Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 23, 2026. Quick answer: you open an account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the account through ACATS. Beacon Pointe Advisors, LLC itself charges nothing extra to end the relationship: 30 days’ written notice (waivable at Beacon Pointe’s discretion), any prepaid unearned fee refunded, and its own fee schedule explicitly excludes custodian fees from what it charges. Beacon Pointe does not custody your assets itself; its own Form ADV names Charles Schwab, Fidelity, SEI Private Trust, Pershing, and Raymond James as recommended custodians (plus HSBC for certain legacy clients), with no single default. If you are custodied at Schwab, budget $50.00 per account for a full outgoing transfer, per Schwab’s own July 2026 pricing guide. The other four custodians publish no comparable figure, an honest gap rather than assumed to be $0.
The published numbers
From Beacon Pointe Advisors, LLC’s Form ADV Part 2A (March 31, 2026), Item 5: “Either party may terminate the Advisory Agreement at any time. Clients are requested to provide thirty (30) days’ written notice of termination to the other party; however, the 30-day notice may be waived at Beacon Pointe’s sole discretion. Beacon Pointe will refund any prepaid, unearned advisory fees based on the effective date of termination… Beacon Pointe’s fees do not include custodian fees.” Item 12 names the custodians: “We generally recommend that clients maintain their assets through either Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (‘Schwab’)… Fidelity Investments Institutional Operations Company, Inc. (‘Fidelity’)… SEI Private Trust Company (‘SEI’), Pershing Advisor Solutions, LLC (‘Pershing’), or Raymond James & Associates, Inc. (‘Raymond James’)… Beacon Pointe has entered into an agreement with HSBC to maintain the accounts of certain legacy clients.” From the Charles Schwab Pricing Guide for Clients of Independent Investment Advisors (July 2026), Account Activity Fees: “Full transfer (out) of assets: $50 per account.” No dollar figure for Fidelity, SEI, Pershing, Raymond James, or HSBC appears anywhere in the Beacon Pointe brochure.
| What | Figure |
|---|---|
| Beacon Pointe’s own exit charge | $0.00 extra: prepaid unearned fees refunded, 30 days’ notice (Form ADV) |
| Full transfer-out at Schwab | $50.00 per account (Schwab’s own July 2026 pricing guide for independent-advisor clients) |
| Fidelity / SEI / Pershing / Raymond James | Fidelity’s own published fee schedules carry no comparable, clearly attributable outgoing-transfer line item for accounts custodied there; left as an honest gap rather than assumed to be $0. |
| ACATS validation + completion window | 1 business day to validate, 3 business days to complete (FINRA Rule 11870) |
Compare your next step
Just comparing fees? Keep reading the fee guide.Optional next step
Explore an adviser match
Compare the services and the full fee before deciding whether to hire anyone.
- No fee to request a match
- No obligation to hire
Expect questions about your situation, your name, email and phone, and phone verification by text. A match is not guaranteed.
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.
Opens here. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button.
How our partner relationships workCompare an adviser match before you decide
Ask about the full fee, what it covers and how the adviser is paid. A match is an introduction, not a recommendation from Clear Money Guide.
- Free matching service
- No obligation to hire
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. Advisers pay for the introduction. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. There is no obligation to hire anyone.
Continue to WiserAdvisorOpens on WiserAdvisor’s site in a new tab.
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 Beacon Pointe Advisors charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Beacon Pointe Advisors’s own fee disclosure.
Sources
- Beacon Pointe Advisors, LLC, Form ADV Part 2A (March 31, 2026): https://beaconpointe.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/BPA-ADV-Part-2A_03-31-2025-1.pdf
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Beacon Pointe Advisors, LLC firm summary (CRD 119290): https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/119290
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Beacon Pointe Advisors, LLC Form CRS: https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/crs/crs_119290.pdf
- Charles Schwab, “Pricing Guide for Clients of Independent Investment Advisors” (July 2026): https://disclosures.schwab.com/SchwabDashboard/61256/REG23060SI.pdf
Methodology. This page was built September 23, 2026, drawing on Beacon Pointe Advisors’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.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Beacon Pointe Advisors review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
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.