How to Leave Fisher Investments (Export Your Cost Basis First)

Guides › Switching Financial Advisors

Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the structural fact that shapes this exit: Fisher Investments does not hold your assets itself. Its own Form CRS states that clients “generally pay trading commissions or fees to third-party brokerage firms we utilize to custody and make trades for your account.” So leaving has two separable steps — end the advisory agreement (which stops the fee) and move or retitle the account at the custodian (which moves the money) — and they do not have to happen on the same day. Export your cost basis and download your statements before you start.

The published fee, so you know what stops

From Fisher’s own Form ADV Part 3 (Client Relationship Summary) dated February 5, 2025, for US clients: an annual fee on assets under management, “calculated and billed quarterly,” on a tiered schedule of 1.5% for all relationships less than $1 million; 1.25% on the first $1 million for amounts equal to or greater than $1 million; 1.125% on additional amounts over $1 million and less than or equal to $5 million; and 1.00% on any additional amount over $5 million. The same document notes the firm is a discretionary adviser, meaning it can trade your account without asking first — which is why the written instruction to stop discretionary trading, below, is step one and not step three. It also states that the professionals who introduce the service “are compensated based on the total value of assets you entrust to our management”: useful context for the retention conversation, and a disclosure the firm makes about itself.

The sequence

1. Download everything first. Statements, tax documents, and a full holdings list with cost basis and acquisition dates, from the custodian’s portal as well as any Fisher-facing portal. Access can end when the relationship does. Under IRC §6045A the delivering broker must furnish a transfer statement with basis for covered securities within 15 days of a transfer, but having your own copy is what lets you check it. 2. Write to end the advisory agreement — naming the accounts, giving an effective date, instructing that discretionary trading stop, and asking for written confirmation and any prorated refund of a fee billed in advance. The generator writes this letter. 3. Decide about the custodian account. Depending on how it is set up you may be able to keep it and simply remove the adviser’s authority, or move it to a new firm via ACATS — ask the custodian which applies to you before assuming either. 4. Confirm the fee stopped on the next statement: the receipt email.

The two questions to settle in writing

Will anything have to be sold? If you move to a firm that cannot hold a position, it gets liquidated, and in a taxable account that is a realised gain in the year you leave — what will not transfer and the four tax cases. Am I owed part of the quarter? Fees billed quarterly are commonly billed in advance, and Form ADV Part 2A Item 5.D requires an adviser to explain how a client obtains a refund of a pre-paid fee when the contract ends mid-period — how to ask, with the exact sentence. Where the tiered rate above sits against the wider market: our benchmark of published adviser fee schedules. General mechanics: switching financial advisors.