory's rubric against that 7.81 catalog-wide mean, and three of the catalog's 145 perfect scores land here.