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FINRA BrokerCheck firm data: registrations, disclosures and the people behind a firm

Every broker-dealer and registered investment adviser in the United States carries a CRD number, and FINRA publishes the register as BrokerCheck. This actor turns firm names or CRD numbers into one row per firm: SEC file numbers, legal form and formation date, the main office address and phone, the owners and executive officers filed on Form BD (and, for advisers, on Form ADV), the states a firm is registered in, and disclosure events counted by type. Two SEC sources complete the row — EDGAR gives broker-dealers their EIN and net capital, and Form ADV gives advisers their website, headcount and assets under management.

Who it is for

• Compliance and onboarding teams — confirming that a counterparty is currently registered and checking its disclosure events before onboarding.
• Wealth-management and fintech sales teams — building lists of broker-dealers and RIAs with the main office phone and the executive officers each firm filed.
• Risk and monitoring teams — watching a list of firms for changes in scope, registration status or disclosures.

What you get

One row per firm, in the same column layout as the other foXLabs company datasets:

A real row for CRD 5393, shortened:

{
  "companyName": "CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC.",
  "registrationNumber": "5393",
  "status": "active",
  "legalForm": "Corporation",
  "incorporatedOn": "1971-04-01",
  "jurisdiction": "California",
  "address": "3000 SCHWAB WAY, WESTLAKE, TX, 76262-8104, United States",
  "phone": "817-859-5000",
  "taxNumber": "94-1737782",
  "website": "https://www.schwab.com",
  "employees": 30690,
  "industry": "Broker-dealer and investment adviser",
  "secNumberBrokerDealer": "8-16514",
  "secNumberInvestmentAdviser": "801-29938",
  "registrationStatus": "Approved",
  "firmSize": "Large",
  "branchCount": 1197,
  "hasDisclosures": true,
  "disclosureCount": 323,
  "disclosures": [
    { "type": "Regulatory Event", "count": 59 },
    { "type": "Civil Event", "count": 3 },
    { "type": "Arbitration", "count": 259 },
    { "type": "Bond", "count": 2 }
  ],
  "sourceUrl": "https://brokercheck.finra.org/firm/summary/5393"
}

In full, this row also lists 8 owners and officers and 53 registered states. For broker-dealers, capital carries net capital from the annual audit — Charles Schwab & Co. reported $13.2 billion at 2025-12-31. For an adviser, Form ADV fills assets under management: The Vanguard Group shows $11.09 trillion and 1,702 employees.

Use cases

• Counterparty due diligence. Confirm a firm is currently registered and see whether it carries disclosure events before onboarding it.
• Wealth-management and fintech prospecting. Build a list of broker-dealers and RIAs with the main office phone and the executive officers (CEO, CCO, CFO) the firm filed, plus CRD numbers you can join to Form ADV data.
• Compliance monitoring. Re-run a watchlist on a schedule and alert on scope, registration-status or disclosure-count changes.

How to run it

Mix firm names and CRD numbers in one list. This is the prefilled input:

{
  "queries": ["Charles Schwab", "Vanguard", "5393", "Robinhood Financial"],
  "maxResultsPerQuery": 10
}

• queries — a number is treated as a CRD and looked up exactly; anything else runs a BrokerCheck firm-name search. Inactive firms come back too, and status tells them apart.
• maxResultsPerQuery — caps how many rows one query may produce.

No API key and no login are needed. BrokerCheck reflects Form BD and Form ADV filings, usually within a day of filing, and every run queries it live.

Honest limits

• Name search is fuzzy. A name query can return firms that merely contain the term, so check companyName before treating a match as exact — or search by CRD.
• A disclosure flag is not a verdict. hasDisclosures means events exist on the record. Read the BrokerCheck report itself before acting on it.
• Adviser-only firms are thinner. BrokerCheck publishes only the name, SEC number, scope and Form ADV office for them. Form ADV fills legal form, phone, website, headcount and Schedule A owners for SEC-registered and exempt reporting advisers that filed in the last 15 months (24,648 in the September 2026 build). State-registered advisers are not in the SEC’s files, so their officers stay empty, and the disclosure breakdown is empty for every adviser.
• Net capital is read from PDF audits, because the SEC will only require these audits in machine-readable form from mid-2027 (2029 for smaller firms). Measured on 90 randomly drawn 2026 audits: in the last 30, which played no part in writing the rules, 20 gave a figure and all 20 matched the audit on a manual read. Scanned audits are read by OCR, and a figure read that way is kept only when the statement’s own arithmetic holds or a second, sharper read agrees. Audits that leave the figure out keep capital empty.
• EIN needs an EDGAR record. Active broker-dealers usually have one (14 of 15 in a sample); firms that closed before EDGAR do not.
• Not published anywhere: email and dissolvedOn stay empty. A terminated registration is not a dissolution, so its date goes to registrationStatusDate.
• Firms only. Individual broker records are personal data, so the actor deliberately queries firms. The people it returns are the owners and officers a firm lists on its public BrokerCheck report or Form ADV.

Where the data comes from

FINRA publishes BrokerCheck as a public search service that answers without a key. The SEC publishes Form ADV for every registered adviser as a daily file, and EDGAR’s company records as open JSON. Sources: FINRA BrokerCheck, SEC Form ADV compilation, SEC EDGAR.

BrokerCheck exists so investors and counterparties can check a firm before dealing with it; FINRA publishes it for public use.

Related data and guides

• Browse the regulatory and compliance datasets on the home page.
• SEC filings, enforcement and the LEI — numbers, enforcement risk and legal identity for US-listed companies.
• KYB company verification — checking a counterparty against the register that created it.
• EPA facility compliance data — the same regulatory lens for industrial sites.

Frequently asked questions

Can I search BrokerCheck by CRD number?

Yes. A number is treated as a CRD and looked up exactly; anything else runs a BrokerCheck firm-name search. Inactive firms are returned too, and status tells them apart.

Does it return individual brokers?

No. Individual broker records are personal data, so the actor deliberately queries firms only. The owners and officers it returns are the ones a firm lists on its public BrokerCheck report (Form BD Schedule A) or its public Form ADV (Schedule A).

What is the net capital figure?

For broker-dealers, capital is net capital under SEC Rule 15c3-1 — the regulatory measure, not book equity — read from the newest Form X-17A-5 annual audit on EDGAR, with the date it is stated for and a link to the PDF it was read from.

Does a disclosure flag mean a firm did something wrong?

No. hasDisclosures means disclosure events exist on the record, and disclosures counts them by type. It is not a judgement about the firm; read the BrokerCheck report itself before acting on it.

Why are adviser-only firms thinner?

BrokerCheck publishes only the name, SEC number, scope and Form ADV office for them. Form ADV fills legal form, phone, website, headcount and owners for SEC-registered and exempt reporting advisers that filed in the last 15 months; state-registered advisers are not in the SEC files.