No commissions, no ads, no advice. Creative Planning is an Overland Park, KS advisory firm, and what follows comes from its own filings and one TPG press release, each linked where it's used. We answer the fiduciary question first, then walk through fees, ownership and disciplinary history, whether you're vetting the firm or already a client, so you can see exactly where each claim comes from.

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The short answer: is Creative Planning a fiduciary?

Yes. Creative Planning is an SEC-registered investment adviser (CRD #105348), and under the Investment Advisers Act it owes a fiduciary duty to the clients it advises. That duty comes from the advisory relationship, not from registration by itself. Creative Planning's Form ADV lists no broker-dealer registration and no related broker-dealer, which means the adviser standard is the one that governs its advice.

The firm reported $295.6 billion in regulatory assets under management, held for 100,298 clients in 320,323 accounts, according to the Form ADV it filed July 10, 2026, the version posted on IAPD when we checked on October 5, 2026. Item 5.E shows no commissions for advisory services. That filing's Item 7.A lists a related person that is an insurance company or agency, so ask your planner directly how that part of your relationship gets billed. Get started with Truthifi

Under its March 31, 2026 Form CRS, also the version posted when we checked, the firm bills a percentage of the assets it manages each quarter in arrears.

What "fiduciary" means: the law requires an adviser held to this standard to put your interests ahead of its own. SEC registration is what places Creative Planning under the Advisers Act and the SEC's oversight. With that duty established, here's how the firm compares in size, structure and history to the rest of the industry.

Creative Planning at a glance

✅ Checked against Creative Planning's public filings on October 5, 2026. We pulled the table's core numbers from IAPD, Creative Planning's Form ADV and one TPG release. Each row names its source, so any line can be traced back to the original.

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Creative Planning fees: what you'll pay

Creative Planning charges a fee based on assets under management, deducted each quarter in arrears, according to its Form CRS dated March 31, 2026. The rate doesn't change by investment type. The firm sets a $200,000 minimum account size.

• Top rate: the CRS states no maximum rate.

• Other pay types: Item 5.E of the Form ADV lists hourly charges and fixed fees next to the asset-based fee.

• Costs on top of the fee: transaction fees, custodian fees, fund expenses, and sub-advisor fees where applicable.

The Form ADV also discloses a related insurance company or agency, so ask your planner which products sit outside the advisory fee and how those get paid separately. Get started with Truthifi

Who owns Creative Planning, and what conflicts does it disclose?

Per its Form ADV and the TPG press release, Peter Mallouk, Creative Planning's President and CEO, holds majority ownership and control. Two private-equity firms hold minority stakes beneath him: General Atlantic since 2020, and TPG Capital, whose strategic minority investment was announced in October 2024. Its filings list those minority stakes as a disclosed conflict.

Its Form CRS of March 31, 2026 discloses several conflicts of interest, including fees tied to assets under management, transaction fees, and compensation incentives, as the CRS requires of advisers using this fee model:

• Under the CRS, the fee rises with the assets in the account, including cash and margin, which the filing discloses as a standard incentive under this fee model. Ask how cash and margin in your account factor into what you're billed.

• The CRS lists a rollover recommendation from a retirement plan to an IRA as a conflict, because its advisory fees can be higher than the plan's fees. Before rolling over, ask your planner to compare the two fee schedules directly.

• The CRS flags referrals to or from its related entities as a conflict, noting that comparable services may be available elsewhere. Ask whether a referred service has a lower-cost equivalent before you use it.

• The CRS also names unaffiliated custodians, including Charles Schwab and Fidelity, as part of its custody arrangements.

• The CRS discloses that employees can receive compensation for certain client referrals and partnership units, which the filing names as an incentive tied to growing assets. Ask your planner directly how their own pay is structured, so you know whether this applies to you.

Its planners are paid a salary, plus eligibility for incentive pay, partnership units and pay for certain client referrals.

Creative Planning SEC record: complaints and disclosures

Anyone searching for Creative Planning complaints should know that its Form ADV and Form CRS both answer Yes to disciplinary-history questions, but neither filing says, on its own, what happened or how it was resolved.

An IAPD disclosure can cover a regulatory, civil or criminal matter, and it can involve the firm or a related person. On its own, it isn't proof of current wrongdoing. Read each item in context on IAPD. The CRS question, "Do you or your financial professionals have legal or disciplinary history?", points to a search tool at Investor.gov for the professionals themselves.

Creative Planning's SEC registration dates to March 18, 1983. It also makes notice filings in 53 jurisdictions, reporting 1,650 employees, 1,538 of them in investment advisory roles. Registration alone can't tell you whether it's the right fit or what it will cost. If you're comparing firms, the same checks apply across our other advisor fact packs, including Edward Jones [→https://truthifi.com/advisors/edward-jones], Fisher Investments [→https://truthifi.com/advisors/fisher-investments] and Edelman Financial Engines [→https://truthifi.com/advisors/edelman-financial-engines]. For the fee math behind these percentages, see our lifetime fee calculator [→/education/lifetime-fee-calculator].

What Creative Planning reviews won't tell you

Creative Planning reviews can describe the client experience, such as how a planner communicated or how meetings went, and that's useful information. Its filings add a separate layer: the fee grows with assets, cash and margin included, employees can earn partnership units and referral pay, and the Form ADV answers Yes on disciplinary history.

We pulled these points from the March 31, 2026 Form CRS and the Form ADV. Before trusting a rating, weigh it against the fee model, Peter Mallouk's control with two private-equity minority investors, and the conflicts listed above. We don't judge whether the firm is right for you, but the filings do tell you what to ask: how your fee is calculated, which referrals involve related entities, and how your planner is paid.

Our take: before you sign, ask Creative Planning for its complete Form ADV Part 2A fee schedule in writing, and ask whether all of your household's accounts count toward a single rate.

How to verify Creative Planning yourself

Three SEC pages verify Creative Planning's basics, the same method we use across our advisor fact packs:

1. SEC adviser record (IAPD): open Creative Planning's IAPD record and confirm that CRD #105348 shows as registered.

2. Form CRS: read Creative Planning's Form CRS for fees, conflicts and any disciplinary history.

3. Confirm the entity: match Creative Planning (CRD #105348) so you know you're reading the right firm before you look at what it actually offers.

What Creative Planning does and who it serves

Creative Planning provides portfolio management, retirement planning, financial planning and sub-advisory services (Form CRS, March 31, 2026). The firm also monitors portfolios continuously, rebalancing and harvesting tax losses when needed. It also offers pension consulting, adviser selection and educational seminars.

The Form ADV's service list also covers portfolio management for individuals and small businesses, for pooled vehicles, and for businesses and institutions. By Truthifi's count, Creative Planning ranks 87 of the 16,552 SEC-registered advisers in the SEC's October 5, 2026 adviser data that reported regulatory assets, placing it in the top 0.53%, a scale few RIAs approach. We built that ranking by sorting those advisers on reported regulatory assets under management alone, leaving out any firm that reported none or zero. It makes no adjustment for client type, so read it as a size measure rather than a quality measure. By comparison, the median firm among those same advisers reported about $449 million.

Financial planning alone reached about 32,550 clients in the last fiscal year, according to Form ADV Item 5.H (2026), counted separately from the client totals in the table below.

Item 5.D sorts the firm's 100,298 clients by type. High-net-worth individuals hold the largest pool of assets, at $164.44 billion:

High-net-worth individuals are about 39% of the firm's 100,298 clients but hold about 56% of its regulatory assets, according to Item 5.D of the Form ADV (2026). At the other end, individuals who don't qualify as high-net-worth are the largest group, about 47% of clients, yet hold under 7% of assets. Dividing assets by clients gives a simple average of roughly $411,000 for that group, against roughly $4.2 million per high-net-worth client. Those averages are our arithmetic from Item 5.D, not figures the firm reports, and a few very large households can pull an average well above what a typical client holds.

Under an asset-based fee, what a client pays scales with the balance, so a $200,000 account produces less fee revenue than a multimillion-dollar one. The filings say nothing about whether service differs by balance. Whether you're near the minimum or well above it, ask what's included at your level, and ask for the Part 2A schedule to see how the rate moves with your balance.

Almost all accounts are discretionary: Item 5.F shows 317,512 of the 320,323 accounts in that category, so the firm can trade in them without asking first. The other 2,811 are non-discretionary, where the client preapproves trades.

According to Form ADV Item 9, Creative Planning reports that it or a related person has custody of some client assets; the filing describes that arrangement in more detail.

Recent developments at Creative Planning

The newest ownership change on the record: TPG Capital's strategic minority investment, announced in October 2024 (TPG, Oct 2024). It joins General Atlantic, already a minority investor.

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What your Creative Planning planner can't see from the filings

Checking Creative Planning's registration takes minutes. Giving your planner the full picture takes longer. Its fee is figured on the assets it manages, and its CRS lists fund expenses as a cost on top. Neither covers a 401(k) still sitting in an employer plan or a spouse's accounts at another custodian, and your planner sees those only if you share them. That matters for the rollover conflict above, since comparing fee schedules needs both sides. That's where Truthifi comes in.

How Truthifi can help

Link your accounts to Truthifi read-only. You'll see what you hold, how it's allocated, how it's performing and where the risk concentrates. That view includes single-stock exposure, returns next to a benchmark, a fee breakdown of the fees on each account by type, and your Truthifi Score, a summary score for the portfolio (the linked guide explains how it's calculated). You pick which accounts to share with your Creative Planning advisor.

From there, you can connect Claude or another AI assistant that supports MCP sign-in. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets an assistant sign in to an outside service, with your permission, and read the data you've shared. That connection works on current consumer plans, including the free Checkup; the pricing page lists the limits.

How the plans differ, in short:

• Free Checkup: free, up to 10 connections, and you can connect your own assistant.

• Truthifi Connect: the lighter membership, made for people who only want to use their own assistant.

• Connect Max, Monitoring or Monitoring Plus+: the plans you need to ask that assistant about the fees on your Creative Planning accounts.

Ask AI about your Creative Planning accounts

Once your accounts are linked, plain-English questions like these work:

• "What do I own across my Creative Planning accounts and everything else, and how is it allocated?"

• "Across all of these accounts, what are my real total fees?"

Try it with Truthifi: open app.truthifi.com, start for free and run a Free Checkup (limits apply).

Truthifi is not an investment adviser and doesn't give investment, tax or legal advice.

Start free (limits apply). Free Checkup is free, and you can link up to 10 connections. Plans and limits sit on the pricing page at truthifi.com.

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FAQ

Is Creative Planning a fiduciary?

Yes. Creative Planning is an SEC-registered investment adviser (CRD #105348), and under the Investment Advisers Act it owes a fiduciary duty to clients whenever it advises them; the duty comes from that advisory relationship. Its Form ADV shows no broker-dealer registration of its own and no related broker-dealer, so the fiduciary adviser standard applies to its recommendations.

What does Creative Planning charge?

Its Form CRS of March 31, 2026 says Creative Planning bills an asset-based fee each quarter in arrears, with a $200,000 account minimum. Hourly and fixed fees also appear in Form ADV Item 5.E, and Form ADV Part 2A holds the complete schedule.

Who owns Creative Planning?

Peter Mallouk, President and CEO, holds majority ownership and control of Creative Planning. Two private-equity firms hold minority stakes beneath him: General Atlantic since 2020, and TPG Capital, with a strategic minority investment announced in October 2024. That's why the table above lists the firm as PE-backed; minority ownership by outside investors is a disclosed conflict worth knowing about. Get started with Truthifi · See how Truthifi keeps your accounts secure

Does Creative Planning have complaints or disclosures?

Its Form ADV and its Form CRS answer Yes to disciplinary-history questions, though neither filing says what happened or how it was resolved. A disclosure isn't proof of current wrongdoing by itself. Read each item in context on IAPD, and use Investor.gov to look up individual professionals. Get started with Truthifi · See how Truthifi keeps your accounts secure

Is Creative Planning legit?

IAPD shows Creative Planning as a real, SEC-registered adviser, with filings going back to March 18, 1983 under CRD #105348. Registration alone doesn't vouch for the quality of its advice, and it can't tell you whether the firm suits you or what you'll pay. For that, read the fee and conflict sections of its Form ADV and Form CRS.

Can AI help me review what Creative Planning costs me?

Yes, within plan limits. Link your Creative Planning accounts to Truthifi read-only, then ask AI to review what you're paying. The Free Checkup is free, covers up to 10 connections, and lets you connect an AI assistant you already use, such as Claude. On Connect Max, Monitoring or Monitoring Plus+, ask it in plain English about the fees on each account. Truthifi isn't an investment adviser and gives no investment, tax or legal advice. Get started with Truthifi · See how Truthifi keeps your accounts secure

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About this fact pack

Truthifi built this Creative Planning fact pack from the firm's own SEC filings (Form ADV and Form CRS). Every page is reviewed by the Truthifi Team before publishing. The series works through U.S. investment advisers one firm at a time, checking each against its public filings.

Read next from the Truthifi blog

• What is a fiduciary?

• Fee-only financial advisor: costs and how to find one

• Are you paying too much? Why that might be the wrong question

• How to ask AI about your real investment accounts

• Robo-advisor vs. human financial advisor: which is better?

More advisor fact packs on Truthifi

• Is Edelman Financial Engines a fiduciary? Fees, ownership & SEC record

• Is Edward Jones a fiduciary? Fees, ownership & SEC record

• Is EP Wealth Advisors a fiduciary? Fees, ownership & SEC record

• Is Fisher Investments a fiduciary? Fees, ownership & SEC record

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A note on sources. Everything here about Creative Planning traces to public documents: its SEC filings, its Form CRS and one TPG press release, each linked where it's used. SEC data here is current as of October 5, 2026. This is general information, not financial or legal advice, and Truthifi is not affiliated with Creative Planning. Filings get amended, so confirm anything important on the official pages and email support@truthifi.com if something here needs correcting.

One thing no filing can show you: Form ADV and Form CRS describe the firm as a whole, while your own quarterly statement is the only record of what you were actually billed. Set one beside the Part 2A schedule, and the filings stop being background reading and become a check on your own bill.