Reliable Municipal Advisors

The firm operates as a registered municipal advisor, which means it provides fee-based, fiduciary guidance to public-sector entities — cities, counties, school districts, utilities — on how to structure and sell municipal bonds and manage related interest-rate risk through swaps. Unlike an underwriter, it does not buy or resell the bonds. Its revenue comes from advisory fees on specific transactions, not from trading spreads or asset management fees.

No. The firm does not appear on the SEC's investment adviser public disclosure (IAPD) database in a capacity that suggests it manages discretionary investment portfolios. Its registration is with the MSRB as a municipal advisor, and its business centers on transactional advisory for bond issuances and derivative monitoring — not on ongoing AUM-based wealth or asset management.

The firm's advisory work does not extend to private-market fund commitments, co-investments, or direct equity investments. It focuses entirely on the public-finance debt market, helping municipal issuers access the roughly $4-trillion municipal bond market. Its clients are the issuers, not institutional allocators seeking private-market exposure.

The firm does not target investment stages in the venture-capital sense. It structures and advises on municipal debt transactions across the credit and rate spectrum, including fixed-rate general obligation bonds, variable-rate demand obligations, revenue bonds for enterprise utilities, and swap-advisory mandates. The underlying assets are public infrastructure and essential services.

Following the Dodd-Frank Act, firms like Reliable Municipal Advisors were required to register and adhere to a fiduciary duty to their municipal clients, while banks acting as underwriters are subject to a suitability standard. This means the firm must put the issuer's interest ahead of its own when recommending a deal structure or swap, and it cannot earn revenue from the counterparty side of a transaction it advises on — a conflict that may still exist in bank-led deals.