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. Primerica prices the account transfer or termination at $50 per event, the lowest full-service exit fee on this list, and applies it identically whether the account is a Lifetime Investment Program advisory account or a non-program brokerage account. The Retirement Account Annual Maintenance Fee is also $50 per year. No IRA-specific closure fee, partial-transfer fee, or waiver language appears anywhere in the published schedule. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
Leaving other advisory firms: How to Leave Carret Asset Management.
More on this firm: Primerica Minimum Investment and Primerica Alternatives.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from Primerica Brokerage Services, Inc.’s own Fee Schedule (© 2023 Primerica, document 61600 / 2844292 / 4.23), fetched directly from primerica.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Account Transfer/Termination Fee | $50.00 | Per event, Program and Non-Program accounts alike |
| Retirement Account Annual Maintenance Fee | $50.00 | Per year |
One number covers every account type the schedule lists. The document applies “Account Transfer/Termination Fee $50.00 per event” identically to both Program (advisory) and Non-Program (brokerage) accounts, with no IRA-specific termination row and no published waiver of either fee: a simpler, and in dollar terms cheaper, structure than any other full-service firm on this list.
No partial-transfer-out fee is itemized separately from the flat $50.00 Account Transfer/Termination Fee.
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionClosing the account vs transferring it: the $50.00 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 a Primerica 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 Primerica transfer out fee?
The Primerica Brokerage Services Fee Schedule (document 61600) lists “Account Transfer/Termination Fee” at $50.00, charged per event, Program and Non-Program accounts alike.
What is the Primerica ACAT fee?
ACATS is the system the receiving firm uses to pull an account. The amount published for sending an account out is $50.00, from the Primerica Brokerage Services Fee Schedule (document 61600).
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 $50 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.
Primerica advisors are also affiliated with a larger financial-services parent; for an independent broker-dealer network’s own regulatory record instead, see the Cetera Advisor Networks review.
Want to know what Primerica charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Primerica’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Primerica, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Three more independent-RIA exits where the custodian, not the advisory firm, sets the transfer fee: Creative Planning, Edelman Financial Engines, and Mercer Advisors.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Primerica review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
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.