Financial advisor disclaimer requirements for your blog
The exact words that belong at the bottom of your blog posts, why each line is there, and what happens if one is missing.
Copy the block on the right and you are done in ten seconds. If you would rather understand it before you use it, the six things it has to say are underneath, one at a time.
Use it as it is, or rewrite it in your own voice. The next section is what the rewrite has to keep.
Six things you have to say. Here they are without the legalese.
The plain meaning first, because that is the part you need to agree with. The formal wording underneath is what ends up on the page.
Say this is education, not advice aimed at you personally.
Leave it out and a reader who followed a post and lost money has a cleaner argument that you were advising them, specifically, about their situation.
Say you are not telling anyone to buy anything.
Leave it out and a post that walks through an investment starts to read like an offer of it, which is a very different document with very different rules.
Say investing can lose money.
Leave it out and the post presents upside with no downside. That imbalance is the single oldest problem in investment advertising and the easiest one to spot from the outside.
Say what happened before does not promise what happens next.
Leave it out and every historical figure in the post quietly becomes a forecast in the reader's head, whether or not you meant it that way.
Say reading this does not make someone a client.
Leave it out and the line between a reader and a client is drawn by whoever is arguing about it later, rather than by the agreement you both signed.
Say being registered with the SEC is not a government seal of approval.
Leave it out and the word “registered” does the work of an endorsement you were never given. This is also why “approved by the SEC” is never a phrase you can use. Registered, yes. Approved, no.
Two more sentences ride along and nothing checks for them. One says the views are the author's and not the firm's. One says you only offer advisory services where the firm and its representatives are licensed or exempt. They are in the block because most firms want them there, and because the second one is the sentence that stops a post written for one state reading like an offer in fifty. Delete them if your counsel would rather you did not say them.
Take a line out. Watch what it costs you.
Switch any of the six off and the block below loses it. This is the same check that runs on a draft before it can publish, so what you see happen here is what happens there.
Every one of the six is on the page, in one block, in the right place. A person at your firm still presses publish. Nothing goes live on its own.
And it goes at the bottom, above your sources.
One block, after the last paragraph, before the list of sources you cited. Not in the sidebar, not only in the site footer, not halfway down. A reader who scrolls to the end of the post should hit it without hunting, and so should anyone reviewing the page a year from now.
You need one disclaimer. Most firms are running three.
One in the site footer from whoever built the website. One in the blog template from whoever set the blog up. One pasted into the post itself by whoever wrote it. They overlap, they contradict each other, and nobody can tell you which one is current.
- Three blocks disagree in public. The 2019 footer says one thing about past performance and the pasted one says another. A reader sees both on the same page.
- Nobody knows which is the real one. When you are asked to show what the page said, three answers is the same as no answer.
- Length stops being a protection and starts being a hiding place. Four hundred words of stacked boilerplate is read by nobody, which defeats the point of putting it there.
- One block. Ninety to three hundred and twenty words. Long enough to say all six things properly, short enough that somebody might actually read it.
This is one of the things Verand checks before a post can publish.
Everything above is the answer whether or not you ever use our product. This is the part where we tell you what we do with it. You name your regulator once during setup. From then on the block is written into every draft, in one place, in the right place, and a draft that is missing any of the six cannot leave the building.
- Written in, not reminded about. The block is part of the draft before you open it, so nobody has to remember it at eleven at night.
- One block, always. If your site already carries a disclaimer somewhere else, the draft still resolves to a single current block at the bottom of the post.
- Your wording survives. Paste your own version in. The check is on the six things, not on our sentences.
- A person presses publish. Always. Verand cannot publish to your site on its own, and there is no setting that lets it.
This is for fiduciary RIA marketing.
If you are a registered representative, or a hybrid firm publishing on the broker-dealer side, FINRA Rule 2210 and Regulation Best Interest are a separate regime with their own requirements. This block is not built for them and does not satisfy them.
Researched from the regulators' own text, tested by Verand.
Validated against the SEC's rules. Researched from the regulators' own text and tested by Verand. Not reviewed by a licensed attorney. Your counsel confirms applicability. Not legal advice. We will not tell you an attorney has looked at it until an attorney has looked at it.
For anyone who wants the receipt: the block on this page is the default disclaimer variant ria-disc-general in the us-sec-ria pack, version 3.0.0, review status internal-reviewed. It renders as a single block positioned before the sources section, accepts 90 to 320 words, permits paraphrase, and is checked for the presence of all six required elements on every draft. None of that changes what the block says. It is here so you can see the claim on this page is a real setting somewhere and not a piece of marketing copy.
The four we get asked every time.
Can I just use the block on this page?
Yes. It is the same text we put into drafts, and you are welcome to copy it. Two caveats worth ten seconds of your time. Check that the sentence about offering advisory services only where you are licensed matches how your firm actually registers, and have whoever handles your compliance read it once before it goes on two hundred posts. It is a starting point that covers the six things, not a document written about your firm.
Does it have to be word for word?
No. Rewrite it in your own voice. What has to survive the rewrite is the six things: that this is educational, that it is not a recommendation or solicitation, that you can lose principal, that past performance guarantees nothing, that registration does not imply skill or approval, and that a written agreement is what makes somebody a client. Lose one of those ideas and you have lost the disclaimer, however good the new wording reads.
Isn't a disclaimer in the site footer enough?
A footer disclaimer sits on every page including the ones it was never written for, and it is the first thing that goes stale when the site gets rebuilt. The block belongs at the bottom of the post, where the claims it is qualifying actually are. If you have a footer disclaimer as well, fine, but decide which one is the real one and keep that one current.
What if a post has no performance figures in it at all?
Use the same block. Splitting your blog into posts that carry the full disclaimer and posts that carry a shorter one means somebody has to make that judgement call correctly every single time, and that is exactly the decision that gets made wrong on a Friday afternoon. One block on everything is easier to defend and much easier to keep current.
Founder of Verand. Fifteen years of SEO, AEO & GEO for regulated industries, now building and measuring for the answers ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude give. Writes about what a regulated firm can publish, and where the AI assistants find it.
More from Daniel →How we write: Editorial standards. Researched from the regulators' own text and tested by Verand. Not reviewed by a licensed attorney. Not legal advice.
Knowing the rule is the easy half. Rank in AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity and Claude with every page checked against it first.
Verand drafts in your firm’s voice and runs the Marketing Rule’s seven prohibitions before a reviewer sees anything. Then it records which assistants cite the page.
Validated against the SEC Marketing Rule. Researched from the regulators’ own text and tested by Verand. Not reviewed by a licensed attorney.
The 2019 fund returned 14.2% net to investors, and this offering carries guaranteed returns of 12 to 15% over a five year hold.
A guaranteed return is deceptive in any financial context and can be a securities violation. Say targeted or projected return, with its basis.
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