Registered Investment Advisor

A Registered Investment Adviser (RIA) is an investment adviser (IA) registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission or a state's securities agency. The numerous references to RIAs within the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 popularized the term, which is closely associated with the term investment advisor (spelled "investment adviser" in U.S. financial law). An IA is defined by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an individual or a firm that is in the business of giving advice about securities.

Individuals or firms that receive compensation for giving advice on investing in securities such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or exchange traded funds are deemed to be investment advisers. It is also common for investment advisers to manage portfolios of securities. RIAs generally are paid in any of the following ways: a percentage of the value of the assets they manage for clients, an hourly fee, fixed fee, a commission on the securities they sell (if the adviser is also a broker-dealer).

An IA must adhere to a fiduciary standard of care laid out in the US Investment Advisers Act of 1940. This standard requires IAs to act and serve a client's best interests with the intent to eliminate, or at least to expose, all potential conflicts of interest which might incline an investment adviser—consciously or unconsciously—to render advice which was not in the best interest of the IA's clients.

To "promote compliance with fiduciary standards by advisers and their personnel," on August 31, 2004, the SEC adopted Rule 204A-1 under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 requiring investment advisers to adopt a code of ethics setting forth "standards of conduct expected of advisory personnel and to address conflicts that arise from personal trading by advisory personnel. Among other things, the rule requires advisers' supervised persons to report their personal securities transactions."

Rule 204A-1 treats all securities as reportable securities, with five exceptions (i.e., direct obligations of the US Government, certain money market instruments and funds, certain mutual funds, and certain unit investment trusts) "designed to exclude securities that appear to present little opportunity for the type of improper trading that the access person reports are designed to uncover". However, transactions in exchange traded funds are reportable securities according to an SEC response to National Compliance Services, Inc.’s 2005 request for no action guidance.

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