I am pleased to announce that for the second time, Acropolis has been named a top Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) by the Financial Times (FT).

The FT starts by looking at firms with more than $300 million in assets under management, which is about 1,500 RIAs.  They invite firms to fill out a questionnaire and then evaluate the companies based on six key attributes: assets under management (AUM), asset growth, company age, industry certifications by key employees, SEC compliance record and online accessibility.  Ultimately, 300 firms are included on the list, known as the FT 300.

It should be noted that the first two criteria carry the most weight, accounting for 80-85 percent of the score that they generate.  They argue that size denotes experience and earned client trust and growth is a proxy for performance, asset retention and client development.

While I might quibble with some of their assumptions (there are some great small firms out there, and we were great when we were small!), one of the great things about this ranking is that it really is independent.  A lot of these kinds of things require or strongly suggest that you buy an advertisement to accompany the award, but that isn’t the case with the FT 300 – we didn’t buy any before and we don’t intend to now.

You can click here to find a link to the article, and we’ve created a press release that you can read by clicking here (the FT website may require a subscription, but the press release is available to anyone).

Naturally, we’re all really proud be to be included on the FT 300. The FT is a prestigious news organization and it’s always nice to be recognized as a top player in your industry.  Of course, we’re not going to rest on our laurels, we are going to keep working hard to deliver the same trusted advice and high quality service that got us here in the first place.