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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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionThe 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.
Closing the account vs transferring it: the $75 to $95 transfer-out fee
Closing an account and transferring it are different events. A transfer in kind moves your holdings to the new firm as they are. Closing by selling everything and withdrawing the cash is a liquidation. A liquidation is a taxable event; a transfer in kind is not, see IRS Publication 550 and Publication 590-B.
How do I close a Merrill Lynch account?
To leave without selling, open the account at the receiving firm and start the transfer there. To close by liquidating, sell the holdings and withdraw the cash. The charge for moving the account is covered in the next answer.
What is the Merrill Lynch transfer out fee?
Merrill’s schedules price a transfer at $75 for retirement accounts and $95 for taxable brokerage accounts at Merrill Advisory Center, and $49.95 at Merrill Edge Self-Directed.
What is the Merrill Lynch ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The amounts Merrill publishes for sending an account out are $75 or $95 at Merrill Advisory Center and $49.95 at Merrill Edge Self-Directed, from the Merrill schedules of miscellaneous account and service fees.
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.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Charles Schwab: the $50 Transfer Fee and the Order to Do It In walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Fidelity: the $0 Transfer Fee and the Order to Do It In walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Osaic: the $150 Transfer Fee Left Over From Lincoln Financial walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Stifel: the $100 Transfer Fee and a Separate $100 IRA Charge walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Thrivent: the $50 Delivery Fee, and a Separate $125 to Close an IRA walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Truist: the $125 Transfer Fee and a $500,000 Waiver walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave U.S. Bank: the $95 Fee, the Same Whether You Trade It Yourself walks through the same transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
Want to know what Merrill Lynch charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Merrill Lynch’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Merrill Lynch, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Three more exits with firm-owned, no-custodian-ambiguity transfer figures: Citizens Private Wealth, D.A. Davidson & Co., and E*TRADE Core Portfolios.
What does leaving cost elsewhere? Compare the published exit fee at 115 advisory firms and brokerages, each taken from that firm’s own schedule or its custodian’s.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave TIAA Wealth Management: the $50 Transfer Fee, $130 for an IRA walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Voya Financial Advisors: the $110 Outgoing Transfer Fee walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Wealth Enhancement Group: the $150 Transfer Fee, $125 for an IRA walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.