Financial advice is one of the very few services a Centennial household buys where the entire disclosure file is public, free, and federally queryable. Every firm that manages money for compensation must keep a Form ADV current with the Securities and Exchange Commission or with its home state, and every one of those filings is readable at adviserinfo.sec.gov without an account. The filing states, under penalty of perjury, how much the firm manages, how many clients it has, whether it takes commissions, what other businesses it runs, and whether it or its principals have any disciplinary history. That is a far better basis for a ranking than star ratings, which in this category barely exist: the advertising rule adopted under the Investment Advisers Act prohibited client testimonials for roughly sixty years, and firms were only required to comply with the replacement marketing rule in November 2022. A Centennial firm managing a billion dollars can therefore show fewer public reviews than the sandwich shop below its office.
Centennial adds a second complication that trips up almost every directory covering this market, and it is worth understanding before you evaluate anyone. The city was incorporated in 2001 out of unincorporated Arapahoe County, long after the postal geography around it was settled, so its ZIP codes still carry other cities as their USPS default names. Mail to 80111 and 80112 is routinely addressed to Englewood or Greenwood Village, and mail to 80121 and 80122 to Littleton, even when the building sits squarely inside Centennial city limits. The practical result is that aggregator listings scatter genuine Centennial firms across four city names and file firms from neighbouring municipalities under Centennial. This page ignores postal convention entirely and uses the principal office address each firm swore to in its own Form ADV, cross-checked against the cover page of the Part 2A brochure the same firm filed with the SEC.
Thirty-five advisory firms give a Centennial principal office in the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system. Four of them carry a disciplinary disclosure flag in that database and were excluded outright, on the same rule the accounting rankings on this site apply to CPAs carrying stipulations. Three more are exempt reporting advisers, meaning private-fund managers who file an abbreviated form and do not take retail clients at all. The remainder were screened on registration status, assets under management, disciplinary record, whether the firm's own official website resolves and names it, and above all on compensation. That last item is the ordering principle here, because it is the single most useful thing this page can tell a reader: four of the six firms below take no commissions of any kind, and two disclose in their own filings that a principal earns commission-based compensation selling insurance alongside the advisory fee. Both arrangements are lawful and both are disclosed. They are not the same product, and the difference is printed beside each entry.
How We Evaluated Centennial Financial Advisory Firms
The Top 6 Financial Advisors in Centennial
2026 Rankings · Centennial, Colorado
Schaefer Financial Management
Schaefer Financial Management, Inc. is the largest and longest-registered advisory firm headquartered in Centennial, and it has the least ambiguous compensation disclosure of any firm on this page. Its SEC registration was approved on 12 April 1989 and has run continuously for thirty-seven years. Jeffrey A. Schaefer founded the practice that year, operated it as a sole proprietorship until incorporating it in Colorado in 2001, and remains its sole owner and president. The Form ADV Part 2A brochure it filed on 26 March 2026 reports $1,114,890,977 under management at the end of 2025.
On the question that matters most, the brochure leaves nothing to interpretation. Item 10 states that the firm maintains “no licenses for the sale of any product including securities and insurance” and concludes, in five plain words, “We are fee only financial advisors.” Elsewhere it confirms that brokerage commissions and fund expenses are third-party costs and that “We do not receive any portion of these commissions, fees, expenses and costs.” Item 9 reports no legal or disciplinary events, and the IAPD disclosure flag on the firm's record is negative. Its published schedule is a tiered percentage of assets beginning at 1.0 percent on the first $1,000,000 and stepping down to 0.2 percent on the highest tier, with hourly work billed at $250.
One characteristic sets it apart from every other large firm in the metro area and deserves to be understood rather than assumed to be a drawback. Schaefer manages the entire $1.1 billion on a non-discretionary basis, with nothing held under discretion. In practice that means the firm cannot trade an account without the client's agreement first; every transaction is discussed and authorised rather than executed under a standing mandate. That is slower, and it will not suit an investor who wants to delegate and forget. For a client who wants to understand and approve each decision, it is close to unavailable at this scale. The brochure names seven CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER professionals across a team of ten, including the founder.
FFG Retirement Counseling
FFG Retirement Counseling took a step in 2026 that is rare enough to be worth ranking on. Its Part 2A brochure, filed 11 February 2026, opens its material-changes section with a single line: “Advisory Persons are no longer licensed as insurance professionals.” A firm that previously held insurance licences alongside its advisory registration gave them up, removing the commission channel that creates the most common conflict of interest in this business. Very few firms move in that direction, and the change is documented in the filing rather than asserted in marketing.
The rest of the file supports it. The firm's SEC registration was approved on 2 September 2020 and is active under CRD 308305. As of 31 December 2025 it reported $216,470,615 in client assets, all managed on a discretionary basis. Item 9 reports no legal, regulatory or disciplinary events involving the firm or its management persons, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative. On compensation the brochure is explicit: the firm “does not buy or sell securities to earn commissions and does not receive any compensation for securities transactions in any Client account, other than the investment advisory fees” it discloses. Those fees run on a published schedule from 1.30 percent on the first $499,999 down to 0.75 percent above $2,000,000.
It is also the one firm on this page whose website states its city in its own page title, which sounds trivial and is not: in a market where four postal city names compete for the same buildings, a firm that plainly says Centennial is easier to place and easier to check. The brochure names Blake V. Barnett and Sean T. O'Reilly as CFP professionals. The practice is built around retirement income planning rather than general wealth management, so households whose main question is how to convert a portfolio into a paycheque are its natural fit; those wanting broad multi-generational planning should confirm scope first.
JHP Wealth Management
JHP Wealth Management, LLC is the second-largest of the clean-compensation firms here and files one of the tidiest brochures in the set. Its SEC registration was approved on 14 August 2020 under CRD 298784, and its California, Colorado and Texas state registrations were terminated within days of that approval, the ordinary signature of a firm crossing from state to federal supervision. The Part 2A brochure filed 26 February 2026 reports $223,829,473 in discretionary assets under management. John Holtkamp is the owner of the firm.
Its disclosure answers are short and unambiguous. Item 9 reads, in full, “We do not have any legal or disciplinary events to report.” Item 10 states that neither the firm nor any of its management persons is registered, or has an application pending to register, as a broker-dealer or a registered representative of a broker-dealer, nor as a futures commission merchant, commodity pool operator or commodity trading advisor. No insurance agency affiliation is disclosed anywhere in the brochure. The only commissions the document mentions are the transaction costs a custodian charges the client directly, which the firm does not share in. Its published schedule tiers from 0.90 percent on the first $1,000,000 down to 0.60 percent.
One qualification belongs on the record, and it concerns verification rather than conduct. The firm's website at jhpwealth.com is the address printed on its own SEC filing and the domain resolves, but the server returned HTTP 403 to every automated request made during this research, so the page content could not be read and confirmed to name the firm the way the other sites here were. That is bot protection rather than evidence of a problem, and the regulatory file is complete and clean. It is noted because this publication says what it checked and what it could not.
Loyd Financial Management
Loyd Financial Management Inc. is the clearest illustration on this page of why a registration date and a founding date are different facts. The Colorado corporation was established in 1998 by its principal owner, Donald P. Loyd, and operated for a quarter of a century as a Colorado state-registered adviser. Its SEC registration was only approved on 18 March 2024, when the firm crossed the federal threshold, with its Colorado, California, Michigan and Texas registrations terminated in the following weeks. A reader looking only at the SEC approval date would see a two-year-old firm; the practice behind it is twenty-eight years old.
The brochure describes the business as “personalized comprehensive financial planning and fee-only investment management to individuals, including high net worth individuals and charitable organizations” and backs the label where it counts: “Loyd Financial does not receive commissions from the sale of investment products but rather charges a fee based on assets under management in connection with giving advice to Clients.” Item 10 confirms that no employee is registered as a broker-dealer or registered representative. Item 9 states that neither the firm nor its employees has been involved in any legal or disciplinary events, criminal or civil actions, administrative actions by the SEC or another regulator, or proceedings by a self-regulatory authority.
As of 31 December 2025 it managed $133,543,388, and the brochure is careful to explain that the figure includes clients' legacy assets, 529 college savings accounts and variable annuities held on a non-discretionary basis. It notes that such holdings are managed in no-load, commission-free accounts at no additional cost. As with the third-ranked firm, loydfinancial.com is the address printed on the firm's own filing and resolves, but sits behind a Cloudflare challenge that refused automated requests during this research, so its page content could not be read directly.
Paller Financial Services
Paller Financial Services, Inc. was formed on 3 November 2000 and, like the firm ranked above it, spent most of its life under state supervision before registering with the SEC in May 2024 under CRD 161531. Its brochure, filed 3 February 2026, reports approximately $147,900,000 in discretionary client assets as of 31 December 2025. Item 9 is unusually direct: “Neither Paller nor its management persons have had any legal or disciplinary events, currently or in the past.” Item 10 confirms no broker-dealer registration and no commodity registrations, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative.
It carries the deepest planning credential bench of any firm on this page relative to its size. The brochure names Mark R. Paller, Jamison White and Mark R. Mogle as CFP professionals and Jennifer McElderry as a CPA, and the firm's published scope runs from financial planning and analysis through tax planning and preparation, estate planning, and the specific transitions that generate most of the demand for advice: retirement, divorce, an inheritance, and the sale of a business or property. The brochure also records that Mark Mogle is no longer a minority owner as of the October 2025 amendment, which is the kind of ownership change worth knowing before an engagement.
It ranks fifth rather than higher for one disclosed reason. The brochure states that Jennifer McElderry is a licensed insurance agent in the State of Colorado and that, when acting in that capacity, “the individual may receive commissions or other compensation related to the sale of insurance products.” That is a narrower exposure than the firm ranked below it, since it attaches to one named person rather than the principal owner, and it is properly disclosed. It is still a second compensation channel that the four firms above do not have, and any client offered an insurance product should ask directly how the recommender is paid for it. One further note from close reading: the fee section describes a single flat asset-based rate charged quarterly in arrears with cash and money-market balances excluded, but writes the rate in a unit notation that is internally inconsistent, so ask for the number in writing.
Hinchley Advisory Group
Hinchley Advisory Group, LLC is included because its regulatory record is clean and its structure genuinely suits a particular kind of client, and it is ranked last because that structure carries the widest compensation exposure on this page. Its SEC registration was approved on 4 June 2024 under CRD 157860, with California, Colorado, Minnesota and Texas registrations terminated on transition. As of 19 January 2026 it reported $193,080,000 in client assets under continuous discretionary management. Item 9 states plainly that the firm has no required disclosures, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative.
The structural advantage is real. Item 10 records that the firm is affiliated through common control and ownership with Hinchley and Company, which provides accounting, tax preparation and mortgage brokerage. For a client whose situation is as much a tax and financing problem as a portfolio problem, having those functions inside one organisation removes a great deal of coordination work. Its published fee schedule is also the most accommodating here for small balances, starting at 2.00 percent on $50,000 or less and stepping down through 1.00 percent between $100,001 and $250,000 to 0.50 percent above $500,000 — a structure that welcomes smaller accounts but charges them a high rate, which is the trade-off to weigh.
The reason it ranks sixth is stated in its own filing without euphemism: “Hinchley will earn commission-based compensation for selling insurance products, including insurance products he sells to you.” That sentence describes the principal owner, not a junior staff member, and it is the clearest example on this page of the distinction the whole ranking turns on. It is lawful, it is disclosed exactly as the rules require, and for some clients an adviser who can also place the insurance is a convenience. But it means the person advising on the portfolio has a financial interest in a product recommendation in a way the four firms above it do not. Ask what the commission is, on any policy, before signing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check whether a Centennial financial advisor is registered and has a clean record?
Use the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system at adviserinfo.sec.gov. It is free, needs no account, and covers both SEC-registered and state-registered advisers. Search the firm name and you will get its CRD number, its registration status and approval date, its current Form ADV, the Part 2A brochure it must give clients, and a flag showing whether any disciplinary event is reported. FINRA's BrokerCheck at brokercheck.finra.org covers the same ground for individuals and for anyone who has ever worked as a registered representative of a broker-dealer, and the two databases do not always show the same picture, so check both. If a firm or person appears in neither, stop there: giving investment advice for compensation without registration or an exemption is not lawful.
What is the difference between a fee-only advisor and one who earns commissions?
A fee-only adviser is paid solely by its clients, normally a percentage of the assets it manages, an hourly rate, or a flat planning fee, and takes nothing from product sponsors. An adviser who also holds an insurance or securities sales licence can charge you that same advisory fee and additionally earn a commission when you buy a product on their recommendation. Both are lawful and both must be disclosed, but only the first removes the incentive to prefer one product over another. Do not rely on marketing language, because fee-only and fee-based read almost identically and mean different things. Open the firm's Part 2A brochure on adviserinfo.sec.gov and read Item 5, which sets out compensation, and Item 10, which lists other financial industry activities and affiliations. Firms that earn insurance commissions say so there in plain terms, as two of the six on this page do.
Is my Centennial advisor regulated by the SEC or by the State of Colorado?
It depends on size, not on quality. Form ADV itself sets the line: an adviser is eligible to register with the SEC as a large advisory firm once it has regulatory assets under management of $100 million or more, and as a mid-sized firm between $25 million and $100 million in defined circumstances. Below that, an adviser generally registers with its home state, which in Colorado is the Division of Securities inside the Department of Regulatory Agencies. Both are real regulators, both require the same Form ADV disclosure, and a state-registered adviser is a smaller firm rather than a lesser one. When a firm crosses the threshold its record shows an approved SEC registration alongside terminated state registrations, which is a growth milestone rather than a warning. Two firms on this page went through exactly that transition after decades of state supervision.
Why do so many Centennial advisors list an Englewood or Greenwood Village address?
Because Centennial is younger than its own postal geography. The city incorporated in 2001 from unincorporated Arapahoe County, by which time the ZIP codes covering the area had long been assigned to other post offices. USPS still treats Englewood or Greenwood Village as the default city name for 80111 and 80112, and Littleton for 80121 and 80122, so a business inside Centennial city limits often has mail addressed to a neighbouring city. Directories and review sites copy the postal name, which scatters genuine Centennial firms across four listings and files outsiders under Centennial. The reliable check is the principal office address in the firm's Form ADV, which the firm states itself and which names the actual municipality. Every address on this page was taken from that filing and confirmed against the firm's own brochure cover page.
What does discretionary versus non-discretionary management actually mean for me?
Discretionary means you have given the firm standing authority to buy and sell in your account without asking first. Non-discretionary means the firm recommends and you approve each transaction before it happens. Neither is inherently safer. Discretionary management lets a firm rebalance or harvest a tax loss the day it makes sense rather than the day it reaches you, which matters in volatile markets; non-discretionary keeps you informed of and responsible for every decision, which suits people who want to understand what they own. Form ADV reports the split, so you can see it before you engage. It is worth checking, because the difference is larger than most marketing suggests: the largest firm on this page manages more than a billion dollars entirely non-discretionary, while three of the others are entirely discretionary.
How do I verify a CFP or CPA credential instead of taking the firm's word for it?
Go to the body that issues the credential, never the firm's biography page. CFP Board runs a public verification tool at cfp.net that confirms whether someone currently holds the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER certification and discloses any public discipline it has imposed. Certified Public Accountants are licensed by state boards of accountancy, and Colorado publishes its register through the Department of Regulatory Agencies. Insurance producers are licensed separately by the Colorado Division of Insurance, which is the check to run if an adviser proposes to sell you a policy. The credentials named on this page are the ones each firm listed in its own SEC filing and are attributed as such, because letters after a name are not themselves regulated and can be written by anyone. Confirming them takes a few minutes and is worth doing.
Sources & References
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) — firm search, registration status and Form ADV filings
Primary source for this page. Every CRD number, SEC file number, registration approval and termination date, principal office address, and disciplinary flag was read from each firm's record here. Fetched and confirmed live during research.
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — IAPD Reports
Form ADV filings and Part 2A client brochures, retrieved by CRD number
Source of every assets-under-management figure, fee schedule, discretion split, Item 9 disciplinary answer, and Item 10 affiliation and insurance disclosure quoted on this page. The registration thresholds cited in the FAQ ($100 million for a large advisory firm, $25 million to $100 million for a mid-sized firm) are quoted from the Item 2 instructions printed in these filings. Note that Form ADV Part 1A renders its Item 5.E fee checkboxes as images, which do not survive automated text extraction; this page therefore quotes the Part 2A brochure prose, which states the same facts in words, and asserts no checkbox answer it could not read.
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FINRA
BrokerCheck — background check for brokers and investment advisers
Cross-check for individual advisers and for broker-dealer history that does not appear on a firm's Form ADV. Backs the FAQ guidance to search both systems. Confirmed live during research.
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Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA)
Division of Securities — investment adviser registration and regulation in Colorado
The state regulator for advisers below the federal registration threshold, cited in the FAQ on SEC versus state supervision. The page returns HTTP 403 to automated requests, which is bot protection rather than a dead link; it loads normally in a browser.
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CFP Board
Verify a CFP Professional
Backs the guidance to confirm CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER certification with the issuing body. The page loads, but its search sits behind a challenge that refuses automated queries, so the CFP credentials named on this page are attributed to each firm's own SEC filing rather than asserted as independently verified.
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Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA)
Colorado Division of Insurance
The authority that licenses insurance producers in Colorado, cited where two firms on this page disclose that a principal holds an insurance licence and may earn commissions. Confirmed live during research.
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Investor.gov
Working with an Investment Professional
Backs the fiduciary, Form CRS, and adviser-selection guidance in the FAQ and conclusion. Confirmed to return HTTP 200 during research; note that www.sec.gov itself refuses automated requests.
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NAPFA
National Association of Personal Financial Advisors — the fee-only standard
Backs the definition of fee-only compensation used throughout this page: an adviser compensated solely by its clients, accepting no commissions or other compensation from any product sponsor. Confirmed live during research.
Our Recommendation
For most Centennial households, Schaefer Financial Management is the strongest combination of what this page can actually verify: thirty-seven years of unbroken SEC registration, a brochure that states in its own words that the firm holds no securities or insurance sales licences and is fee-only, no disciplinary events, seven CFP professionals on a team of ten, and more than a billion dollars managed without ever trading an account the client has not approved. That last point is also the reason it will not suit everyone. If you want to hand the portfolio over and hear from your adviser quarterly, FFG Retirement Counseling and JHP Wealth Management run fully discretionary practices with equally clean compensation records, and FFG gave up its insurance licences outright in 2026.
Where tax work dominates the problem, Paller Financial Services and Hinchley Advisory Group both keep accounting inside the organisation, and Hinchley will take smaller balances than anyone else here. Read their insurance disclosures first, both of which are quoted above, and ask what any recommended policy pays the person recommending it. Loyd Financial Management sits between the two groups: a twenty-eight-year-old practice that only reached federal registration in 2024 and takes no product commissions at all.
Whichever way you go, run the ten-minute check yourself before the first meeting. Search the firm on adviserinfo.sec.gov, confirm the registration is active, download the Part 2A brochure, and read Item 5 for how it is paid, Item 9 for its disciplinary record, and Item 10 for what else it does. Every figure on this page came out of those documents and can be re-checked the same way in a browser.
This page is editorial research, not investment advice. Denver Dean's List is not a registered investment adviser and does not provide personalised financial, investment, tax, or legal advice. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security, and no statement on this page should be read as a prediction or assurance of any investment result. Registration with the SEC or a state regulator does not imply endorsement, approval, or any particular level of skill. Assets under management and account figures describe a firm's size on the date of its filing; they are not performance figures and say nothing about the outcome for any individual client. Verify every fact independently and consult a qualified professional about your own circumstances before acting.
Denver Dean's List maintains editorial independence. We do not accept payment for rankings and do not accept advertising from the companies we evaluate. Rankings are based on primary regulatory filings and editorial research. Regulatory data reflects each firm's Form ADV and Part 2A brochure as filed on the date noted in its entry and may have changed since; confirm current information at adviserinfo.sec.gov before making any hiring decision.