SEC Form ADV (via IAPD): investment-adviser registration

Form ADV is the registration form every SEC- or state-registered investment adviser must file, and it is public and free through the SEC’s IAPD (Investment Adviser Public Disclosure) system. It is the source for what an adviser is: assets under management, client and employee counts, private-fund details, ownership, disciplinary history, and a narrative brochure of strategies and fees. Papers that classify funds or advisers (hedge fund vs mutual fund adviser, private-fund flags) read Form ADV; the Kwan, Liu & Matthies attention paper uses it for fund classification.

The one thing to know first: Form ADV is not on EDGAR. Advisers file it through the IARD/CRD system, not EDGAR, so it has its own identifiers (CRD numbers, 801-/802- file numbers) and its own access points. Looking for it under a CIK on data.sec.gov returns nothing.

• Cost: free, no paywall, no key.
• Auth: none. A descriptive User-Agent header is courteous and avoids throttling, same as EDGAR.
• Coverage: all SEC-registered advisers, exempt reporting advisers (ERAs, partial form), and state-registered advisers.
• Home: https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/ · Bulk data: https://www.sec.gov/foia-services/frequently-requested-documents/form-adv-data

Access

Option 1: IAPD firm report (one adviser, PDF)

Every registered firm has a public report addressed by its CRD number:

https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/reports/ADV/{CRD}/PDF/{CRD}.pdf

import requests
headers = {"User-Agent": "Your Name your@email.edu"}
crd = 105631   # Bridgewater Associates
pdf = requests.get(
    f"https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/reports/ADV/{crd}/PDF/{crd}.pdf",
    headers=headers,
)   # 200, application/pdf: the full Form ADV Parts 1 and 2

This is the human-readable filing (Part 1 data + Part 2 brochure). Confirmed live on the verified date: a multi-megabyte ADV PDF returned for CRD 105631.

Option 2: Search API (resolve a name to a CRD)

CRD is the join key, so most pipelines start by resolving a firm name:

https://api.adviserinfo.sec.gov/search/firm?query={name}&hl=true&nrows=12&start=0&wt=json

Returns matching firms with CRD, SEC number, and location. There is a parallel /search/individual endpoint for adviser representatives.

Option 3: Bulk structured data (the whole population)

For panel work, the SEC publishes the structured Part 1 data (the check-box and numeric fields, including Schedule D private-fund rows) as downloadable archives, plus monthly Part 2 brochure dumps, on the FOIA page:

https://www.sec.gov/files/adv-filing-data-20111105-20241231-part1.zip   # ~700 MB
https://www.sec.gov/files/adv-filing-data-20001019-20111104.zip

The complete-filing-data archives give you every adviser’s Part 1 fields over time, which is what you want for classification at scale rather than scraping PDFs one CRD at a time. Confirmed reachable on the verified date (HTTP 200, ~700 MB zip).

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

The reason to read this page rather than the SEC instructions. Verified against live IAPD and the bulk feed on the date above.

• Not on EDGAR; CRD, not CIK. Form ADV uses CRD/IARD identifiers and 801-/802- SEC file numbers. There is no CIK and no data.sec.gov endpoint. Join to EDGAR-based holdings by name or a hand-built CRD↔CIK map, not by a shared key.
• Self-reported and as-of the latest amendment. The IAPD firm report shows the current filing. Advisers must file an annual updating amendment within 90 days of fiscal year-end, but for a point-in-time history you need the bulk archive or dated compilation reports, not the live report.
• AUM is regulated AUM (RAUM), gross. Part 1 Item 5.F reports regulated assets under management: gross of leverage, including uncalled capital commitments for private-fund advisers. It is not net AUM and is not directly comparable to a 13F dollar value.
• Three registration regimes, different coverage. SEC-registered advisers (generally >$100M RAUM), state-registered advisers (smaller, file with states), and exempt reporting advisers (ERAs, e.g. some private-fund and VC advisers) who file only a truncated Form ADV. Do not assume the SEC-registered set is the whole universe.
• Private funds live in Schedule D Section 7.B.1: one row per reported private fund, with a self-classified fund type (hedge fund, private equity, etc.). The type is the adviser’s own label; treat it as a self-report.
• Part 2 is prose, not fields. The brochure (Part 2A) and supplement (Part 2B) are narrative PDFs. Strategy, fee, and conflict classification means parsing text, not reading a tagged field.
• Bulk filenames embed date ranges. The archive filenames carry the period they cover (e.g. ...20111105-20241231-part1.zip), so the URL goes stale as the SEC adds new periods. Re-read the FOIA page for the current filenames rather than hard-coding a URL.
• One adviser can advise many funds. A fund-classification join is adviser→funds, often many-to-many; a single ADV does not map one-to-one to a single mutual fund. Cross-reference fund-level filings (e.g. EDGAR N-1A) for the fund side.

What’s in each part

Part	Form	Contents
1A	structured	RAUM, client/employee counts, custody, ownership, disciplinary, Schedule D (incl. private funds)
1B	structured	State-registration items
2A	brochure (PDF)	Narrative: advisory business, fees, strategies, conflicts
2B	supplement (PDF)	Background of individual advisory personnel
3	Form CRS	Relationship summary for retail clients

Standard operations

• Classify advisers/funds: resolve name to CRD (Option 2), then read Schedule D and Item 5/Item 7 from the bulk Part 1 data (Option 3) rather than scraping PDFs; the structured fields are the classifiable signal.
• Build a panel: use the dated bulk archives for point-in-time fields; the live IAPD report is current-only and not reproducible as history.
• Join to holdings or returns: map CRD to the EDGAR CIK (by name) to link an adviser’s Form ADV profile to its 13F / N-1A filings; there is no shared key, so document the crosswalk.
• Always record the CRD and the as-of date of the filing you read; ADV is amended continuously, so an undated pull is not reproducible.

Citation

Cite the form, adviser, and source, e.g.: Bridgewater Associates, LP, Form ADV, CRD No. 105631, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD); https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/, accessed YYYY-MM-DD. For bulk data, cite the SEC Form ADV complete filing-data archive and the archive date range.