SEC Marketing Rule Enforcement Tracker: 32 Actions, $4.57M Fines

The SEC has brought 32 enforcement actions charging violations of the amended Investment Adviser Marketing Rule (Advisers Act Rule 206(4)-1) since the rule’s November 4, 2022 compliance date, with $4,570,000 in disclosed civil penalties. We built this tracker by reading every SEC administrative order with an Advisers Act release number published from November 4, 2022 to November 10, 2026, plus every SEC litigation release through November 12, 2026. Nineteen of the 32 actions involved hypothetical performance, most of it posted on a firm’s public website.

SEC Marketing Rule enforcement by the numbers

Every figure below comes from the SEC orders and releases linked in the full tracker further down. Settled orders are entered “without admitting or denying” the findings, and the Titan order notes that settled findings “are not binding on any other person or entity.”

For scale: our State of RIA Websites 2026 study counted 17,263 SEC-registered advisers on the roster dated November 2, 2026, so the 32 public actions are a thin slice of the firms subject to the rule. This count covers public enforcement actions only; examination deficiencies are described by the SEC only in aggregate, through risk alerts. If you want the wider market context, our RIA industry statistics page covers firm counts and assets.

Marketing Rule actions and fines by year

Enforcement clustered in 2024. No action in our data charged the amended rule in November or December 2022, and the first case came nine months after the compliance date.

2024 penalties include 20 actions with a stated amount; the Black Dragon consent judgment’s penalty is not stated in the SEC litigation release.

The three Marketing Rule sweeps, verified

The SEC announced 23 of the 32 actions in three batches. Two press releases use the word “sweep” directly.

The April 2024 release is the clearest signal on cooperation: Bradesco, Credicorp, InSight and Monex “received reduced penalties because of the corrective steps they undertook in advance of being contacted by the SEC staff.” Their penalties were $20,000 to $30,000, against $50,000 to $175,000 for the nine firms in the September 2023 batch charged with the same provision.

Full tracker: every SEC Marketing Rule enforcement action

Download the data: sec_marketing_rule_actions.csv (32 actions, 16 fields: date, respondent, release number, violation types, penalties, AUM and SEC links). Free to reuse with a link to this page.

Sorted by date. Firm names link to the SEC order or release. AUM is the regulatory assets under management figure as stated in the order, which the SEC takes from the firm’s own Form ADV. “Undertakings” means the firm agreed to compliance steps such as hiring a consultant or reviewing its advertisements.

What firms were charged with, by violation type

Many orders charge more than one provision, so the counts add up to more than 32. We tagged each action from the findings in the order itself, not from press coverage.

Median penalties by type are computed over actions with a stated penalty and overlap, because one order can carry several types. Penalties also tracked firm size: among the 30 actions with both a stated penalty and a stated AUM figure, the median was $72,500 for firms under $250 million (14 actions), $82,500 for $250 million to $1 billion (10) and $235,000 for firms over $1 billion (6).

SEC marketing rule testimonials and endorsements: the four cases

Testimonials and endorsements get the most attention from advisor marketers, yet only four actions charge Rule 206(4)-1(b). Each one turned on disclosure or paperwork, not on the use of testimonials as such.

1. Global Predictions (March 18, 2024, $175,000): failed to disclose material conflicts of interest from its relationships with certain people giving testimonials, alongside its AI claims.
2. GeaSphere (April 12, 2024, $100,000): failed to enter into written agreements with people it compensated for endorsements.
3. Howard Bailey Securities (Sept. 9, 2024, $90,000): advertised that it was the “Official Wealth Management Partner of” a university athletic program on videos, social media, bags and flags without disclosing that the endorser was a paid non-client; it also posted “testimonials” that did not come from current clients.
4. Wahed Invest (Nov. 1, 2024, $250,000): ran endorsements from several professional athletes on its website, social media and email without the required disclosures.

The rule’s required disclosures, from 17 CFR 275.206(4)-1(b), are short: whether the person is a current client, whether they were paid, and a brief statement of material conflicts, all “clearly and prominently.” The Division of Examinations’ December 16, 2025 risk alert found the same gaps in exams: missing disclosures, no written agreements with paid promoters, and disclosures placed behind hyperlinks or in small fonts. If you are planning a testimonial program, our guide to client testimonials and case studies for financial advisors covers how to collect them; this tracker shows where firms slipped on the disclosure side.

What got firms fined: a pass/fail website and marketing checklist

Each row maps a violation the SEC actually charged to a check you can run on your own website, social profiles and pitch decks. “Fail” examples are taken from the orders.

In my view the cheapest fixes are checks 4 and 6: deleting a “conflict-free” line or adding a date to an award badge takes minutes, and both appear in multiple orders. Copywriters should treat the rule as a constraint from the first draft; our notes on financial advisor website copy that converts and on getting more reviews assume the disclosures above are in place. Social posts count as advertisements too: the April 2024 risk alert lists advisers that “did not maintain copies of information posted to social media,” which matters if you follow a social media plan for financial advisors.

Marketing Rule guidance timeline: risk alerts and FAQ updates

Exams and staff FAQs move faster than enforcement. This is the full public guidance trail we could verify on sec.gov.

Reading the two lists together: guidance kept coming after enforcement slowed. The January 15, 2026 FAQ, for example, says whether showing net performance with actual fees violates the general prohibitions “depends on all of the facts and circumstances,” a softer reading than some advisers took from footnote 590 of the adopting release.

What Rule 206(4)-1 covers and who it applies to

The Marketing Rule applies to investment advisers registered or required to be registered with the SEC under Section 203 of the Advisers Act, as the April 2024 and December 2025 risk alerts state. The rule has four working parts, per the regulation text:

• (a) Seven general prohibitions: no untrue or misleading statements, no material facts you cannot substantiate on demand, no misleading implications, no benefits without fair and balanced risks, and no cherry-picked performance or time periods.
• (b) Testimonials and endorsements: allowed with disclosures, oversight, written agreements for paid promoters, and no compensation to disqualified persons.
• (c) Third-party ratings: allowed with due diligence on the survey and disclosure of date, period, rater and compensation.
• (d) Performance: net with gross, 1, 5 and 10 year periods for non-private-fund ads, and hypothetical performance only with audience-relevance policies and disclosure of criteria, assumptions, risks and limitations.

The FTC enforces a different set of advertising rules for most other businesses; our FTC advertising enforcement statistics make a useful comparison for firms that also market non-advisory services.

Methodology

1. We crawled the full SEC Administrative Proceedings listing and kept all 2,122 entries dated November 4, 2022 to November 10, 2026.
2. We downloaded the 451 orders carrying an Advisers Act (IA) release number, extracted the text and searched for “206(4)-1” and “Marketing Rule.” 37 orders matched.
3. We read each match. 31 found violations of the amended rule and are in the tracker. 6 were excluded: Fundrise Advisors (IA-6381, conduct under the old cash solicitation rule, charged only under Rule 206(4)-7), Wellesley Asset Management (IA-6433, old advertising rule, conduct 2015 to March 2022), Joseph Andrew Paul (34-100323, follow-on to an old-rule injunction), Inspire Investing (IA-6710, Rule 206(4)-1 appears only in the cease-and-desist clause, with findings under Section 206(2) and Rules 206(4)-7 and 206(4)-8), Invesco Advisers (IA-6770, old rule 206(4)-1(a)(5), conduct 2020 to July 2022) and the Black Dragon follow-on order (IA-6729, counted with its court case).
4. We fetched all 1,115 SEC litigation releases dated November 4, 2022 to November 12, 2026 and searched the same terms. One civil action matched: SEC v. Black Dragon Capital (LR-26095).
5. We scanned SEC press release headlines back to April 2023 for Marketing Rule, hypothetical performance, testimonial, endorsement and advertising terms to confirm the sweep dates and totals.
6. For each action we recorded date, respondent, release number, provisions found violated, other charges, civil penalty, disgorgement and interest, other relief, AUM as stated in the order, and links. Violation-type tags are our classification of the order’s findings. Requests to sec.gov used a generic research user agent and were paced at no more than about five per second.

Limitations

• Litigated complaints: Marketing Rule counts that appear only in a court complaint, without a litigation release mentioning the rule, would be missed. Black Dragon’s penalty amount is not stated in the SEC release.
• Exam findings are not public: individual examination deficiencies are not published, so they are not in this data; the risk alerts describe them only in aggregate.
• Other regulators: state securities regulators and FINRA actions are not included.
• AUM: the figure is what the order states from a Form ADV filed near the time of the case; it is self-reported and may have changed.
• FAQ history: the dates come from the FAQ page as published on November 12, 2026; questions removed or superseded earlier may not show.
• Cut-off: orders published after November 10, 2026 and litigation releases after November 12, 2026 are not included.

This tracker summarizes public SEC records for research purposes and is not legal advice; talk to your compliance counsel before changing advertising. If you want a second pair of eyes on how your marketing plan holds up against these orders, you can book a consultation.

Frequently asked questions

What is the SEC marketing rule?

The SEC Marketing Rule is Rule 206(4)-1 under the Investment Advisers Act, amended in December 2020 with a compliance date of November 4, 2022. It replaced the old advertising and cash solicitation rules with one rule covering seven general prohibitions, testimonials and endorsements, third-party ratings and performance advertising, including strict conditions on hypothetical performance.

How many firms has the SEC charged under the marketing rule?

Our tracker counts 32 SEC enforcement actions charging the amended Marketing Rule from August 21, 2023 to November 12, 2026: 31 settled administrative orders and one federal court case against Black Dragon Capital settled by consent. Those actions named 33 advisory firms plus one individual. The most recent action we found is Meridian Financial on September 4, 2025.

How big are SEC marketing rule fines?

Disclosed civil penalties total $4,570,000 across 31 actions with a stated amount. The median penalty is $90,000 and the range runs from $20,000 (InSight Securities and Bradesco, both reduced for early corrective steps) to $850,000 (Titan Global Capital Management, which also paid $192,454 in disgorgement). Firms with over $1 billion in assets had a median penalty of $235,000.

Can financial advisors use testimonials under the SEC marketing rule?

Yes, if the advertisement clearly and prominently discloses whether the person is a current client, whether they were paid, and any material conflicts, and the adviser has oversight and written agreements for paid promoters. All four SEC testimonial and endorsement cases, including Howard Bailey and Wahed Invest, involved missing disclosures or agreements, not testimonials as such.

Who does the SEC marketing rule apply to?

The Marketing Rule applies to investment advisers registered or required to be registered with the SEC under Section 203 of the Advisers Act, including advisers to private funds. It covers advertisements disseminated on or after November 4, 2022, which includes website pages, social media posts, emails and pitch materials that offer advisory services to more than one person.

What does SEC rule 206(4)-1 focus on?

Rule 206(4)-1 focuses on keeping adviser advertising truthful and balanced. In enforcement, the SEC has focused most on hypothetical performance shown without required policies (19 of 32 actions), unsubstantiated claims such as being conflict-free (14 actions with general prohibition charges), testimonials and endorsements (4) and third-party ratings without dates or sources (4).

What is hypothetical performance under the marketing rule?

Hypothetical performance is performance not actually achieved by any portfolio of the adviser, such as model, backtested or projected returns. An adviser may advertise it only with policies making it relevant to the likely audience and with disclosure of criteria, assumptions, risks and limitations. All 14 firms in the September 2023 and April 2024 sweeps were charged for showing it on public websites without this.