RIA Wire Answers · Updated September 2026 · By the RIA Wire data desk
How do I get a list of new RIA registrations?
Every newly SEC-registered investment adviser appears in the SEC's free monthly Form ADV extract, with its registration effective date, phone number, city, state, and reported AUM. In the first eight months of 2026, 811 firms became SEC-effective — about 101 per month. You can build the list yourself from the SEC file, or buy it cleaned and monthly.
Key numbers (September 2026 SEC Form ADV extract)
- —811 firms became SEC-effective registrants in January–August 2026.
- —Monthly counts ranged from 63 (February) to 152 (April) — an average of 101 per month.
- —762 of the 811 (94%) already report regulatory AUM on their first filing.
- —Median new registrant: 4 employees. The founder is the buyer.
Why do vendors want new RIA registrations first?
A newly registered firm buys everything at once — custodian, portfolio system, compliance, E&O insurance, fund lineup, CRM — inside roughly its first ninety days. There is no incumbent vendor to displace, because there is no vendor yet. Miss the window and every one of those decisions is made, and you are the displacer instead of the first call.
How do I build the list myself from the SEC file?
- Download the current month's ZIP from the SEC's Information About Registered Investment Advisers page. It contains one CSV of roughly 40MB covering every SEC-registered adviser.
- Filter to rows where SEC Current Status is Approved and SEC Status Effective Date falls in your target window.
- Keep the columns that matter for outreach: Primary Business Name, Organization CRD#, city, state, phone, website, and 5F(2)(c) — regulatory AUM.
- Repeat every month when the SEC posts the next file.
The catch is step 4. The file is free; the recurring cleanup is not. Column formats are messy, the download URL changes month to month, and a one-time pull goes stale at the same ~101-firms-a-month rate the market moves.
One caution: "new registration" does not always mean "new firm"
The SEC effective date resets when a firm moves from state registration to SEC registration — typically when it grows past $100M. So the new-registrant list mixes true startups with established firms graduating to SEC oversight, including breakaway teams that arrive with hundreds of millions in AUM. For a seller, both are buying windows; just don't read the list as a count of brand-new businesses.
RIA Wire tracks new registrations and threshold crossings from every monthly SEC file and delivers them as clean CSVs, the same day the new extract is processed.
See what's in the RIA Wire file — pricing is on the page →Common questions
How many new RIAs register with the SEC each month?
In the first eight months of 2026, 811 firms became SEC-effective — an average of 101 per month, ranging from 63 in February to 152 in April. The figures come from the SEC's own monthly Form ADV extract.
Is the SEC's list of new RIA registrations free?
Yes. The SEC publishes a monthly FOIA extract of every registered adviser at sec.gov, including registration effective dates. The cost is the recurring work of downloading, filtering, and cleaning it every month.
Does the SEC file include email addresses for new RIAs?
No. The Form ADV extract contains no email column for any firm. It does include a main office phone number for every firm and a website for most, which is where compliant outreach starts.
Do newly registered RIAs report assets under management?
Almost all do: 762 of the 811 firms registered in the first eight months of 2026 (94%) reported regulatory AUM on their first filing, so you can size a new registrant before the first call.
How quickly should a vendor contact a newly registered RIA?
Within the first ninety days. A new firm sets up its custodian, software, compliance, insurance, and fund relationships in roughly one burst after registration, and those choices harden fast.
Source and method
Every figure on this page is computed from the SEC's monthly Form ADV extract (the public FOIA file of every SEC-registered investment adviser), using the same parsing and threshold-crossing logic that builds the RIA Wire subscriber files. Figures are from the September 2026 extract; the SEC publishes a new file each month, and these pages are refreshed against it. Any row can be verified against the SEC's own download.