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. E*TRADE Core Portfolios’ own wrap-fee brochure is silent on transfer or closing costs entirely, an omission that goes back at least to a superseded 2023 version of the same document. E*TRADE’s own live Pricing and Rates page fills the gap: under Special Request Fees, “Account transfers (outgoing): $75 for full transfers.” That same page markets Core Portfolios directly, at the identical 0.30% annual advisory fee (on accounts of $500 or more) the wrap-fee brochure states, so it is the fee page covering the same product, not an unrelated schedule.
The published numbers
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC’s Core Portfolios Wrap Fee Program Brochure (Form ADV Part 2A, March 30, 2026), Item 4.C, lists “account closing/transfer costs” only as a category name excluded from the Advisory Fee, with no dollar figure anywhere in the document; the same gap exists in the superseded 2023 brochure. E*TRADE’s own live Pricing and Rates page (fetched September 23, 2026), under Special Request Fees: “Account transfers (outgoing): $75 for full transfers.” The same page’s Managed Portfolios section states: “Core Portfolios… Account market value $500+, Flat annual advisory fee 0.30%,” matching the brochure’s own rate exactly. We deliberately did not use Morgan Stanley Wealth Management’s separate “Schedule of Miscellaneous Account and Service Fees” ($125/$95, already cited on this site’s Morgan Stanley page): that document never names Core Portfolios or E*TRADE, and its “Self-Directed Accounts” carve-out is a different, defined MSWM account type in the same document’s own fee-waiver section, so applying it here would be an unproven cross-reference. The same Pricing and Rates page separately lists an “outgoing” wire transfer fee of $25, a related cost worth budgeting if you move cash by wire rather than through ACATS.
| What | Figure |
|---|---|
| Core Portfolios’ own wrap-fee brochure | Silent on transfer/closing costs; no dollar figure in the current or the superseded 2023 brochure |
| Account transfers (outgoing) | $75.00 for a full transfer (E*TRADE, Pricing and Rates, fetched September 23, 2026) |
| Outgoing wire transfer | $25.00, a related charge from the same Pricing and Rates page |
| Custodian ambiguity | None: the fee page and the Core Portfolios product share the same 0.30% rate, confirming the same coverage |
| 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 E*TRADE Core Portfolios charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from E*TRADE Core Portfolios’s own fee disclosure.
Sources
- E*TRADE, “Pricing and Rates”: https://us.etrade.com/what-we-offer/pricing-and-rates
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC firm summary (CRD 149777): https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/149777
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC Form CRS: https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/crs/crs_149777.pdf
Methodology. This page was built September 23, 2026, drawing on E*TRADE Core Portfolios’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 E*TRADE Core Portfolios review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.