When To Publish a Sample Financial Plan on Your RIA Website (and When Not To)

Publish a sample financial plan on your website only when a visitor can interpret it without knowing any client's situation, when it reflects the service you deliver today, and when it can pass your firm's content and privacy review. When those conditions fail, a clear service description or a guided conversation explains the work better, and publishing nothing is a legitimate choice.

This guide walks through the decision: the question a sample should answer, where the explanation belongs, how to build one without touching client records, and how to keep it accurate after launch.

Key Takeaways

• Decide which prospect question the sample must answer before choosing a document or format.
• Choose a public sample, a guided explanation, or no sample based on the context a reader needs.
• Build a fictional demonstration from blank material, kept separate from client records.
• Explain the sample's limited purpose; a label does not replace accurate scope or review.
• Assign an owner who verifies the sample still matches your current service.

Define the Question the Sample Must Answer

A sample deliverable earns its place on your website when it resolves one specific uncertainty a prospect has before contacting your firm: what the work product looks like, how it is organized, or which decisions it supports. That is a narrow job. A fictional sample on its own cannot establish the judgment behind an actual recommendation, the quality of an ongoing client relationship, or any future investment outcome, and a page that implies otherwise overpromises.

Name the question before you pick a format. If prospects ask what they will receive after onboarding, a sample answers that ask. If the real uncertainty involves fee structure, investment philosophy, or fit with a specific life stage, other pages answer it more honestly. Choosing the question first keeps the format decision practical: the sample exists to resolve one doubt, not to summarize the entire engagement.

Choose Where the Explanation Belongs

Three placements cover most situations.

• A standalone public sample works when the document interprets itself and the surrounding copy can supply the context a stranger needs.
• A guided explanation fits material that requires discussion: a walkthrough in a meeting, webinar, or call where an advisor frames what the viewer is seeing.
• A service description with no sample is the right choice when no artifact is representative enough or ready enough to stand on its own.

Do not treat a gate as a legal cure. Under the current marketing rule text, the definition of an advertisement covers communications an adviser makes to more than one person, and it can reach certain one-person communications that include hypothetical performance; the stated exceptions, such as responses to unsolicited requests, are specific. An email gate, login, or private walkthrough does not on its own remove a communication from the rule. Scope also depends on registration. The SEC's marketing rule guide explains that the rule applies to advisers registered or required to be registered with the Commission, so state-registered firms need their own review of the rules that apply to them.

Build the Sample From Blank Material

The safest starting point is a blank page. Editing down a real client document is the riskier shortcut. Researchers have shown that some de-identified data can sometimes be re-identified, and NIST's work on de-identification treats identifier removal as a limited safeguard rather than a guarantee. A trimmed client file can also carry over names, metadata, comments, or hidden content that a quick read would miss.

Build the fictional version in the same format your firm delivers, and confirm you have permission to publish any vendor template or software output before it goes on the site. Keep the content conditional and generic: the information a plan would gather, the role each party plays, and the decision a section supports. Leave out account balances, client history, and results. A short task list labeled as an illustration can show the shape of the work without pretending to be someone's plan.

Frame the Sample Without Promising Outcomes

The copy around the document is one safeguard among several, not a substitute for an accurate sample, sound privacy handling, vendor permissions, or your firm's review. State that the sample is fictional, name the limited stage of service it shows, list what an actual engagement includes and excludes, and remind readers that real work follows an agreed scope. Keep out model returns, projected savings, investment recommendations, and any exceptional deliverable an ordinary client would not receive.

For SEC-registered advisers, accuracy here has a regulatory anchor. The marketing rule prohibits advertisements that include untrue statements of material fact, misleading omissions or implications, or material factual claims the adviser lacks a reasonable basis to substantiate, and it requires fair and balanced treatment of material risks when an advertisement discusses potential benefits. The same rule defines hypothetical performance as results not actually achieved by any portfolio of the adviser and sets conditions for using it in advertisements. A fictional format demonstration does not by itself become hypothetical performance, and your firm and counsel own that classification. Keeping returns and projections out of the sample keeps that question simpler; it does not settle the analysis.

Approve It, Publish It, Keep It Representative

Before release, confirm the sample reads well on a phone, the explanatory text is accessible, any download works, and the content matches the service as delivered today. Record who may approve changes and who confirms vendor permissions. After release, the risk shifts from launch accuracy to drift: a sample built around last year's service misleads this year's prospect. Assign a named owner with authority to update or remove it, and fold that check into the website maintenance and publishing responsibilities your firm already runs.

If this decision raises larger questions about how your site presents the firm, that is the kind of work we do. Our website design for financial advisors engagements shape messaging and page copy around your audience, services, differentiators, and approved facts, and a scoped strategy and positioning engagement can settle what belongs on the site before anything gets built. To talk through the decision, request a strategy conversation.