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Item 7A identifies the types of financial businesses operated by the adviser's related persons. Item 6A covers the adviser's own activities. Item 7A covers affiliated entities.
Related persons include entities connected through ownership, control, common management, or family relationships as defined in SEC rules. These affiliations can create conflicts of interest when the adviser has incentives to refer clients to related companies or recommend products that benefit the broader corporate family.
Each Yes reports that a related person has the stated business type. It does not show that the adviser recommends the affiliate, sends it business, receives compensation from it, or uses its products.
On Best Investors, Item 7A appears as a checklist within the ADV form panel, showing which types of related-person businesses exist within the adviser's corporate family.
Locate Item 7A on the firm's ADV form panel. For each Yes, identify the business type and then look for an actual client-facing arrangement elsewhere in the filing.
Start with 7A(1): broker-dealer affiliate and 7A(2): other investment adviser. Then check Item 8 for reported brokerage practices and referral compensation before concluding that the affiliation affects clients.
For a broker-dealer affiliate, check Item 8 for broker selection, recommendations, and related-person transactions. For a bank or insurance affiliate, check the firm's compensation answers and client agreement for fees, commissions, or referral terms. For another adviser, check Items 8H and 8I for reported referral compensation.
The Item 7A checkbox does not name the affiliate. Use the ownership and related-person information on the ADV panel to identify it. If the profile does not show how the affiliate is used, ask which client services, referrals, or transactions involve that entity.
Do not treat fewer affiliations as proof of conflict-free advice or more affiliations as proof of poor advice. Use Item 7A to map reported relationships.
Item 7A does not state whether the adviser uses the affiliate, how often clients interact with it, or what compensation moves between the entities. It also does not state the affiliate's prices, service terms, or performance.
The checkboxes do not describe conflict controls or prove that a conflict affected a recommendation. Those details require the related Item 8 answers, compensation information, disclosures, and client documents.