Compliance
Advisors accumulate outside roles quietly, and each one feels unrelated to advice. Collectively they are a recurring examination finding.
Advisors accumulate outside roles quietly: a board seat, a rental property, a stake in a friend's business, a second company that started as a hobby. Individually each feels unrelated to advice. Collectively they are one of the more common examination findings.
Not because the activity is improper. Because it creates conflicts, time demands, and in some cases a channel through which client money could move outside the firm's visibility.
The concern is not the board seat. It is the board seat you did not mention, at a company your clients are invested in.
Any business activity outside the firm, compensated or not. Investment-related roles receive more scrutiny, but the disclosure obligation is broader than that, and firms that only ask about investment-related activity collect an incomplete picture.
Roles at charities and community organizations count. So does the family business you help run at weekends.
An advisor who invests personally in a private company, then has a client invest alongside, has created a conflict that requires careful handling — and if the firm was not told, it could not handle it. This is a recurring pattern in enforcement, and it usually began with someone being helpful.
Ask at hire. Ask again annually, in writing, with a form that says what counts. Require pre-approval before a new role starts rather than disclosure afterwards. Keep the record.
And review the answers against what is on the Form ADV and the individual filings, because the two drift apart quietly.
You still owe this to yourself. Write down every outside role you hold, check it against your filings, and repeat annually. There is nobody else to notice the omission, which makes the discipline more important rather than less.
Questions this did not answer? Ask them directly — that is what the twenty minutes is for.
Schedule a call to see for yourself