Shook Research Rebrands as Veritant Post-Forbes Editor Scandal
Shook Research, which got caught up in a controversy this summer when a top Forbes editor was fired over an undisclosed $6 million payment he received from Shook Founder RJ Shook, has rebranded as Veritant and enhanced its systems, data capture and research process.
Veritant also announced that it would continue to work with Forbes Media as its marketing partner and outlined plans to publish the Forbes | Veritant Top RIA Firms ranking, the first published under the new brand, in December. The company will continue with its full slate of rankings and events in 2027.
Molly Bennard, who took over as CEO of Shook earlier this year, said the brand refresh and investments in the company’s marketing and technology systems were already in the works before the events over the summer. But the timeline was accelerated due to the controversy.
“I think the August announcement, and I would say the negative press around that, definitely put pressure on the brand,” she said. “We used this time post-August to really go dark and spend that time focused on our branding, how we’re positioning ourselves in the market and that we could come back as a stronger company with a distinct name and position that segregated the business from its past and from the founders and the legacy that was associated with that. We wanted to get, I guess you can call it, a fresh start or a clean start with a new brand.”
Shook has partnered with Forbes for the past decade on various wealth advisor lists, including its “Best-In-State Wealth Management Teams” and “Top Next-Gen Wealth Advisors.”
This summer, The New York Times broke the story that Randall Lane, a top Forbes editor, was fired for failing to disclose a $6 million secret payment from RJ Shook, the founder of Shook Research. The news drew immediate scrutiny to the relationship between Forbes’ editorial efforts (which Lane oversaw) and the research provider behind Forbes’ best-advisor lists, raising questions among many advisors about the integrity of those lists and the business arrangements behind them.
In response, two wirehouse firms, Wells Fargo Advisors and Morgan Stanley, opted to withdraw from the Forbes rankings. Shortly after, Forbes and Shook announced the suspension of all wealth advisor rankings and events for the remainder of this year, while Shook focused on rebranding.
Bennard said Veritant has been on a listening tour for the last couple of months, spending time with all the big firms that they work with and asking what they could do better and what they were looking for from a ranking organization. She’s hopeful that Veritant will get everyone’s participation when they relaunch in 2027.
Veritant also decided to move up the timeline for publishing the lists due to advisor demand.
“The reality is the wealth management industry doesn’t have a long list of quality accolades that advisors can leverage,” Bennard said. “We all know the main competitors that come out with their lists, but advisors do really appreciate the ability to market the accolade, and clients recognize that that accolade means something and represents quality from an advisor perspective. In our discussions with advisors, we continue to have a lot of very positive support around their desire to be ranked and to get back to our events and continue their engagement with us.”
Veritant did conduct extensive investigations and an internal review of its processes to address some of the concerns that were raised, and it brought in Charles River Associates to review its processes as well. The reviews found there was no evidence that the integrity of its research was affected by the payment.
“We confirmed our hypothesis that obviously there was an issue between two individuals, but as it pertains to our methodology and rankings, those were unimpacted,” Bennard said.
In addition to the new name, Veritant has also invested heavily in upgrading its technology systems and data capture. The firm is building a data lake to capture all of the information it has and make that information more dynamic. The firm is integrating a lot of the compliance regulatory data that they use as part of the due diligence process, so that it is in real time and responsive.
Along with that tech change, the company has also revamped its survey design, so advisors will have a better experience with the system going forward, Bennard said.
The newly branded firm also created an Independence Charter, which lays out the seven principles that govern the independence of the rankings. Those principles include a research firewall, designed to keep research and commercial activities separate; conflict management; transparency of the methodology and process while they’re building the rankings; a third-party audit of the governance and methodology every year; and direct engagement with advisors, firms and sponsors. The Charter also aims to maintain the rankings’ independent research and avoid outside influence.
“Advisors and clients, they do look at these rankings to basically confirm the credibility of an advisor,” she said. “We thought it would be a good idea for us to draft the charter to make sure it’s out there publicly to basically confirm our commitment to do the things that we say that we do.”
