Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 18, 2026. Quick answer: you open an account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the accounts through ACATS. CAPTRUST Financial Advisors itself charges nothing extra to end the relationship: either party can terminate on 30 days’ written notice (or within 5 business days without penalty if you just received the brochure), and any advisory relationship that ends before the last day of a quarter gets its unearned fees prorated and refunded. CAPTRUST does not custody your assets itself; its own Form ADV names Pershing, Fidelity, and Schwab as its standard custodians (with an incentive to steer clients toward Schwab specifically). If you are custodied at Schwab, budget $50.00 per account for a full outgoing transfer, per Schwab’s own July 2026 pricing guide. Fidelity and Pershing publish no comparably clear figure, so both are honest gaps rather than assumed to be $0.
The published numbers
From CAPTRUST Financial Advisors’ Form ADV Part 2A, Wealth Client Brochure (March 27, 2026): “[An advisory agreement may be terminated] by either party upon thirty days’ written notice to the other party. However, if the client has not received this brochure at least 48 hours prior to entering into the advisory agreement, the client may terminate the advisory agreement within five business days… without penalty. If any advisory relationship terminates before the last day of a quarter, fees are prorated accordingly, and the Adviser will refund any unearned fees due to the client.” The same brochure names the custodians: “Some clients choose to use custodians other than Pershing, Fidelity, or Schwab.”, naming those three as the standard set, and separately discloses CAPTRUST has “an incentive to recommend that client accounts be held in custody at Schwab” via a non-Schwab-custody participation fee structure. From the Charles Schwab Pricing Guide for Clients of Independent Investment Advisors (July 2026): “Full transfer (out) of assets: $50 per account.” Fidelity and Pershing publish no comparably clear figure on their own documents (see the Buckingham Strategic Wealth page in this same series for the Pershing ambiguity in full); neither is published here as confirmed.
| What | Figure |
|---|---|
| CAPTRUST’s own exit charge | $0.00 extra: unearned fees prorated and refunded, 30 days’ written notice (Form ADV) |
| Full transfer-out at Schwab | $50.00 per account (Schwab’s own July 2026 pricing guide for independent-advisor clients) |
| Fidelity / Pershing | No clearly comparable published figure found this session; honest gap, not $0 |
| ACATS validation + completion window | 1 business day to validate, 3 business days to complete (FINRA Rule 11870) |
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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. Whether a transfer 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.
Want to know what CAPTRUST charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from CAPTRUST’s own fee disclosure.
Sources
- CAPTRUST Financial Advisors, “Form ADV Part 2A – Wealth Client Brochure” (March 27, 2026): https://www.captrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/2026-CAPTRUST-Form-2A-Wealth-Client-Brochure-FINAL.pdf
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, CAPTRUST Financial Advisors firm summary (CRD 175112): https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/175112
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, CAPTRUST Financial Advisors Form CRS: https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/crs/crs_175112.pdf
- Charles Schwab, “Pricing Guide for Clients of Independent Investment Advisors” (July 2026): https://disclosures.schwab.com/SchwabDashboard/61256/REG23060SI.pdf
- Fidelity, “Brokerage Commission and Fee Schedule”: https://www.fidelity.com/bin-public/060_www_fidelity_com/documents/Brokerage_Commissions_Fee_Schedule.pdf
Methodology. This page was built September 18, 2026, drawing on CAPTRUST’s own Form ADV/wrap-fee brochure/fee schedule plus each named custodian’s own published fee schedule, with sources linked inline; any figure we could not independently confirm this session on a firm-owned or custodian-owned document is named as an honest gap above rather than presented as verified. Nothing here is personalized financial, tax, legal, or investment advice. See our Editorial Policy, Corrections, Affiliate Disclosure, and Disclaimer.
Three more exits from RIAs where your custodian, not the firm, sets the transfer cost: Northern Trust, Cetera, and Farther.
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.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.