Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 28, 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. Ally Invest Advisors LLC’s Form ADV Part 2A lets you terminate with “30 days’ written notice,” but for Robo Portfolios clients specifically, requesting a full liquidation and transfer through the digital platform stops the advisory fee “within three business days.” Ally does not custody assets itself: its brochure names Apex Clearing Corporation as the unaffiliated qualified custodian, with Ally Invest Securities LLC as the introducing broker-dealer of record. The ADV itself states no dollar transfer figure, instead pointing clients to the broker’s own published fee list. That list, fetched directly from ally.com, states an “ACAT Transfer Out (full or partial)” fee of $50.00 for the Robo Portfolios tier, the same figure Schwab charges on a standard RIA account.
The published numbers
From Ally Invest Advisors LLC’s own Form ADV Part 2A / Wrap Fee Program Brochure (April 1, 2026), Item 4: “You may terminate our advisory relationship by providing us with 30 days’ written notice… For Robo Portfolios and Invest Simply Clients Only: If you request a full liquidation and transfer or withdrawal through our digital platform, we will stop charging our advisory fee within three business days.” The same brochure names its custodian (Item 4): “Apex Clearing Corporation (“Custodian”), an unaffiliated broker-dealer, acts as Broker’s clearing firm and holds… the assets in your portfolios.” Item 5 states: “You are responsible for paying any service fees assessed by Broker or Custodian, such as… account transfer fees… A list of those fees is available at www.ally.com/invest/.” Ally Invest Securities LLC’s own published fee page states: “Account Transfer Fees… ACAT Transfer Out (full or partial)… Robo Portfolios: $50.” A separate IRA Transfer Fee of $50 and IRA Closure Fee of $25 apply to retirement accounts.
| What | Figure |
|---|---|
| Ally Invest Robo Portfolios’ own advisory-fee stop | Stops within 3 business days of a full liquidation/transfer request (Form ADV); no separate termination penalty |
| ACAT Transfer Out, full or partial | $50.00 per account (Ally Invest Securities LLC’s own published fee page) |
| IRA transfer fee | $50.00, all account types (Ally’s own fee page) |
| IRA closure fee | $25.00, charged on full distributions and full outgoing transfers (Ally’s own fee page) |
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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 Ally Invest Robo Portfolios charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Ally Invest Robo Portfolios’s own fee disclosure.
Sources
- Ally Invest Advisors LLC, “Form ADV Part 2A / Wrap Fee Program Brochure” (April 1, 2026): https://www.ally.com/content/dam/pdf/invest/wrap-fee-pgrm-brochure.pdf
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Ally Invest Advisors LLC firm summary (CRD 170301): https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/170301
- SEC Investment Adviser Public Disclosure, Ally Invest Advisors LLC Form CRS: https://reports.adviserinfo.sec.gov/crs/crs_170301.pdf
- Ally Invest Securities LLC, “Commissions and Fees”: https://www.ally.com/invest/commissions-and-fees/
Methodology. This page was built September 28, 2026, drawing on Ally Invest Robo 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 Ally Invest Robo Portfolios review.
What does it take to open an account? See Ally Invest Robo Portfolios’s minimum investment, straight from its own Form ADV Part 2A brochure.
Before you decide to leave Ally Invest Robo Portfolios, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
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.