Frequently asked questions

No. We give you educational information and our opinion of how your account has done compared with a simple index portfolio. We don't tell you what to buy, sell or do, and we are not a registered investment adviser or broker-dealer. Talk to a qualified professional before you make decisions.

Not yet. We're running a small, free pilot. Sign up on our contact page to take part or to be notified when report cards are available. Prices on the pricing page are planned prices, not an offer.

We expect a personal check-in about every month, such as a call, a meeting or a personal message about your account, plus a full review of your goals every year. That's a higher bar than many firms set, since quarterly or yearly reviews are common. So your report card also shows the schedule your own advisory agreement promises, and whether it was kept. Check-in answers come from you.

No. Every firm is graded by the same formula, whether it's a big brokerage, an independent adviser or a robo-adviser. The kind of firm is never part of the grade. Only fees, how well your account fits your goals, and how any in-house funds actually did count.

Funds run by your advisor's own firm or a company it owns or is tied to. They're legal, and firms must disclose them as a conflict of interest. If you hold them, your report card shows how much of your account is in them and how they did after fees compared with similar funds and a matching index fund, plus questions to ask. It doesn't tell you to sell anything.

It's a mix of low-cost funds that simply track the market, like an S&P 500 index fund for stocks and a total bond market fund for bonds. For your report we build a hypothetical one with the same stock and bond mix as your account.

We rebuild what actually happened in your account, add up every fee, and compare your result with an index twin that had the same deposits and withdrawals on the same dates. If your advisor's documented planning work, such as tax savings, added value, we give credit for it. The method will be published before launch.

Never. After launch, savers will pay for report cards and annual re-checks (the pilot is free), and browsing profiles and reviews will be free. Advisors will be able to claim and respond to their profiles for free. We take no ads, placement fees, referral fees, commissions or revenue share from any advisor, broker, insurer or fund company we rate. No one can pay to change a grade or rank higher.

Before a review is posted, the reviewer shows a statement (or a read-only account link) with the advisor or firm on it. We match it to public registration records and keep only a record that the person is a verified client, shown as “Verified client since 2021,” never their name. Only verified reviews count toward the star rating.

Verification is the first barrier. We also screen for bursts of reviews, copied or machine-written text and other signs of coordination, and we may pause new reviews on a profile during unusual activity. We never pay or reward anyone for a review, and fake reviews violate our terms and federal law.

No. Advisors can't pay, hide, reorder or remove reviews. We remove a review only if it breaks our published guidelines, for example no real client relationship, a conflict of interest, personal information, harassment or a clearly false statement of fact, and never just because it's negative.

Yes. Advisors can claim their profile for free, add a bio and fee schedule, reply publicly to reviews, and flag a review they believe breaks our guidelines. Flags are decided under the same rules for everyone.

A grade is a summary, not the whole story, and it's only as good as the data behind it. Every report shows a confidence label and the full detail behind the grade. If we have less than 3 years of history, we show a fee-only view instead of a grade.

Right now the only information we collect online is what you type into the signup form. Please don't send account numbers, statements or Social Security numbers through it. Pilot participants get a separate written consent explaining how their documents are handled and deleted. After launch, any account connections will be read-only, so they can't move money. We will never sell your personal information. See our Privacy Policy.

Public records: the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure site, FINRA BrokerCheck and the CFP Board's verification tool. Public records can be incomplete or out of date, so you can check them yourself for free at those sites.

No. Your grade describes what happened over a past period. It does not guarantee or predict future results for your advisor or any investment.

Advisors can request a correction or send a response, and we fix factual errors quickly. Our goal is accuracy, not gotchas.

No. Real Performance Report is not an investment adviser, broker-dealer or financial planner, and we don't give investment advice or manage money. “Performance” refers to measuring what your account actually delivered after fees compared with a simple index portfolio. We don't promise or predict anyone's returns.