Review & Testimonial Policy

1. Terminology, and why it matters

Under SEC Rule 206(4)-1 (the Marketing Rule) the words matter, so we use them precisely:

• A testimonial is a statement by a current client of the advisor about their experience.
• An endorsement is a statement by someone who is not a current client — including a former client — about the advisor.

We label every published statement as one or the other, based on a mandatory attestation the author makes at submission. We never call an endorsement a testimonial.

2. Who may submit

Anyone who has had a real, direct professional relationship with the advisor, as a current client, a former client, or a prospective client who met with them. You must sign in with a verified account (Google or Apple) so we can prevent duplicate and automated submissions. We do not share your identity or your email address with the advisor.

3. Anonymity

You choose how your name appears: full name, first name and last initial, or fully anonymous. Anonymity is free, unlimited, and carries no penalty — anonymous reviews are not ranked lower, hidden, marked as less trustworthy, or treated differently in any way. We believe an honest signal requires that a client be able to speak without their advisor knowing who spoke.

We will not disclose a reviewer's identity except in response to valid legal process, or where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm. If we receive a subpoena or court order seeking a reviewer's identity, we will notify that reviewer at the address on file, with a copy of the demand and plain-language information about moving to quash, and we will give them at least 14 days to respond before we produce anything. Where a requester has made no showing that their claim has merit, we will object. We promise you this process. We do not promise that identity can never be compelled.

4. What we require at submission

Every submission requires three attestations, and we publish what you attest:

1. Relationship: current client / former client / prospective client who met with the advisor / no relationship (rejected).
2. Compensation: whether the advisor or anyone acting for them offered you anything of value — cash, a gift card, a discount, a fee credit, entry into a drawing — in connection with this review. If the answer is yes, we will not publish the review. We do not host incentivized reviews.
3. Conflicts: whether you are an employee, family member, business partner, referral source, or otherwise have a financial relationship with the advisor.

5. What appears on every published review

Rendered inline with the review, in the same size and weight as the review text — never in a footnote, a tooltip, or behind a link:

• Testimonial — given by a current client of this advisor. or Endorsement — given by a person who is not a current client of this advisor.
• No compensation was provided for this review.
• Material conflicts of interest: none disclosed. (or the disclosed conflict, stated plainly)
• Verification: identity verified (Google account). or Verification: identity verified; client relationship documented. or Verification: unverified.
• The date the review was submitted.
• This review reflects one person's experience and may not be representative of the experience of other clients. It is not a guarantee of future performance or success.

6. What we will not publish

We reject, against published and sentiment-neutral criteria applied identically to positive and negative reviews:

• Any specific investment return, gain, loss, or performance figure ("made me 22%," "doubled my account").
• Guarantees or assurances ("guaranteed income," "no risk," "you can't lose").
• Predictions or projections of future performance.
• Claims that an advisor is "conflict-free," "unbiased," or "has no conflicts of interest."
• Specific securities recommendations attributed to the advisor.
• Objective-rank superlatives ("the best advisor in Texas," "#1 planner"). Subjective statements about your own experience ("the best experience I've had with an advisor") are fine.
• Unverified accusations of crime or regulatory violation. Report those to the SEC, FINRA, or your state securities regulator — we are not the right venue and we will tell you so.
• Account numbers, balances, addresses, or other personal information about you or anyone else.
• Profanity, threats, harassment, spam, malware, unlawful content, and content that infringes someone's rights.
• Reviews we reasonably believe are fake, duplicated, or automated.

We reject or accept. We do not rewrite the substance of a review.

7. What advisors can and cannot do

This is the part advisors' compliance officers care about, so we state it flatly.

An advisor can:

• Claim their profile and correct factual errors in their own biographical and firm information.
• Reply publicly to any review, free of charge. Replies are published unedited, beneath the review, attributed to the advisor. Replies do not alter, hide, or reorder the review.
• Report a review that violates the criteria in section 6, through the same form available to anyone.

An advisor cannot, ever:

• Approve, reject, hide, delete, unpublish, delay, or suppress a review about them.
• Reorder, pin, feature, or select which reviews appear, or in what order.
• Solicit reviews through findmyFA.app. We provide no "invite your clients" tool, no advisor-specific submission link, and no client-list upload. Advisors who solicit reviews through other means are violating our Terms.
• Offer anything of value for a review.
• Pay us for a better rating, better placement, or the removal or suppression of any review.
• Learn the identity of an anonymous reviewer from us.

We designed it this way deliberately. Under the SEC's adoption-and-entanglement analysis, an advisor who curates, suppresses, orders, or solicits third-party commentary may have that commentary attributed to them as their own advertisement. By giving advisors no control lever at all, we keep reviews on this site from becoming the advisor's advertisement. We think that makes findmyFA.app safer for advisors than their own website. It is not legal advice to them, and every advisor should reach their own conclusion with their own compliance counsel.

8. Ordering and display

Reviews are sorted most recent first by default. Users may re-sort. Ordering is mechanical and identical for every advisor. Paying advisors — if we ever have any — receive no ordering, visibility, or rating advantage of any kind.

9. Ratings

When we publish an aggregate score, it will be computed mechanically from disclosed inputs, using the same formula for every advisor, with no manual adjustment of any individual advisor's score, ever.

Wherever a score appears — including in any badge an advisor embeds on their own site — we render inline, at the same prominence as the score itself:

• the date the rating was given and the period of reviews it covers;
• Created and tabulated by findmyFA.app;
• whether any compensation was provided by the advisor in connection with obtaining or using the rating.

What our score measures: self-reported client satisfaction, from the reviews published on this site, over the stated period.
What it does not measure: investment performance, returns, suitability for you, fee competitiveness, fiduciary conduct, regulatory standing, or the quality of investment advice. A high score is not evidence of skill, and a low score is not evidence of misconduct.

Instrument neutrality. Our submission form is built so that it is equally easy to submit an unfavorable review as a favorable one: a symmetric scale with no pre-selected default, neutrally worded prompts, identical steps and friction for every rating, and no path that diverts dissatisfied reviewers to a private channel instead of publication. There is no minimum rating required for publication, and no weighting that advantages any advisor.

10. Disputes

Anyone — including the advisor — may report a review. We acknowledge within 3 business days and decide within 15. We decide against the published criteria in section 6, applied without regard to whether the review is positive or negative and without regard to whether the advisor pays us anything. When we decline to remove a review, we say so in writing and cite the criterion. We log every decision.

We will never remove a review because it is negative, or because an advisor is unhappy.

11. Your right to review

Under the federal Consumer Review Fairness Act, a clause in a form contract that bars or penalizes you for an honest review is void and unenforceable. If your advisory agreement contains a non-disparagement clause, it does not lawfully prevent you from writing an honest review of your experience.

12. Records we keep

Review text and all versions, submission timestamp, IP address, device signals, sign-in method and account identifier, attestations, verification artifacts (hashes, never the underlying document), moderation decisions and the criterion applied, and dispute correspondence. If you use the optional documented-relationship badge, any document you upload is reviewed and then deleted within 30 days — we never retain client statements.