Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: you open the account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the account through ACATS. Thrivent splits the exit charge in a way most peers do not: the Full Transfer Out Account Delivery Fee is $50, but a separate IRA Custodial Closing Fee runs $125 if the account being closed is a retirement account: two-and-a-half times the general transfer price. The annual IRA custodial fee is $35, waived once the account reaches $250,000. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
Leaving other advisory firms: How to Leave CIBC Private Wealth Management.
More on this firm: Thrivent Minimum Investment and Thrivent Alternatives.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from Thrivent Investment Management’s own “Miscellaneous other fees and charges for brokerage and managed accounts” schedule (document 25001 R12-23), fetched directly from thrivent.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Full Transfer Out Account Delivery Fee | $50 | Per account |
| IRA Custodial Closing Fee | $125 | Per IRA account |
| IRA Custodial Maintenance Fee / HSA Annual Fee | $35 (waived at $250,000+) | Per year |
Which fee applies depends entirely on the account type, and the gap between them is large. The schedule lists “Full Transfer Out Account Delivery Fee $50” as a general line, and separately “IRA Custodial Closing Fee $125”: a retirement account closing costs two and a half times what a general transfer costs. The $35 annual maintenance line carries its own published waiver: “IRA Custodial Maintenance Fee and Health Savings Account (HSA) Annual Fee (waived if account value $250,000 or more) $35.”
No partial-transfer-out fee is listed as a separate line item from the $50 Full Transfer Out Account Delivery Fee.
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionThe 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. Budget $50 for the exit charge and leave the cash to cover it in the account rather than sweeping the balance to zero first. 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. To put the exit charge next to the fee you would stop paying, the switching advisors cost calculator returns the break-even in months.
Want to know what Thrivent charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Thrivent’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Thrivent, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Thrivent review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Three more exits, each with a Schwab-confirmed transfer figure: SignatureFD, Halbert Hargrove, and Wescott Financial Advisory Group.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.