Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the transfer-out fee is charged by the firm you are leaving, it is usually a flat charge per account rather than a percentage, and it is published — you do not have to ask anyone. Edward Jones, for example, lists “Total transfer of an account” at $95.00 in its own Schedule of Fees. The fee is almost never the real cost of switching. The real costs are the holdings that must be sold to move, and one more year of a fee you had already decided was too high.
The one verified number, and why there is only one
Every firm publishes a schedule of fees, and every published schedule changes. Rather than reprint a table of numbers that may already be stale, this page states what was read directly from the source and shows you how to check yours in about a minute.
Edward Jones — brokerage Schedule of Fees (LGL-7685Q-A, rev. April 2024): “Total transfer of an account” $95.00; estates service fee for re-registration of assets $100.00. IRA Schedule of Fees (LGL-7513L-A, rev. March 2022): “Total transfer or termination of an account” $95.00, plus a $40.00 annual IRA fee that is “not prorated” and $20.00 for additional IRAs of the same individual. Both schedules carry the same caveat: all fees are subject to change without notice. The firm waives the total-transfer or termination fee where the account has been open at least 24 months and the pricing group holds $5,000 or less in assets under care. The full Edward Jones exit sequence.
A $95 exit fee is not the number that matters.
The number that matters is what the next adviser charges, every year, for as long as you stay. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here — you stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions — age, investable assets, location — then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button.
How to find any firm’s number in one minute
Brokerage account: search the firm’s site for “schedule of fees” and look for the line named account transfer, total transfer, account termination or ACAT. It is a published document, not a negotiation. IRA: there is usually a separate schedule, and it usually carries an annual custodial fee that may not be prorated in your favour in the year you leave. Advisory account: the adviser’s Form ADV Part 2A must, under Item 5.C, describe “any other types of fees or expenses clients may pay” such as custodian fees — the seven lines to check in a Form ADV.
The costs that are bigger than the fee
Forced sales. Anything that will not transfer in kind has to be liquidated, and in a taxable account that is a realised gain in the year you switch — what will not move and when tax actually applies. Surrender charges. An annuity inside the relationship may carry its own contingent deferred sales charge, which is a contract term and has nothing to do with the transfer fee. A prepaid quarter. If you were billed in advance, you may be owed a prorated refund — how Form ADV Item 5.D governs that. And the cost of not switching. Our own benchmark of published adviser fee schedules puts the weighted median annual cost at roughly $3,750 to $5,000 on $500,000 and $8,750 to $10,000 on $1 million — against numbers like those, a one-time $95 is a rounding error. The full benchmark.
Once you have your firm’s number, the switching advisors cost calculator puts it next to the fee you would stop paying and returns the break-even in months, so a published exit charge can be judged against what it buys rather than in isolation.
Four more firms now have their own published exit number on the record: Northwestern Mutual charges $125 to close or transfer out and adds any unpaid annual fee on top (how to leave Northwestern Mutual), Wells Fargo Advisors charges $125 per transfer under a line your statement calls a termination fee (how to leave Wells Fargo Advisors), and the two self-directed accounts are cheaper at $49.95 each (WellsTrade, Merrill Edge).
Seventeen more firms now carry a page naming their own published transfer or termination charge, from the cheapest on this list to the priciest: UBS ($95), Stifel ($100), Baird ($150), RBC Wealth Management ($125), Janney Montgomery Scott ($125), Oppenheimer ($125), Truist ($125), PNC Investments ($125), U.S. Bank ($95), Citi ($95), J.P. Morgan ($95), Primerica ($50), Thrivent ($50), Equitable Advisors ($150), Osaic ($150), Commonwealth Financial Network ($75) and Betterment ($75).