Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 15, 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 and you never have to call Schwab. Budget $50.00 per account for a full outgoing transfer, per Schwab’s own April 2026 Pricing Guide for Individual Investors; a partial transfer out is listed at $0.00. Note the asymmetry: Schwab’s own transfer-in pages say it does not charge to move assets into Schwab either, so the $50 line item is specifically the cost of moving a full account out.
Leaving other advisory firms: How to Leave Amerant Investments.
More on this firm: Charles Schwab Minimum Investment and Charles Schwab Alternatives.
The published numbers
From the April 2026 Charles Schwab Pricing Guide for Individual Investors (disclosures.schwab.com/SchwabDashboard/61330/REG23060.pdf), under Account Activity Fees: “Transfer (out) of assets: Full: $50 per account” and “Transfer (out) of assets: Partial: $0 per account.” No separate account-closing line item appears in the guide’s Account Activity or Special Service Fee tables; the $50 full-transfer charge is the applicable exit cost. Separately, on schwab.com/transfer-to-schwab: “Schwab does not charge for account transfers”; that page describes transfers into Schwab, not the $50 outgoing fee above; we could not confirm on a Schwab-owned page whether Schwab reimburses an outgoing fee charged by another firm when you move to Schwab, so that is left as an honest gap rather than assumed.
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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 (or worth nothing, on the pages above) 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.
Sources
- Charles Schwab, “Pricing Guide for Individual Investors” (April 2026): https://disclosures.schwab.com/SchwabDashboard/61330/REG23060.pdf
- Charles Schwab, “Transfer to Schwab”: https://www.schwab.com/transfer-to-schwab
Methodology. This page was built September 15, 2026, drawing on Charles Schwab’s own published pricing pages/PDFs, with sources linked inline; any figure we could not independently confirm this session on a Charles Schwab-owned page 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.
Want to know what Charles Schwab charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Charles Schwab’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Charles Schwab, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Charles Schwab review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Seven more exits, each with a firm-named custodian and a confirmed transfer figure: GenTrust, Foster Group, Sand Hill Global Advisors, Edgemoor Investment Advisors, SouthState Private Capital Management, Valley Wealth Managers, and First Citizens Investor Services.
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.