Financial advice is one of the very few services a Highlands Ranch household buys where the entire disclosure file is public, free, and federally queryable. Any firm that manages money or gives investment advice 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 it is paid, what other businesses its people run, and whether it or its principals carry 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 Highlands Ranch firm managing six hundred million dollars can therefore show fewer public reviews than the coffee shop at Town Center.
Highlands Ranch also creates a geographic problem that trips up almost every directory covering this market, and it is worth understanding before you evaluate anyone. Highlands Ranch is not a municipality. It is an unincorporated census designated place in Douglas County, governed by a metro district and a community association rather than a city council, and it shares the 80126, 80129 and 80130 ZIP codes with addresses that USPS labels Littleton. The practical consequence is that aggregator listings scatter genuine Highlands Ranch firms under Littleton, Lone Tree and Centennial, and file firms from those places under Highlands Ranch. This page ignores postal convention entirely. Every address below was taken from the principal office each firm swore to in its own Form ADV, then run through the United States Census Bureau geocoder against the current public address ranges. Five of the six returned Highlands Ranch CDP, Douglas County, with no incorporated place, which is exactly what an unincorporated community should return. The sixth sits on a street too newly built to appear in the Census file yet, and that is stated in its entry rather than glossed over.
Twenty-six advisory firms give a Highlands Ranch principal office in the SEC's Investment Adviser Public Disclosure system. Three of them are exempt reporting advisers, meaning private fund managers who file an abbreviated form and take no retail clients at all. Five carry a disciplinary disclosure flag on their IAPD record, and the rule this publication applies to them is absolute: a flagged firm is excluded outright, without exception and without being named here, on the same basis the accounting rankings on this site exclude CPAs carrying board stipulations. That left eighteen eligible firms, screened further on assets actually under management, on whether the firm's own official website resolves and names it, and above all on compensation. That last item is the ordering principle, because it is the single most useful thing this page can tell a reader. Every firm below is an independent registered investment adviser rather than a brokerage branch or a captive insurance agency, five of the six take no commissions of any kind, and the sixth discloses in its own filing that its people sell insurance for commission and are not acting as fiduciaries when they do. All of that is lawful. It is not all the same product, and the difference is printed beside each entry.
How We Evaluated Highlands Ranch Financial Advisory Firms
The Top 6 Financial Advisors in Highlands Ranch
2026 Rankings · Highlands Ranch, Colorado
Staib Financial Planning
Staib Financial Planning, LLC has the least ambiguous compensation disclosure of any advisory firm headquartered in Highlands Ranch, and it is the only one on this page whose fee-only status is corroborated by a body other than itself. Its Part 2A brochure, filed 6 January 2026, opens Item 5 with a sentence that leaves nothing to interpretation: the firm “is a flat fee-only service provider, which means fees paid by Clients are our only source of compensation,” and adds, “We do not sell any products and we do not receive any commissions. Our sole fiduciary responsibility is to the Client.” Item 10 confirms it from the other direction, stating that no employee is registered or applying to register as a broker-dealer or a registered representative, that the firm has no related parties at all, and that it receives no compensation from any outside source.
The fee model is genuinely different from everything else in this market and deserves to be understood rather than assumed to be a detail. Staib does not bill a percentage of assets. Ongoing comprehensive planning and investment management is charged as a flat annual fee ranging from $6,500 to $25,000, set in advance against the complexity of the household rather than the size of the portfolio, with the brochure spelling out at unusual length what puts a client at the low end and what puts one at the high end. A standalone financial plan runs $4,000 to $8,000, and hourly work is $500. The practical effect is that the firm has no financial interest in whether a client rolls a pension into a managed account or pays down a mortgage instead, which is the conflict the percentage model creates and almost never names.
The regulatory file is clean and older than the SEC registration date suggests. The firm's registration as an investment adviser was granted on 22 July 2003 and it operated under Colorado supervision for more than two decades before crossing the federal threshold, with SEC registration approved on 5 February 2026 and the Colorado and Texas registrations terminated within days. It reported $118,021,052 in discretionary assets and no non-discretionary assets at 31 December 2025. Item 9 states that the firm has had no legal or disciplinary events and no pending events, and separately that neither the firm nor its management has been involved in any criminal or civil action, administrative enforcement proceeding, or self-regulatory proceeding; the IAPD disclosure flag on its record is negative. Paul Staib, CRD 4524109, holds the CFP and RICP designations and an MBA from DePaul University, and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors lists the firm in its fee-only directory at the same Highlands Ranch address.
Rosel Wealth Management
Rosel Wealth Management, LLC is by a wide margin the largest advisory firm headquartered in Highlands Ranch, and the only one here operating at a scale usually found downtown. Its SEC registration was approved on 15 December 2017 under CRD 291065 and file number 801-112145, and the Part 2A brochure filed 15 April 2026 reports $619,140,673 managed on a discretionary basis and $11,097,140 on a non-discretionary basis, for total assets under management of $630,237,813 at 31 December 2025. The firm also files under the name MorganRosel Wealth Management, which is worth knowing because directory listings and its Better Business Bureau profile appear under that variant rather than the legal name on the SEC record.
On compensation the record is clean without being self-congratulatory. Item 9 states that there are no legal or disciplinary events material to the evaluation of the advisory business or the integrity of management, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative. Item 10 discloses no broker-dealer registration, no commodity registrations and no insurance agency affiliation. The brochure notes plainly that where sales charges or commissions arise, clients “generally pay sales charges or commissions to a broker-dealer, not our firm.” The maximum annual asset management fee is capped at 1.50 percent, with the specific rate written into each client's advisory agreement rather than published as a public tier table, which is a fair criticism to make of an otherwise transparent filing: ask for the number in writing before you sign.
Two disclosed conflicts are worth reading before an engagement, and both are to the firm's credit for being in the document at all. It refers some clients to third-party money managers and states that the compensation those managers pay varies, creating an incentive to prefer one over another. And Item 14 records that real estate investment trust companies, opportunity zone sponsors, private placement sponsors and mutual fund companies provide financial assistance for client educational seminars, which the brochure itself calls a conflict that may incentivise use of their products. Neither is a commission on a client's account, and both are the kind of thing most firms simply do not write down. The practice is broad, covering estate planning, tax preparation fee reimbursement, and retirement plan consulting under an acknowledged ERISA section 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary role, and the firm's own site names Eric Rosel as a CFP professional at the 1805 Shea Center Drive address.
Cedarwood Wealth
Cedarwood Wealth LLC is the newest firm on this page and the second largest, a combination that ordinarily signals a team leaving a bigger organisation and bringing client relationships with it. It was established in 2025 by Jeffrey Bullock and Denton King, who are its principal members, with Bullock serving as chief compliance officer. SEC registration was approved on 12 March 2025 under CRD 334756 and file number 801-132112. The brochure filed 4 March 2026 reports $211,517,496 in discretionary assets and $1,902,369 in non-discretionary assets, for a total of $213,419,865.
Its compensation disclosure is the most specific of any firm here about what it will not take. Item 10 states that Cedarwood Wealth “does not accept commission for the sale of securities or other investment products, including asset-based sales charges or service fees from the sale of mutual funds,” which closes the mutual fund service fee loophole by name rather than by silence. Separately, in its description of risk management services, the brochure states that the firm “does not sell insurance products but can offer advice on what types of insurance a client may need or be lacking,” which is the arrangement most households actually want and the opposite of the structure at the bottom of this page. Item 9 answers all three disciplinary subparts individually and in the negative, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative.
The fee schedule is worth studying because it is one of the few in this market that is genuinely tiered rather than a breakpoint table dressed up as one. The maximum fee is 1.00 percent, stepping down through 0.85, 0.75, 0.50, 0.35 and 0.25 percent, and the brochure explains in plain arithmetic that each rate applies only to the dollars inside its own tier: a $3,000,000 account pays 1.00 percent on the first million, 0.85 percent on the second and 0.75 percent on the third, for a total of $26,000 rather than a flat percentage of the whole balance. Fees are negotiable, and the brochure lists the reasons they might be lowered, including householding, legacy pricing for long-standing clients, and matching a competitor's quote in good faith. The one caution to weigh is age. This is a firm founded in 2025, so its own operating history is short even though the assets and the people are not.
Prima Wealth
Prima Wealth is the larger of the two Colorado state-registered firms here and a useful illustration of what state registration actually means. It is not a lesser category. Form ADV sets the dividing line by size alone: an adviser becomes eligible for SEC registration as a large advisory firm at $100 million in regulatory assets under management, and as a mid-sized firm between $25 million and $100 million in defined circumstances, with everything below that registering in its home state. Prima Wealth reported approximately $93,862,387 in client assets at 31 December 2025, which sits just under the federal line, and it has been registered with the Colorado Division of Securities since 22 September 2016, alongside California and Illinois.
Its disclosure answers are short and unusually direct. Item 9 states that there are no legal, regulatory or disciplinary events involving the firm or its owner, and the brochure goes further than most by adding that there have been no client complaints, lawsuits, arbitration claims or administrative proceedings against either the firm or Lane M. Weintraub, its president and private wealth manager. The IAPD disclosure flag is negative. Item 10 confirms that neither the firm nor its owner is registered as a broker-dealer, a registered representative, a futures commission merchant, a commodity pool operator or a commodity trading advisor, and that the firm does not select other advisers for clients. The brochure also records that Weintraub is dedicated to the advisory activities of the firm's clients and “does not receive any additional forms of compensation,” and that no performance-based fees are charged.
One verification note belongs on the record, because this publication reports what it could check and what it could not. The principal office sworn in the firm's Form ADV and printed on every page footer of its brochure is 6865 Osprey Court, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130, and the Census Bureau geocoder places that address inside the Highlands Ranch census designated place in Douglas County with no incorporated place, confirming it. The firm's public website, however, describes it simply as a registered investment adviser located in the State of Colorado and markets from Denver rather than naming the Highlands Ranch address. That is a marketing choice rather than a discrepancy, and the regulatory filing is the controlling document, but a reader comparing the two should know why they differ.
Asset Strategies Group
Asset Strategies Group, LLC is the oldest continuously operating advisory practice on this page and the only one that manages nothing at its own discretion. That single characteristic is why it is here, and it deserves to be understood rather than assumed to be a limitation. The firm reported $61,319,477 across 284 accounts as of 26 June 2026, all of it non-discretionary. In practice that means the firm cannot buy or sell in a client account without the client agreeing first. Every transaction is recommended 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 someone who wants to understand and approve what happens to their money, it is close to unavailable elsewhere in this market at any size.
The firm was formed under Colorado law in 2009 and has been in business as an investment adviser since that time, with Colorado registration approved on 4 February 2010 and a Wyoming registration added in February 2024; Louisiana and Texas registrations were terminated later that year. It is owned by Jim Beaudreau III, Thomas Larsen and Connie Terrell, all three of whom have their own brochure supplements in the filing. Item 9 reports no legal or disciplinary events material to the evaluation of the advisory business or the integrity of management, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative. Item 10 is one line long and answers the question this page turns on completely: the firm “has no other financial industry activities and affiliations to disclose.” No insurance agency, no broker-dealer, no accounting affiliate, no outside business at all.
Its published fee schedule is also the most accommodating here for a household that is not yet wealthy. It starts at 1.00 percent on balances from $10,000 to $99,999 and steps down through 0.90, 0.80, 0.70, 0.60 and 0.50 percent above $5,000,000. A $10,000 minimum is genuinely low for a firm of this vintage, though the 1.00 percent rate at that level is high in absolute terms, and that is the trade-off to weigh. Jim Beaudreau, the chief compliance officer, holds a Juris Doctorate from Western New England College and a Master of Tax Law from Boston University School of Law, and his supplement records Series 65, 63, 26 and 6 examinations along with sixteen years as a registered representative at a broker-dealer before he moved to the advisory side in 2009. That history is disclosed in the filing and is not a current registration; the firm holds none today.
Lord and Richards Wealth Management
Lord and Richards Wealth Management, LLC is included because its regulatory record is clean, its scale is real and its structure genuinely suits a particular kind of client. It is ranked last because that structure carries the widest compensation exposure on this page, and because its own filing describes that exposure in terms no other firm here has to use. SEC registration was approved on 15 December 2023 under CRD 328907 and file number 801-129213, with a Texas registration terminated in June 2024 on transition. The firm was organised in Colorado in January 2020 and its principal owner is Colin Richards. The brochure filed 2 March 2026 reports $128,761,154 in discretionary assets and no non-discretionary assets as of December 2025.
Item 9 is clean on all three subparts, with no criminal or civil actions, no administrative proceedings and no self-regulatory proceedings to report, and the IAPD disclosure flag is negative. The published fee schedule is straightforward and among the more competitive here at the top end, running 1.50 percent up to $1,000,000, 1.00 percent to $2,499,999, 0.75 percent to $4,999,999 and 0.50 percent above $5,000,000, billed monthly in arrears and generally negotiable. The firm requires discretionary authority, so accounts are traded without prior permission for each transaction under a written investment policy statement that documents the client's risk tolerance and objectives.
The reason it ranks sixth is set out in Item 10 of its own brochure without euphemism, and it is the clearest statement of the distinction this whole page turns on. Eight named individuals, including the principal owner, are licensed insurance agents with Lord and Richards, Inc., the affiliated agency that shares the firm's name. The brochure states that this “creates a conflict of interest since there is an incentive to recommend insurance products based on commissions or other benefits received from the insurance company, rather than on the client's needs,” and then adds the sentence that matters most: “the offer and sale of insurance products by supervised persons of LRWM are not made in their capacity as a fiduciary, and products are limited to only those offered by certain insurance providers.” The same person can therefore be your fiduciary on Monday for the portfolio and not your fiduciary on Tuesday for the annuity. The firm mitigates this properly, reviewing recommendations, prohibiting tying, and stating that no client is ever obliged to buy a policy and that comparable products may be available elsewhere on better terms. All of it is lawful and all of it is disclosed. Ask what any recommended policy pays the person recommending it, and ask in writing.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check whether a Highlands Ranch 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, so a smaller Colorado firm appears there alongside a billion-dollar one. Search the firm name and you get its CRD number, its registration status and approval date, its current Form ADV, the Part 2A brochure it is required to hand every client, 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 a person appears in neither, stop there: giving investment advice for compensation without registration or an exemption is not lawful.
What is the difference between an independent RIA, a broker, and a captive insurance representative?
An independent registered investment adviser is paid by you, owes you a fiduciary duty on the advice it gives, and files a Form ADV in its own name. A broker is a registered representative of a broker-dealer, is generally paid through commissions and sales credits on transactions, and is held to a best-interest standard under Regulation Best Interest that is not the same thing as a continuous fiduciary duty. A captive insurance representative sells the products of one company or a limited panel and is compensated by the insurer. All three are lawful and all three can be competent. The practical difference is who pays them and what they are permitted to recommend. Every firm on this page is an independent RIA, because the screen was built on advisory firms with a Highlands Ranch principal office. The national brokerage and insurance storefronts around Town Center are branch offices of firms headquartered elsewhere, and that pattern is measurable: alongside the 26 advisory firms based in Highlands Ranch, another 24 advisory firms headquartered somewhere else run a branch office inside it, among them Janus Henderson, William Blair, Mariner and First Trust Advisors. A branch is a perfectly good place to get advice. It is simply not the same thing as hiring the firm itself, and the person across the desk is supervised from another state.
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 the sixth firm on this page does, and its filing goes further by stating that those sales are not made in a fiduciary capacity.
Is my Highlands Ranch advisor regulated by the SEC or by the State of Colorado?
It depends on size, not on quality. Form ADV itself sets the line in its Item 2 instructions: 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, or $90 million or more at the time of its most recent annual updating amendment if it is already registered, 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. Four of the six firms on this page are SEC-registered and two are registered with Colorado. 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; the top-ranked firm here went through exactly that in February 2026 after more than twenty years under Colorado supervision.
Why do Highlands Ranch advisors sometimes show a Littleton address?
Because Highlands Ranch is not a city. It is an unincorporated census designated place in Douglas County, run by a metro district and a community association rather than a municipal government, and its ZIP codes were assigned by a postal geography that does not follow the community boundary. The 80126, 80129 and 80130 codes cover addresses that USPS labels Littleton, and some genuinely Littleton addresses fall the other way. Directories and review sites copy the postal name, which scatters real Highlands Ranch firms across several city listings and files outsiders under Highlands Ranch. The reliable check is the principal office address in the firm's Form ADV, which the firm states itself and which can then be tested independently. Every address on this page was taken from that filing and run through the United States Census Bureau geocoder against the current public address ranges. Five returned Highlands Ranch CDP in Douglas County with no incorporated place, and the sixth sits on a street too new to appear in the Census file, which its entry says outright.
How do I verify a CFP 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. The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors maintains a separate directory of firms that have signed its fiduciary oath and meet its fee-only definition, which is a useful second check on a compensation claim rather than on a qualification. Insurance producers are licensed separately by the Colorado Division of Insurance, which is the register to search 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 on its own site, 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 before a first meeting rather than after.
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 on 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 and who are reachable when a decision is needed. Form ADV reports the split for every registered firm, so you can see it before you engage rather than discovering it afterwards. It is worth checking, because the difference is larger than most marketing suggests: on this page one firm manages more than sixty million dollars across two hundred and eighty-four accounts entirely without discretion, while three others are entirely discretionary.
Sources & References
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Investment Adviser Public Disclosure (IAPD) — firm search, registration status and disciplinary flags
Primary source for this page. The screen of 26 advisory firms with a Highlands Ranch principal office, the 3 exempt reporting advisers, the 5 firms excluded for a disciplinary disclosure flag, the count of 24 firms headquartered elsewhere that operate a Highlands Ranch branch office, and every CRD number, SEC file number, registration approval and termination date on this page were read from this database. 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 or insurance disclosure quoted here. The registration thresholds cited in the FAQ, $100 million for a large advisory firm, $90 million on an annual updating amendment, and $25 million to $100 million for a mid-sized firm, are quoted from the Item 2 instructions printed in these filings. Note the extraction trap: Form ADV Part 1A renders its address fields and its Item 2 and Item 11 answer boxes as form-field images that do not survive automated text extraction. This page therefore takes addresses and disciplinary status from the machine-readable IAPD record and from the Part 2A brochure prose, and asserts no checkbox answer it could not read.
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FINRA
BrokerCheck — background check for brokers, brokerage firms 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, and the description of how a registered representative of a broker-dealer is compensated and supervised. 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, and the registering authority for the two Colorado state-registered firms on this page. 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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U.S. Census Bureau
Geocoding Services — address matching against current public address ranges and census geographies
Used to test each firm's sworn Form ADV address against the Highlands Ranch census designated place. Five of the six addresses returned Highlands Ranch CDP in Douglas County with no incorporated place, confirming both the location and the unincorporated status described in the introduction. The sixth address sits on a street not yet present in the current address-range file, which is stated in that firm's entry.
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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 designations named on this page are attributed to each firm's own SEC filing and public site rather than asserted as independently verified.
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National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA)
Mission and Fiduciary Oath — the fee-only standard and the NAPFA member directory
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. NAPFA's public directory also lists the top-ranked firm on this page at its Highlands Ranch address under the fee-only designation, which is the third-party corroboration referenced in that entry. Confirmed live during research.
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U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission — Investor.gov
Working with an Investment Professional
Backs the adviser-selection, Form CRS and fiduciary guidance in the FAQ and conclusion, including the distinction between an investment adviser and a broker-dealer registered representative. Confirmed to return HTTP 200 during research; note that www.sec.gov itself refuses automated requests.
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Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA)
Colorado Division of Insurance
The authority that licenses insurance producers in Colorado, cited where the sixth-ranked firm discloses that eight of its supervised persons are licensed insurance agents with an affiliated agency and earn commissions on policy sales. Confirmed live during research.
Our Recommendation
For most Highlands Ranch households, Staib Financial Planning is the strongest combination of what this page can actually verify: an advisory practice running since 2003, a brochure that states in its own words that the firm sells no products and takes no commissions, a flat annual fee that does not rise because your portfolio does, a clean disciplinary record on every subpart of Item 9, and a fee-only claim corroborated by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors rather than only by the firm itself. The trade-off is scale and staffing. It is a single-adviser practice, and a household that wants a bench of people behind its plan should say so early.
Where size and breadth matter more, Rosel Wealth Management manages $630 million from Shea Center Drive with no insurance or brokerage arm, an acknowledged ERISA fiduciary role for retirement plans, and unusually candid conflict disclosure; ask it to put the applied fee rate in writing, since the filing publishes only a 1.50 percent ceiling. Cedarwood Wealth is the closest thing here to a straight fee-for-management arrangement, refusing mutual fund service fees by name and advising on insurance without selling it, at a genuinely marginal tiered rate capped at 1.00 percent. Prima Wealth is the option for a household below the federal registration threshold that wants a state-supervised firm with no complaints, suits or arbitrations on its record. Asset Strategies Group is the choice for someone who wants to approve every trade personally, and it will take a $10,000 account to do it.
Lord and Richards Wealth Management is ranked last for one reason, and it is not its record or its scale, both of which are sound. Its own filing states that when its people sell you insurance they are not acting as fiduciaries and are limited to certain providers. For a client who wants portfolio management and insurance from the same relationship and who understands that distinction, that is a workable arrangement and an honestly documented one. For a client who assumed that a fiduciary is a fiduciary in every room, it is exactly the thing worth knowing before the first meeting.
Whichever way you go, run the ten-minute check yourself. 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. Then search the individual adviser on brokercheck.finra.org as well, because a firm record and a person record are not the same file. 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.