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. PNC prices the account termination or transfer at a flat $125 whether the account is a retirement account or not: the schedule prints the identical figure in both columns of its fee table. A separate $75 Annual Service Fee applies each year, and that one, not the $125 exit charge, is what PNC’s TotalRewards enrollment can waive. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from PNC Wealth Management’s own Overview of Products and Services, effective June 15, 2026, fetched directly from pnc.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Account Termination/Transfer Fee | $125 (Non-Retirement) / $125 (Retirement) | Per account, identical either way |
| Annual Service Fee | $75 (Non-Retirement) / $75 (Retirement) | Per year, waivable via TotalRewards |
The waiver reaches the annual fee, not the exit fee. PNC’s own language: “With enrolling in and meeting the eligibility requirements of the PNC TotalRewards Program, PNCWM clients have an opportunity to benefit from increased BDSP rates and/or an annual service fee waiver for eligible brokerage accounts.” That is a waiver of the $75 Annual Service Fee. The $125 Account Termination/Transfer Fee carries no published waiver condition of its own, and the schedule notes it may show on your statement under several different labels: “Retirement Fee,” “IRA Fee,” “Administrative Fee” or “Service Fee.”
No separate partial-transfer line is published; the schedule lists a single $125 termination/transfer fee, and separate certificate/legal-transfer items ($30 physical, $80 legal) cover registration handling, not partial ACAT transfers.
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionClosing the account vs transferring it: the $125 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 a PNC 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 PNC Investments transfer out fee?
The PNC Wealth Management Overview of Products and Services lists “Account Termination/Transfer Fee” at $125, charged per account, identical either way.
What is the PNC Investments ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The amount published for sending an account out is $125, from the PNC Wealth Management Overview of Products and Services.
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 $125 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.
Want to know what PNC Investments charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from PNC Investments’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave PNC Investments, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full PNC Investments review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.