Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Guides › Switching Financial Advisors
Updated July 31, 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 ask your Edward Jones representative to do anything. Budget $95.00 per account for the total-transfer fee, which the firm publishes in its own Schedule of Fees, and check whether any holding is an Edward Jones proprietary or advisory product that cannot move as-is. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
The published numbers
From the brokerage Schedule of Fees (document LGL-7685Q-A, rev. April 2024): “Total transfer of an account” $95.00; estates service fee, charged for the re-registration of assets, $100.00; transfer-on-death agreement disbursement fee, due upon death of the account holder, $300.00. From the IRA Schedule of Fees (LGL-7513L-A, rev. March 2022): “Total transfer or termination of an account” $95.00; annual IRA fee $40.00 per calendar year, not prorated; additional IRAs of the same individual $20.00. Both documents state that all fees are subject to change; the current versions live at edwardjones.com/disclosures and are worth a fresh look before you plan around any figure here.
The published waiver. The IRA schedule states that, effective May 1, 2019, the firm waives the total transfer or termination fee and any due-but-unpaid annual IRA fee where the account has been open at least 24 months before termination and the account’s pricing group held $5,000 or less in assets under care in the preceding month. Small, old accounts may therefore leave for nothing. Note also the “not prorated” wording on the annual IRA fee: leaving in February does not buy back eleven months.
Compare your next step
Just comparing fees? Keep reading the fee guide.Optional next step
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionClosing the account vs transferring it: the $95.00 transfer-out fee
Closing an account and transferring it are different events. A transfer in kind moves your holdings to the new firm as they are. Closing by selling everything and withdrawing the cash is a liquidation. A liquidation is a taxable event; a transfer in kind is not, see IRS Publication 550 and Publication 590-B.
How do I close an Edward Jones account?
To leave without selling, open the account at the receiving firm and start the transfer there. To close by liquidating, sell the holdings and withdraw the cash. The charge for moving the account is covered in the next answer.
What is the Edward Jones transfer out fee?
Edward Jones’ brokerage Schedule of Fees (document LGL-7685Q-A) and IRA Schedule of Fees (LGL-7513L-A) list “Total transfer of an account” at $95.00, and “Total transfer or termination of an account” at $95.00 for IRAs.
What is the Edward Jones ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The amount published for sending an account out is $95.00, from the brokerage Schedule of Fees (document LGL-7685Q-A) and IRA Schedule of Fees (LGL-7513L-A).
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. 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 see what that charge means against the fee you would stop paying, the switching advisors cost calculator returns the one-time cost of leaving and the number of months the new arrangement takes to repay it.
Comparing exit steps at more than one firm? How to leave Osaic, PNC Investments, Primerica, RBC Wealth Management, Stifel, Thrivent and Truist, fee by fee and form by form.
Want to know what Edward Jones charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Edward Jones’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Edward Jones, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Edward Jones review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Three more exits, each with a firm-owned, no-custodian-ambiguity transfer figure: KeyBank Private Wealth, M1 Finance, and Robinhood.
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.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Charles Schwab: the $50 Transfer Fee and the Order to Do It In walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Fidelity: the $0 Transfer Fee and the Order to Do It In walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Kestra Financial: Why Your Custodian Sets the Exit Fee walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Lincoln Financial Advisors: the $150 Transfer Fee, $125 for Retirement Accounts walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Mariner Wealth Advisors: the $50 ACAT Fee From Its Own Broker-Dealer walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave MassMutual: the $50 Transfer Fee, $125 for Retirement Accounts walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave Mercer Advisors: Why Your Custodian Sets the Exit Fee walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
If you are comparing exit steps at more than one firm, How to Leave SoFi Invest: the $100 Outgoing ACAT Fee walks through the transfer-out process at a different brokerage.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.