How to Analyze Investment Adviser Data in Form ADV with ChatGPT and Claude

Form ADV is the form investment advisers use to register and report under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. Part 1A of Form ADV contains structured answers on regulatory assets under management, clients, fees, ownership, private funds and disciplinary history, and Part 2A is the adviser's narrative brochure.

Once ChatGPT, Claude or any other AI tool is connected to the SEC-API.io MCP server, the assistant can query Form ADV records of more than 41,000 SEC and state registered adviser firms and more than 380,000 individual adviser representatives. A single prompt then for example can return a ranked table of advisers, a list of private funds or an ownership chain.

This post explains what Form ADV contains, who files it and when, how to connect the assistant and how to read the results, using five prompts run against current filings.

What Form ADV contains

Parts 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B and 3

Form ADV is set out in 17 CFR 279.1 and has five parts.

IARD, the Investment Adviser Registration Depository, is the electronic filing system FINRA operates for the SEC and the states. Under Rule 204-1, amendments to Parts 1A, 2A and 3 are filed electronically through IARD. Amendments to Part 2B brochure supplements are not filed with the Commission.

Who files Form ADV

Three groups of advisers file Form ADV.

Rule 203A-1 adds a buffer around the $100 million threshold. An adviser with $100 million or more but less than $110 million in regulatory assets under management may register with the SEC, and an SEC registered adviser has to withdraw once its annual updating amendment reports less than $90 million. Exempt reporting advisers file under Rule 204-4 and carry the registration type ERA in the data.

Filing deadlines and amendments

For an adviser whose fiscal year ends in December, the annual updating amendment is due by 30 or 31 March, which is why many Form ADV filings are dated late March. A filing dated later in the year is an interim amendment, triggered by one of the items that must be updated promptly. The full requirements are in the Form ADV General Instructions.

Items that answer most adviser questions

Every answer in Part 1A is searchable in the Form ADV API. The items below cover most of the questions analysts ask.

Worked prompts

Connect the Server to your AI tool

Steps to connect the MCP Server to Claude are described in How to access SEC financial data in Claude, ChatGPT and Codex in How to access SEC financial data in ChatGPT. For all other AI tools see SEC-API.io MCP server documentation. You can get a free API key at sec-api.io/signup.

The SEC-API.io MCP Server provides nine Form ADV tools: firm search, individual search, Schedule A direct owners, Schedule B indirect owners, Schedule D Sections 1.B, 5.K, 7.A and 7.B.(1), and the Part 2 brochure list. The assistant picks the right tool based on the prompt.

The five prompts below work in ChatGPT or Claude once the connector is on. Below each prompt is the output of a run on 22 September 2026, based on each adviser's latest Form ADV filing.

Screen advisers by location, fee type and assets

Find every SEC registered investment adviser with its principal office in
Connecticut that charges performance based fees, advises at least one private
fund and reports regulatory assets under management of $10 billion or more.
Rank by total regulatory assets under management. Return firm name, CRD,
city, total and discretionary regulatory assets under management, number of
accounts, number of employees, the date of the latest filing, and every
Item 11 disclosure question answered yes.

What comes back:

• One row per adviser, keyed on the CRD number, which stays the same when a firm changes its name
• Regulatory assets under management from Item 5.F, split into discretionary and non discretionary amounts
• The account count from Item 5.F(2)(f), which shows whether a manager runs a few pooled vehicles or thousands of separate accounts
• The filing date of the latest amendment, which shows whether the figures come from the annual updating amendment or a later amendment
• The Item 11 questions answered yes, listed by number

The prompt returned 37 advisers. Here are the top 10:

All ten advisers have a December fiscal year end. Four filed in the last week of March, in time for the annual updating amendment deadline, and six filed later amendments between April and September 2026.

The client type split in Item 5.D explains the two rows with non discretionary assets. Symetra Investment Management attributes $61.15bn of its regulatory assets to insurance company clients and $24.80bn to other investment advisers. Portfolio Advisors reports $18.05bn from state or municipal government entities and $24.68bn from pooled investment vehicles.

Verition answers no to the opening question of Item 11, which asks whether any reported event involves the adviser or its supervised persons, but yes to Item 11.E(2). The event behind 11.E(2) therefore involves an advisory affiliate outside that group. Tudor answers yes to both. The Item 11 answers only show which question applies; the event itself is described in the Disclosure Reporting Pages of the filing.

Map the private funds of one adviser

For Viking Global Investors, CRD 132272, list every private fund in
Schedule D Section 7.B.(1) with fund type, jurisdiction, gross asset value,
minimum investment, number of beneficial owners and percentage owned by non
United States persons. Sum gross asset value and beneficial owners by fund
type, and compare the total gross asset value with regulatory assets under
management in Item 5.F. Name the auditor, the prime brokers and the
administrator of the largest fund.

What comes back:

• One row per private fund, with feeder funds listed under their master fund
• The fund type selected in question 10: hedge fund, private equity fund, liquidity fund, real estate fund, securitized asset fund, venture capital fund or other
• Gross asset value from question 11, minimum investment from question 12 and beneficial owners from question 13
• Service providers from questions 23 to 26: auditors, prime brokers, custodians and administrators
• Each fund's Form D file numbers from question 22, which connect the fund to its Regulation D offering notices

Viking's latest Form ADV, filed on 15 June 2026, reports 15 private funds with a combined gross asset value of $81.74bn:

Its five largest funds:

Viking Global Equities Master Ltd. is the master fund for four feeder funds. It uses seven prime brokers (Barclays Capital, BofA Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley and UBS Securities), lists 13 custodians and has Morgan Stanley Fund Services as its administrator. PricewaterhouseCoopers in the United States or the Cayman Islands audits all 15 funds, and all 15 report unqualified audit opinions.

The Schedule D total of $81.74bn is $3.54bn higher than the $78.20bn in Item 5.F because the two figures measure different things: Item 5.F reports regulatory assets under management calculated under Instruction 5.b to Part 1A, and question 11 of Section 7.B.(1) reports the gross asset value of each fund. Both are correct as filed, so a comparison across advisers should use one measure throughout.

Trace the ownership chain of an adviser

For Bridgewater Associates, CRD 105129, list every direct owner and
executive officer in Schedule A and every indirect owner in Schedule B.
For each, give the name, title or status, the ownership code translated into
its percentage range, the date the status was acquired, and whether the
person is a control person. Show the chain from the adviser up to the
ultimate owners.

What comes back:

• Schedule A rows for executive officers and for owners of 5% or more of the adviser, with the ownership code of each
• Schedule B rows for anyone owning 25% or more of a direct owner that is an entity, continuing up the chain
• The control person flag, which is set separately from the ownership percentage
• The date each title or status was acquired, which shows when management changed

The ownership codes stand for ranges. Schedule A uses NA for less than 5%, A for 5% to less than 10%, B for 10% to less than 25%, C for 25% to less than 50%, D for 50% to less than 75% and E for 75% or more. Schedule B uses C, D and E with the same ranges, and F for a general partner, trustee or elected manager.

The Schedule A in Bridgewater's latest Form ADV, filed on 18 August 2026, lists one entity owner and seven executive officers:

Schedule B continues up the chain. Bridgewater Associates Holdings, LLC is the general partner of Intermediate Holdings, with code E. Three owners of Holdings, LLC have code C, 25% to less than 50%:

Eight more board members of Holdings, LLC have code F; the most recent joined in June 2026. The chain ends with a foreign entity, the Brunei Investment Agency, which owns 25% to less than 50% of Amanah Sdn Bhd.

Count disclosure flags across an adviser's representatives

For Morgan Stanley, CRD 149777, report total regulatory assets under
management, number of accounts, number of employees and number of employees
registered as investment adviser representatives from the latest Form ADV.
Then count the individual adviser representatives currently employed by the
firm whose records carry a customer complaint disclosure and a regulatory
action disclosure, and the number with a branch office in Washington state.
Report counts only, without individual names.

What comes back:

• Firm figures from Items 5.A, 5.B and 5.F of the firm filing
• Counts from the individual search, filtered by current employer CRD and by each representative's disclosure flags
• A note that the individual search returns at most 10,000 records per query, so large firms have to be counted with narrower filters such as disclosure type or branch state

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, doing business as Morgan Stanley, filed its latest amendment on 7 August 2026:

The disclosure flags come from each representative's Form U4. A customer complaint disclosure covers complaints, arbitrations and civil litigation meeting the Form U4 reporting criteria, including pending and settled matters. A flag count measures reported events. The details of each event are in the Disclosure Reporting Page of the individual record, and the Info.link field links to the representative's page on adviserinfo.sec.gov.

Pull the current brochure

List the Part 2A brochures of Bridgewater Associates, CRD 105129, with the
submission date. Open the most recent one and extract the fee structure from
Item 5, the performance fee basis from Item 6, the client types from Item 7,
and the assets under management figure the brochure states. Compare that
figure with regulatory assets under management in Item 5.F of Part 1A and
report the answer to Item 5.J(2).

What comes back:

• The brochure list with version ID, name, submission date and a link to the PDF
• Extracted text from the brochure items named in the prompt
• The Part 1A figures side by side with the brochure figures, each with its date

Bridgewater has one current brochure, "Part 2A, March 2026", submitted on 30 March 2026. It describes two fee types: management fees, generally a percentage of assets, and profit participations, generally a percentage of profits. Fees are billed in arrears, generally quarterly. The brochure states that performance fee arrangements are structured under Section 205(a)(1) and Rule 205-3 of the Advisers Act. It lists corporate and public pension funds, foreign governments and central banks, university endowments, charitable foundations, family offices and funds of funds as client types, and reports discretionary client assets of approximately $102.4bn as of 31 December 2025.

Item 5.F of the Part 1A amendment filed on 18 August 2026 reports $150.16bn. Bridgewater answers yes to Item 5.J(2), which asks whether the client assets reported in Item 4.E of Part 2A are calculated differently from regulatory assets under management. The two figures have different dates and different methods, and the filing itself says so through the answer to Item 5.J(2).

How to read Form ADV data

Regulatory assets under management follow a method

Item 5.F reports regulatory assets under management, calculated under Instruction 5.b to Part 1A: gross assets of securities portfolios for which the adviser provides continuous and regular supervisory or management services, without deduction of outstanding debt, and including uncalled capital commitments of private funds. The brochure, marketing material and Schedule D gross asset value each use their own basis, so a screen on assets should use Q5F2C for every adviser.

Item 11 covers advisory affiliates

Item 11 asks about the disciplinary history of the adviser and of all its advisory affiliates, which include officers, partners, directors, employees other than clerical staff, and persons that control or are controlled by the adviser. For a firm with thousands of employees or a large group of affiliates, a yes points to the Disclosure Reporting Pages, where each event is described. Item 11.C covers actions by the SEC and the CFTC, Item 11.D actions by other federal, state and foreign financial regulators, and Item 11.E actions by self regulatory organizations and commodities exchanges.

Ownership codes are ranges

Schedules A and B report ownership in bands. Adding up codes across owners gives a range: two owners in band C together hold anywhere from 50% to less than 100%. An officer with code NA can still be a control person, because control under Form ADV includes the power to direct management or policies through a position as well as through ownership.

The API returns the latest filing

The firm search, individual search and schedule endpoints return the most recent version of each Form ADV filing, and the data is updated once a day between 5:00 AM and 7:30 AM Eastern. Filing.Dt shows when the latest filing was processed. To analyze changes across years, you need the historical Form ADV data from 2000 onward, which SEC-API.io provides on request.

Form ADV compared with Form 13F, Form PF, Form N-PORT and Form D

Form ADV describes the adviser and its private funds, and question 22 of Schedule D Section 7.B.(1) lists each fund's Form D file numbers. Holdings are reported on Form 13F for listed equities and on Form N-PORT for registered funds. How to track institutional portfolios with AI covers the holdings of the same managers.

How to download the result as Excel, CSV or a chart

The assistant answers in text unless the prompt asks for a format. Add the format to the end of any prompt above: an Excel file, a CSV, a PDF, a Markdown table or a chart as an image. For an adviser screen, one row per adviser works well, with CRD, name, state, regulatory assets under management, discretionary share, accounts, employees, fee types, private fund flag, latest filing date and Item 11 answers. For a private fund map, a stacked bar chart of gross asset value by fund type for each adviser, on an axis starting at zero, makes managers easy to compare. The Financial Analysis Prompt Library has more prompts with their output.

FAQ

Can ChatGPT or Claude access Form ADV data?

Yes, once they are connected to a data source. The SEC-API.io MCP server gives both assistants nine Form ADV tools covering firm filings, individual adviser representatives, Schedules A, B and D and Part 2 brochures. Without a connection, the assistant answers from its training data, which stops at its cutoff date and misses every amendment filed since.

Where can I find Form ADV data?

The SEC publishes Form ADV filings on the Investment Adviser Public Disclosure website at adviserinfo.sec.gov, one adviser at a time. The Form ADV API makes every Part 1A answer searchable across all advisers with Lucene queries on any field, and the Data Browser runs the same queries without code.

What is a CRD number?

It is the Central Registration Depository number that FINRA's CRD system or IARD assigns to each firm and each individual. It stays the same when an adviser changes its name, which makes it the key for screens and joins across Form ADV data.

Which advisers have to register with the SEC?

Generally, advisers with $100 million or more in regulatory assets under management, under Section 203A of the Advisers Act and Rule 203A-1. Advisers to registered investment companies and advisers that qualify for an exemption from the prohibition on SEC registration also register with the SEC. Advisers below that level generally register with their state securities authority.

What is an exempt reporting adviser?

It is an adviser exempt from SEC registration under Section 203(l), because it advises only venture capital funds, or under Section 203(m), because it advises only private funds and has less than $150 million in assets under management in the United States. Exempt reporting advisers file a partial Form ADV Part 1A with Items 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10 and 11 and the related schedules.

How up to date is Form ADV data?

Advisers file an annual updating amendment within 90 days after their fiscal year ends, and file amendments promptly when certain items change. SEC-API.io updates Form ADV data once a day between 5:00 AM and 7:30 AM Eastern, and each record shows the processing date of its latest filing in Filing.Dt.

Where can I find an adviser's holdings?

Form ADV reports assets under management, client types and the gross asset value of private funds. Holdings of individual securities are reported on Form 13F for listed equities managed by institutional investment managers, and on Form N-PORT for registered funds. Form PF covers private fund exposures and is filed confidentially.

How can I download the result as an Excel file?

Ask for it in the prompt, for example by adding "return the result as an Excel file". The same works for CSV, PDF and charts. Listing the columns you want in the prompt sets the layout of the file.

Related reading

Setup and prompts

• SEC-API.io MCP server documentation
• Get a free API key
• How to access SEC financial data in Claude
• How to access SEC financial data in ChatGPT
• Financial Analysis Prompt Library

Investment managers and holdings

• How to track institutional portfolios with AI
• Guide to corporate ownership structures
• Fund performance monitoring with Form 13F filings (Python)

Primary sources

• Investment Advisers Act of 1940, Section 203, 15 U.S.C. 80b-3
• Section 203A, 15 U.S.C. 80b-3a
• Rule 203A-1, Rule 204-1, Rule 204-3 Rule 204-4
• Form ADV General Instructions

Educational content about accessing and analysing SEC filing data. Not investment advice, legal advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

Last updated: 22 September 2026