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. Equitable Advisors prices an outgoing account transfer at $150: a fee its own schedule explicitly says excludes retirement accounts: and charges the same $150 again under a separate “IRA/QRP and 403(b)(7) Termination” line for retirement accounts specifically. Unusually on this list, the annual IRA maintenance fee is $0: the schedule states it plainly, per year and per account. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from Equitable’s own Miscellaneous Account and Service Fees Schedule: Model Wealth Portfolios (document FS17-EQH, Revised 0325, March 2025), fetched directly from Equitable’s disclosure portal.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing Account Transfer (excludes retirement accounts) | $150 | Per account |
| IRA/QRP and 403(b)(7) Termination | $150 | Per account |
| Annual IRA Maintenance | $0 | Per year, per account |
The $150 general transfer fee explicitly does not apply to a retirement account: a different $150 line does. The schedule describes the Outgoing Account Transfer fee as “for processing full account transfer of all assets and positions to another financial institution (excludes retirement accounts)” and, separately, prices “IRA/QRP and 403(b)(7) Termination” at the same $150 for the retirement side. The $0 annual IRA maintenance figure is the lowest recurring IRA cost of any firm on this list, though the schedule’s only waiver language for the transfer/termination fees themselves is a generic footnote: “Some of these fees may be waived under certain conditions… see account agreements for more information.”
No partial-transfer-out fee is itemized; the schedule scopes the $150 fee to a full transfer of all assets and positions.
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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. Budget $150 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.