Review Management for Financial Firms

Each month we handle the steady, repeatable parts of a review program so your office does not have to. The routine covers review-request templates and links, email, text or QR-code request workflows where you have permission to contact the recipient, monitoring of public reviews, privacy-safe draft replies, escalation of account-specific or threatening content, and a monthly activity report. We also keep a library of reply language based on wording you have approved, a calendar of reviews and replies, and archive-ready exports with approval logs.

Some decisions stay with you. We cannot approve your advertising, decide whether something is legally compliant, answer account questions, make investment or tax claims, or remove a legitimate negative review. Review management also does not replace referrals. Referrals remain a main way clients find a firm, and many prospects look a firm up online after a referral. Reviews support that public information, and they do not guarantee a client.

Our prices start at the following flat monthly fees, with no per-lead, per-client or percentage pricing:

• Reviews, $99 a month. A review-request routine, replies to every Google review, and a monthly report.
• Reviews Plus, $199 a month. Everything in Reviews, plus replies on Yelp, Facebook and Nextdoor, policy disputes, and a quarterly citation check.
• Citation and review cleanup, $150 one time. Included with either monthly plan.

Google review replies are already part of the $149 a month Google Business Profile plan. Pricing for every service is listed on our plans and pricing page, and the page for financial firms shows how these services fit together.

Nothing on this page is a quote or a contract. Work starts with a signed written agreement that sets the scope, price and timeline, and a paid setup or build fee. We do the work ourselves. Your firm owns its accounts, review history, data and records, and accounts you already own stay yours. If you leave, everything leaves with you, and we hand over credentials and documentation. The monthly plan is optional and month to month. Rankings, leads, clients and other results are not guaranteed, because search visibility depends on more than reviews alone.

When you compare this fee with other options, look at what each one includes: the number of locations, how often reviews are monitored, who writes the replies, how approvals work, what the reports show, and whether software or staff time is extra. Your compliance workload does not disappear under any plan, so count it on both sides of the comparison.

Your firm keeps ownership of its Google Business Profile, domain, review history and exports. Google says third-party partners need explicit approval to respond to reviews on a customer's behalf, so the access you grant is a deliberate step. We work from the lowest permission level that lets the job get done, and the access is removed when the engagement ends.

The routine runs on a short set of decisions that only your firm can make. Before the first review request goes out, have these ready:

• Google Business Profile ownership and authorized access.
• Your approved name, locations, categories, hours, phone number and website.
• A list of services and client types that may be mentioned publicly.
• A privacy rule for public replies.
• A list of prohibited subjects, including accounts, balances, returns, recommendations, tax facts and complaint details.
• The compliance or principal reviewer.
• Your broker-dealer or registered investment adviser approval procedures.
• An escalation contact for legal, privacy, complaints and security issues.
• Preferred languages and tone, including Spanish for bilingual firms.
• Retention requirements and the archive location.
• Approval of review-request wording and timing.
• Confirmation that requests go to genuine clients without selecting only the people expected to respond positively.

For broker-dealers, FINRA Rule 2210 requires retail communications to be approved by an appropriately qualified registered principal before use or filing, subject to the rule's categories and exceptions. For SEC-registered advisers, your compliance professional decides whether a review stays an unsolicited platform review or is reused as an advertisement, testimonial, endorsement or third-party rating, and approves any reuse.

Google lets businesses request genuine reviews, and verified businesses can reply publicly and share review-request links or QR codes. The same policy bars businesses from discouraging or prohibiting negative reviews and from soliciting only positive ones, and Google can remove violating content or restrict a profile from receiving or displaying reviews. The FTC rule points the same way: a business may generally invite all customers to leave honest reviews, positive or negative, without incentives tied to sentiment. Selectively asking only clients expected to be happy may violate the FTC Act even when the rule does not name the practice.

So, our requests go to genuine clients you have permission to contact, never ask for a particular rating or wording, and offer no discount or gift in exchange. The FTC rule also covers fake reviews, bought reviews, reviews from people with no actual experience of the business, and review suppression through unfounded legal threats. None of those belong in a review routine.

Under Rule 206(4)-1, a testimonial is a current client's statement about an experience with an adviser, and an endorsement is a statement by someone who is not a current client or private-fund investor. An advertisement may include either only when the adviser discloses clearly and prominently whether the speaker is a current client, discloses any cash or non-cash compensation and material conflicts, keeps a reasonable basis to believe the communication complies, and generally has a written agreement describing the activities and compensation. De minimis compensation means $1,000 or less in the preceding 12 months.

An ordinary unsolicited Google review is not automatically a testimonial placed in an advertisement. The risk rises when the adviser selects, republishes, quotes, embeds or links to a review in promotional material, which is why the reuse decision sits with your compliance professional.

For broker-dealers, FINRA Regulatory Notice 17-18 says unsolicited third-party comments on a registered representative's business-use social media page generally are not the firm's communications. A representative who likes or shares favorable comments has "adopted" them, and the comments then fall under FINRA's rules on misleading claims, testimonial disclosures, supervision and recordkeeping. Where a firm arranges a post or comment, FINRA treats the firm as entangled with it. For testimonials about investment advice or performance, Rule 2210(d)(6) calls for prominent disclosure that the testimonial may not represent other customers' experiences, that it does not guarantee future performance, and that it was paid if more than $100 in value was provided.

State rules and professional codes can add requirements. The CFP Board's Code and Standards, for example, bars untrue or misleading communications and requires client information to stay confidential unless disclosure is authorized or required by law. Your compliance professional confirms which of these apply to your registration.

A public reply can acknowledge feedback without confirming that the reviewer is or was a client. It leaves out accounts, portfolios, transactions, tax returns, balances, financial plans, investment recommendations, complaint history and private conversations. Regulation S-P treats the fact that someone is or was a customer as personally identifiable financial information when it is disclosed in a way that shows the relationship.

A reply to a critical review can follow this pattern:

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We take privacy seriously and cannot discuss individual matters in a public forum. Please contact our office directly through the usual channel so the appropriate team member can review your concern.

A reply to a positive review can follow this one:

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We appreciate your comments and are glad to hear that our team was responsive. Because we protect privacy, we cannot discuss individual matters here.

We draft replies from language your firm has approved, and anything account-specific moves to a private channel. Threatening content goes to your escalation contact. Replies are posted only after the approver your firm names has signed off, and automated replies are not posted without review.

Each item in the archive carries the review, the reply, the date, the platform, the account used, the approval status and the final published version. The SEC books and records rule requires advisers to keep advertisements and the documents that support testimonial, endorsement and rating compliance, generally for at least five years, with the first two in an appropriate office. FINRA's social media guidance says business-related communications must generally be kept for at least three years. Your compliance professional confirms the retention schedule that fits your firm, and we deliver exports and approval logs in the format your archive needs.