Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: you open the account at the receiving firm and sign the transfer form there; the new firm pulls the account through ACATS. Citi Personal Wealth Management prices the outgoing account transfer at $95, and separately lists a $95 Termination Fee (Retirement) as its own line for IRAs: the same number, printed twice, under two different names. Citi’s pricing document does not itemize a distinct annual IRA custodial fee or a separate partial-transfer charge; the only stated waiver language is generic, discretionary, and applies to “some of the fees listed above,” not a specific one. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from Citi Personal Wealth Management’s own CPWM Pricing, Commissions, and Fees document (doc code 1591255, dated 07/26), fetched directly from citi.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Account Transfer Fee (Outgoing) | $95 | Per account |
| Termination Fee (Retirement) | $95 | Per account, IRA-specific line |
The retirement termination fee is its own row, but the number does not change. The document lists “Account Transfer Fee (Outgoing) $95” in the Selected Fees section and, separately, “Termination Fee (Retirement) $95”: two distinct entries in the same table that happen to charge the identical amount. No annual IRA custodial fee and no partial-transfer-out fee are itemized anywhere in the document after checking every section (Equity/ETF Pricing, Option Pricing, Fixed Income, Foreign Exchange, Selected Fees, Additional Selected Fees, and Lending).
The only waiver language in the document is generic: “Some of the fees listed above may be negotiated, waived or reduced at the discretion of the firm.” No numeric threshold is published for either the $95 outgoing transfer fee or the $95 retirement termination fee.
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The 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. Budget $95 for the exit charge and leave the cash to cover it in the account rather than sweeping the balance to zero first. Whether the 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. To put the exit charge next to the fee you would stop paying, the switching advisors cost calculator returns the break-even in months.