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: the structural fact that shapes this exit: Fisher Investments does not hold your assets itself. Its own Form CRS states that clients “generally pay trading commissions or fees to third-party brokerage firms we utilize to custody and make trades for your account.” So leaving has two separable steps — end the advisory agreement (which stops the fee) and move or retitle the account at the custodian (which moves the money) — and they do not have to happen on the same day. Export your cost basis and download your statements before you start.
Jump to: compare your next step by portfolio size.
The published fee, so you know what stops
From Fisher’s own Form ADV Part 3 (Client Relationship Summary) dated February 5, 2025, for US clients: an annual fee on assets under management, “calculated and billed quarterly,” on a tiered schedule of 1.5% for all relationships less than $1 million; 1.25% on the first $1 million for amounts equal to or greater than $1 million; 1.125% on additional amounts over $1 million and less than or equal to $5 million; and 1.00% on any additional amount over $5 million. The same document notes the firm is a discretionary adviser, meaning it can trade your account without asking first — which is why the written instruction to stop discretionary trading, below, is step one and not step three. It also states that the professionals who introduce the service “are compensated based on the total value of assets you entrust to our management”: useful context for the retention conversation, and a disclosure the firm makes about itself.
Compare your next step
Just comparing fees? Keep reading the fee guide.Optional next step
Explore an adviser match
Compare the services and the full fee before deciding whether to hire anyone.
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The matching service is run by WiserAdvisor, an independent advisor-matching company. It opens on their site, asks for your ZIP code and a few questions, and matches you with 2 to 3 vetted advisors. It is free to you. WiserAdvisor states the service is built for portfolios of $250,000 and above. By submitting, you consent to emails, phone calls and text messages from WiserAdvisor and up to three advisors, so expect to be contacted. Advisers pay for the introduction. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. There is no obligation to hire anyone.
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionWhat leaving costs, and who charges it
Fisher Investments does not hold your money. Its own Form ADV names Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC and Northern Trust Company as the custodians that hold its client assets, which means the fee for leaving is charged by the custodian rather than by Fisher. For an account custodied at Charles Schwab, the published cost of a full transfer out is $50 per account, and a partial transfer costs nothing.
So the number to look up is your custodian’s, not Fisher’s. Check the statement for whose name is on it before you assume which schedule applies. For comparison, a full transfer out costs $95 at Edward Jones and $125 at Morgan Stanley — the custodial route is at the cheaper end, and if you are moving only part of the account, Schwab’s published partial-transfer charge is $0.
Closing the account vs transferring it: no transfer-out fee is stated
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 a Fisher Investments 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 Fisher Investments transfer out fee?
Fisher Investments’ own Form CRS does not state a transfer-out fee. It says clients “generally pay trading commissions or fees to third-party brokerage firms we utilize to custody and make trades for your account,” so any charge for moving the account comes from the custodian, not from Fisher Investments.
What is the Fisher Investments ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The Fisher Investments Form CRS does not list a transfer-out amount, and this page does not invent one; ask your custodian for its outgoing-transfer charge in writing.
The sequence
1. Download everything first. Statements, tax documents, and a full holdings list with cost basis and acquisition dates, from the custodian’s portal as well as any Fisher-facing portal. Access can end when the relationship does. Under IRC §6045A the delivering broker must furnish a transfer statement with basis for covered securities within 15 days of a transfer, but having your own copy is what lets you check it. 2. Write to end the advisory agreement — naming the accounts, giving an effective date, instructing that discretionary trading stop, and asking for written confirmation and any prorated refund of a fee billed in advance. The generator writes this letter. 3. Decide about the custodian account. Depending on how it is set up you may be able to keep it and simply remove the adviser’s authority, or move it to a new firm via ACATS — ask the custodian which applies to you before assuming either. 4. Confirm the fee stopped on the next statement: the receipt email.
The two questions to settle in writing
Will anything have to be sold? If you move to a firm that cannot hold a position, it gets liquidated, and in a taxable account that is a realised gain in the year you leave — what will not transfer and the four tax cases. Am I owed part of the quarter? Fees billed quarterly are commonly billed in advance, and Form ADV Part 2A Item 5.D requires an adviser to explain how a client obtains a refund of a pre-paid fee when the contract ends mid-period — how to ask, with the exact sentence. Where the tiered rate above sits against the wider market: our benchmark of published adviser fee schedules. General mechanics: switching financial advisors.
To weigh the exit costs against the fee you would stop paying, the switching advisors cost calculator returns the one-time cost of leaving and how long the new arrangement takes to repay it.
Comparing exit steps at more than one firm? How to leave U.S. Bank, fee by fee and form by form.
For your own numbers, run the AUM Fee Calculator 2026: 1% Advisor Fee in Dollars.
See Read the adviser-hiring guide for more on this.
Want to know what Fisher Investments charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Fisher Investments’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Fisher Investments, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Fisher Investments review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Four more exits, each with a firm-named custodian and a confirmed transfer figure: Corient, Tiedemann Advisors, Johnson Investment Counsel, and Allworth Financial.
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.