How to Check a Broker's Record Yourself

This is the check this whole site is built on. Every entity figure we publish — legal name, CRD number, SEC file number, registration status — comes from the same free database you can search yourself, and we publish the numbers precisely so you can.

The two-minute version

1. Go to brokercheck.finra.org and search the firm’s legal name, not its brand. These often differ: the company behind Fidelity is Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, and the one behind Merrill Edge is Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated
2. Better still, search the CRD number. It is unambiguous where a name is not, and we publish it on every broker review
3. Check the status reads active, and that the firm is registered to do what you are about to ask it to do
4. Read the disclosures section, if there is one. This is where any regulatory matter appears

What a disclosure is, and is not

A disclosure on a firm’s record is not a criminal conviction and it is usually not an allegation of theft. Large brokerages run enormous volumes of transactions under detailed rules, and most matters concern supervision, recordkeeping, reporting or how something was disclosed to customers. That does not make them trivial, but it does mean the count alone tells you very little.

The phrase to look for is settled without admitting or denying the findings. It is the standard resolution in this area: the firm pays, agrees to fix something, and neither confesses nor contests. It means the regulator’s account was not tested in a hearing, and it means the firm chose to pay rather than argue. Read the regulator’s own order rather than a summary of it — ours included.

A worked example from our own database

Of the twelve brokers we score, one carries enforcement matters we identified in our sourced review: Robinhood. In March 2025 FINRA ordered Robinhood entities to pay $3.75m in restitution to customers with $26m in fines, over anti-money-laundering, supervisory and disclosure failures — including inaccurate disclosure of order collaring. In January 2025 the firm agreed to $45m in civil penalties to settle SEC charges covering recordkeeping, trade reporting and other rule violations. Both were settled without admitting or denying the findings.

That record is why Robinhood scores 6 out of 10 on safety in our ranking while the rest of the set runs from 7 to 9. It is a real deduction and we apply it consistently. It is also not the same thing as saying your shares are at risk there, and the distinction is the point of the next section.

One caveat we owe you: twelve brokers is not the whole industry, and “no enforcement matter identified in our sourced review” is a statement about what we found, not a certificate of a clean record. Run the search yourself. That is the entire argument of this page.

Conduct and custody are different questions

A disciplinary record tells you about a firm’s conduct — how it supervised its staff, what it told customers, whether it reported correctly. Whether your assets come back if the firm fails is a separate question answered by SIPC membership, and every broker we publish is a SIPC member. A firm can have a poor conduct record and intact custody protection, and a firm with a spotless record is not thereby a good investment platform.

Conflating the two is the most common mistake we see in broker coverage, in both directions: treating a fine as though customer assets were stolen, or treating SIPC membership as though it were a seal of good behaviour. Neither follows.

What should actually stop you

• A registration that is not active, or a firm operating outside its stated permissions
• A firm whose legal entity you cannot find on the register at all
• A firm that cannot or will not give you a CRD number matching the name on the register
• A pattern of matters concerning customer funds or misrepresentation, rather than isolated reporting and supervision failures
• Any pressure to act before you have checked

Outside the United States

The same discipline applies with a different register. In the United Kingdom it is the FCA’s Financial Services Register, where firms carry a firm reference number rather than a CRD. Reading it on 31 August 2026 we found unauthorised-firm warnings sitting beside the genuine entries for several large platforms — clones using the real firm’s name. The lesson transfers exactly: check the number, not the logo.

If your account would be held by a broker’s non-US entity, that entity has its own record on its own regulator’s register, and the US one tells you nothing about it.