Research support for financial services professionals who can't afford gaps in their data

In financial services, the quality of your research directly affects the quality of your decisions—whether you're preparing a client portfolio review, evaluating a new market opportunity, or building a competitive pitch. The problem isn't access to information; it's having the bandwidth to gather, organize, and synthesize it before it matters. A Trusty Oak EA handles the research legwork so you're walking into every meeting with the numbers already pulled.

Fractional research support for financial services firms

How Trusty Oak handles research for financial services firms

A Trusty Oak EA assigned to a financial services client typically handles research tasks that are time-consuming but don't require a licensed advisor—think pulling public filings from SEC EDGAR, compiling competitor fee structures, summarizing earnings call transcripts, or building comparison tables from industry reports. They work inside tools you already use: Google Sheets, Notion, Airtable, or a shared drive, and they document sources so everything is traceable. You define the scope and the output format upfront—usually during the onboarding call with your Client Success Manager—and the EA delivers structured, ready-to-use deliverables rather than raw dumps of information. Your role is to review and apply the findings; the EA handles the digging, formatting, and follow-up pulls when the scope expands.

What your EA takes off your plate

Before handing off your first research request, write out one completed example—what you searched for, where you found it, and how you formatted the output. That single example does more to set expectations than a paragraph of instructions, and it cuts revision cycles significantly. The most common mistake is assuming the EA knows which sources you trust; explicitly list your preferred sources and any you want excluded, especially if you're in a regulated context where source credibility matters.

1

Competitor Product & Fee Analysis

EA researches competing RIAs, broker-dealers, or fintech platforms and compiles fee structures, AUM minimums, service tiers, and differentiators into a comparison spreadsheet.

2

SEC EDGAR & Public Filing Review

EA pulls Form ADV, 10-K, 8-K, or proxy filings for target companies or competitors and summarizes key disclosures, risk factors, or ownership changes.

3

Industry Report Sourcing & Summarization

EA locates relevant reports from sources like Cerulli, McKinsey, Morningstar, or FINRA and extracts the data points or trends most relevant to your client's use case.

4

Prospect & Client Background Research

EA compiles professional background, company financials, recent news, and LinkedIn activity for high-value prospects ahead of discovery calls or relationship reviews.

5

Regulatory & Compliance News Monitoring

EA tracks updates from the SEC, FINRA, CFPB, or state regulators on topics you specify and delivers a weekly digest with links and brief summaries of relevant rule changes or guidance.

Tools our team works with

We adapt to your existing stack — no forced migrations.

Apollo.io
SimilarWeb
Statista
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
G2
SEMrush

...and many more!

Trusted by financial services firms

Trusty Oak supports financial services firms including Dominion Fund Services — handling everything from research to broader operational support.

What research support costs for financial services firms

Drag the sliders to build a monthly plan that fits your workload.

Executive Assistants
~$35/hour
10 hours $350
Specialists
~$50/hour
20 hours $1,000
Fractional Executives
~$95/hour
0 hours $0
Your monthly budget
$1,350

Starting at $1,000/month. One-time $300 onboarding fee includes your Strategic Delegation Plan.

Book a Discovery Call

Frequently Asked Questions

Trusty Oak EAs work with the tools and access you provide—if you have a Bloomberg Terminal or FactSet subscription and want to grant access, your EA can work within those platforms. For clients without paid data subscriptions, EAs are skilled at sourcing comparable data from SEC EDGAR, Yahoo Finance, Morningstar's free tier, company investor relations pages, and other public sources.
Trusty Oak operates under a confidentiality agreement, and your Client Success Manager can walk you through the specifics during onboarding. Most financial services clients handle this by keeping research requests at the market or company level rather than sharing identifiable client data—your EA doesn't need to know why you're researching something to do it well.
Deliverables are formatted however you specify—Google Sheets, a Word doc, a Notion page—and every entry includes a source link so you can verify or dig deeper. EAs are trained to flag when a data point couldn't be confirmed from a primary source, rather than filling gaps with assumptions, which matters in a field where a wrong number has real consequences.

Get research off your plate

Start with a $1,000/month talent budget and a dedicated Client Success Manager who'll help you scope exactly what to delegate first. One-time $300 onboarding fee, three-month initial commitment.