Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated August 20, 2026. Quick answer: you open the account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the accounts through ACATS. What you pay depends on which account you hold and which side of Merrill it sits on — $75 for a retirement account at the Merrill Advisory Center, $95 for a CMA or other taxable brokerage account there, and $49.95 for an account at Merrill Edge Self-Directed. The transfer fee and the closeout fee are not charged on top of each other. This page states only what Merrill itself publishes.
The published numbers
The figures come from Merrill’s own schedules of miscellaneous account and service fees — the advised schedule carries the document code SHEET-11-25-0006 | 11/2025 — retrieved from mlaem.fs.ml.com on August 20, 2026. The firm brands itself Merrill; the broker-dealer of record is still the entity the schedule names: “Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (also referred to as “MLPF&S” or “Merrill”) makes available certain investment products sponsored, managed, distributed or provided by companies that are affiliates of Bank of America Corporation (“BofA Corp.”).”
| The account you are moving | Merrill Advisory Center | Merrill Edge Self-Directed |
|---|---|---|
| Retirement — IRA, IRRA, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE, BASIC | $75 | $49.95 |
| Taxable brokerage — BIA, CMA, WCMA | $95 | $49.95 |
| Closing without transferring out | $75 | $49.95 |
| Partial transfer | Not published | Not published |
One firm, three prices, and the account type decides which. The advised schedule prices the retirement row “Full Account Transfer Fee and Closeout Fee BASIC, IRA, IRRA, Roth, SEP, SIMPLE (not charged in addition to the closeout fee) $75 Transactional” and the taxable row “BIA, CMA, WCMA $95 Transactional” directly beneath it. Health and medical savings accounts are $50 on that schedule. The self-directed schedule does not split by account type at all — its single row reads “Full Account Transfer Fee (Not charged in addition to closeout fees) Various Account Types $49.95 Transactional”. If you have seen our cross-firm table quote $75 for Merrill, that is the retirement-account row on the advised schedule — the wider comparison summarises one figure per firm.
The parenthesis in the row is the part worth reading. Both schedules say the full account transfer fee is not charged in addition to the closeout fee, so an account that transfers out is charged once, not twice. Neither Merrill schedule publishes a partial-transfer row. Only a full account transfer fee appears. We print “not published” rather than $0, because the absence of a row is not a promise of no charge.
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Before you start, what actually happens. The matching service is run by WiserAdvisor, an independent advisor-matching company. It opens on their site, asks for your ZIP code and a few questions, and matches you with 2 to 3 vetted advisors. It is free to you.
WiserAdvisor states the service is built for portfolios of $250,000 and above. By submitting, you consent to emails, phone calls and text messages from WiserAdvisor and up to three advisors, so expect to be contacted. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone.
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A $75 exit fee decides nothing. What you move to decides everything.
Price the destination before you pay to leave. 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.
Compare flat-fee and hourly ranges before you call anyone.
Flat-fee and hourly advisers price the work directly instead of as a percentage of your assets. The comparison guide below has current per-year, per-project and per-hour ranges so you can price a quote before you book a call.
The annual fees that are still running
The exit charge is not the only line on the way out. The advised schedule prices the annual account fee at $125 for a CMA or BIA, $125 for a CMA for Trust Account, $65 for an Individual Investor Account and $300 for a WCMA. The retirement custodial fee is not a flat number: the schedule states “Annual Custodial Fee IRA, IRRA, ROTH 25 basis points; Min $50, Max $100 Waived unless otherwise noted” — that is the schedule’s own wording, waiver and all, and it is worth asking which of it applies to you before you assume any of it does. The schedule says some fees may be waived under certain conditions without saying which, so no waiver is claimed here.
The $500 line most people never see
ACATS moves the ordinary positions. Anything that has to be delivered out individually is priced separately, and one of those numbers is large: Merrill’s schedule charges $25 to deliver a non-government security that is eligible for the Direct Registration System and $500 for one that is not, and lists both under third-party fees. A legal transfer through the Depository Trust Company is $75 and a government security transfer is $125. None of these is the ACATS fee, and none of them appears on a summary comparison. The practical protection is the same question as always — ask the receiving firm whether every position on your statement can come across through ACATS, and what happens to the ones that cannot.
The sequence
1. Pull a current statement for every account, showing the exact registration, the account numbers and the complete holdings list. The receiving firm works from that, not from memory. 2. Ask the receiving firm what it cannot hold. The question is literally “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 the instruction or take exception to it, and three business days after validation to complete the transfer. 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 Merrill 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. Check which of the three figures — $75, $95 or $49.95 — your own account actually sits under before you budget for the move. Whether the exit charge 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, and what switching costs across firms.
Because the exit charge depends on which account you hold, total yours first and then put it into the switching advisors cost calculator, which returns the one-time cost of leaving and the months it takes to earn back.
If your account is a Merrill Edge Self-Directed account rather than one held through the Merrill Advisory Center, the exit is the flat $49.95 row and there is no advisory agreement to terminate: how to leave Merrill Edge.