A Transparent Way to Choose a Financial Advisor

How client reviews can transform trust in wealth management

By: Walter Mansky

The Problem

Ten years into my career, I found myself searching for a financial advisor to help me answer questions about equity compensation. I had just hit five years at Tegus and was staring down the usual year-end panic: what should I do with my stock options?

Like most, I started with Google. What I found was a list of local advisors with no way to tell who had experience helping clients with equity comp. I tried several “advisor matching” websites. After giving up my personal info, I got matched with generic firms that lacked relevant experience. Then came the phone calls and emails and unstoppable, daily flow of them, from large RIAs with big sales teams.

I tried to find more information about the firms calling me, but what I found was cookie cutter websites offering: “Our Team”, “Our Philosophy”, Service that were all the same: Financial Planning, 401K Services, Top Advisors 2025 with sketchy methodologies. What I wanted was to be able to read reviews from real clients of these advisors who had been helped with equity compensation problems. So I started digging in…

Why Is Choosing a Financial Advisor So Hard?

Hiring a financial advisor is one of the most important decisions someone can make. The right advisor can be a tailwind in your financial journey. The wrong one can become a headwind or even lead you to complete ruin, which we see all too often.

Most people aren’t sure what kind of help they actually need
Advisors offer a wide variety of services, which aren’t always easy to compare
Financial advice is expensive and people rightfully question if it’s worth the cost
And above all, trust is hard to establish when there’s so little transparency across the industry

It’s a confusing, high-stakes process, and most tools out there only make it harder.

What’s Broken in the Current System?

Even once you’ve decided to look for an advisor, the tools that claim to help often make things worse.

Pay-to-play sites disguise themselves as Advisor Matching sites. Duping consumers into thinking their personal financial information is being used to match them with an advisor who has specific knowledge and experience helping clients like them. In reality, these sites, collect consumer information and sell it to the highest bidder, or highest 5 bidders depending on the site. So consumers are most often “matched” with the largest, most sales-driven firms, this is what happened to me my first attempt at finding an advisor. These platforms are built around lead generation and revenue-sharing. That means they’re not incentivized to help consumers find the right advisor they’re incentivized to match you with someone who pays them the most.

And when those mismatched relationships fall apart, guess who benefits? The same platforms. When consumers return looking for a new advisor the sites sell their information to another set of advisors. This churn driven dynamic deepens mistrust and discourages people from seeking advice at all.

How Reviews Can Fix This

From 2015 to 2020, I helped build G2.com, a review-based marketplace for B2B software. I saw firsthand how verified client feedback could unlock trust in complex, high-stakes decisions. Reviews transformed how businesses chose vendors. We’ve seen similar shifts with Zocdoc in healthcare, Glassdoor in recruiting, Carrier Source in freight and many more.

The same shift will happen in financial advice but with one key difference: compliance.

Wealth management is a regulated space. Client reviews need proper disclosures and context. Generic review platforms like Yelp or Google Reviews simply aren’t built for that. The SEC now allows client reviews when properly tagged with SEC mandated disclosures.

Valinor was built from the ground up to support compliant, verified reviews tailored to the unique needs of the financial advice industry.

What Valinor Does Differently

Valinor is an open, transparent platform where advisors are listed and ranked based on verified client feedback. We don’t sell leads. We don’t accept pay-to-play.

Every advisor can control their listing at no cost
Reviews are collected at no cost
Rankings are based solely on client experience data

We provide the structure, compliance framework, and visibility so that great advisors rise to the top — not the ones with the biggest marketing budgets.

Why This Matters for Advisors

Advisors face real challenges:

Differentiation in a crowded market
Low online visibility
Competing against well-known firms with large brand names and huge marketing budgets

Valinor flips the dynamic. Your clients’ voices become your most powerful marketing tool.

According to Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center, reviews have the biggest impact when:

The product/service is expensive
It involves personal safety
It’s unfamiliar
It’s tied to an unknown brand

For independent advisors, that’s a clean four-for-four. Reviews don’t just help they change the game.

A Win-Win-Win for Advisors, Consumers, and the Industry

Valinor helps:

Consumers find trusted advisors based on real outcomes
Advisors showcase the impact of their work and attract right-fit clients
The industry build credibility and transparency in the eyes of the public

Final Thoughts

A platform where client feedback drives trust. Where rankings are earned, not bought. Where choosing a financial advisor is no longer a confusing, black-box experience — but a decision grounded in real stories and real results.

If you’re an advisor ready to showcase your impact, I’d love to hear from you:
📬 walter@valinorfinance.com