How to Leave Edward Jones: the $95 Transfer Fee and the Order to Do It In

Guides › Switching Financial Advisors

Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: you open an account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the accounts through ACATS and you never have to ask your Edward Jones representative to do anything. Budget $95.00 per account for the total-transfer fee, which the firm publishes in its own Schedule of Fees, and check whether any holding is an Edward Jones proprietary or advisory product that cannot move as-is. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.

The published numbers

From the brokerage Schedule of Fees (document LGL-7685Q-A, rev. April 2024): “Total transfer of an account” $95.00; estates service fee, charged for the re-registration of assets, $100.00; transfer-on-death agreement disbursement fee, due upon death of the account holder, $300.00. From the IRA Schedule of Fees (LGL-7513L-A, rev. March 2022): “Total transfer or termination of an account” $95.00; annual IRA fee $40.00 per calendar year, not prorated; additional IRAs of the same individual $20.00. Both documents state that all fees are subject to change; the current versions live at edwardjones.com/disclosures and are worth a fresh look before you plan around any figure here.

The published waiver. The IRA schedule states that, effective May 1, 2019, the firm waives the total transfer or termination fee and any due-but-unpaid annual IRA fee where the account has been open at least 24 months before termination and the account’s pricing group held $5,000 or less in assets under care in the preceding month. Small, old accounts may therefore leave for nothing. Note also the “not prorated” wording on the annual IRA fee: leaving in February does not buy back eleven months.

The sequence

1. Pull a current statement for every account, showing the exact registration, account numbers and complete holdings list. 2. Check the holdings for anything that will not move. Ask the receiving firm directly: “Can you hold every position on this statement?” Anything they cannot hold has to be sold, and in a taxable account that is a realised gain in the year you switch — the categories that commonly do not transfer. 3. Open the receiving account and sign the transfer form there. Under FINRA Rule 11870 the delivering firm then has one business day to validate and three business days after validation to complete. 4. Send a dated termination letter for the record — the generator writes it — and confirm in writing that billing has stopped.

Two things to get right

Cost basis. Under IRC §6045A the delivering broker must furnish a transfer statement carrying basis for covered securities within 15 days of the transfer. Keep your final statements anyway, and check the first statement at the new firm for positions showing a missing or zero basis. Retirement accounts move as a direct transfer, trustee to trustee — not as a distribution to you. Why that distinction matters. Whether the fee is worth paying at all is a question of what you are moving to: our benchmark of published adviser fee schedules puts the weighted median annual cost near $2,000 to $2,500 on $250,000 — the benchmark. The general mechanics: switching financial advisors.