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. Truist Investment Services prices a full account transfer out at $125, and lists an identically priced but separate $125 IRA termination fee as its own line item. The $60 annual IRA maintenance fee is waived outright for households holding $500,000 or more in brokerage assets: a real, checkable threshold, not a discretionary one. This page states only what the firm itself publishes.
Related reading on this site: Truist AMC Pinnacle program.
The published numbers
Every figure below comes from Truist Investment Services’ own Investing Guide, dated July 1, 2026 (document code “2026-05-0822 TIS Investing Guide”), fetched directly from truist.com.
| What it charges | Amount | How it is charged |
|---|---|---|
| Full account transfer out | $125.00 | Per account |
| IRA termination fee | $125.00 | Per account |
| IRA annual maintenance fee | $60.00 (waived at $500,000+ household) | Per year |
The $500,000 waiver is a stated household threshold, not a discretionary courtesy. The guide’s own footnote reads: “TIS offers clients several ways to avoid annual fees. For example, the IRA annual maintenance fee will be waived for households valued at $500,000 (or more) in brokerage assets.” That waiver reaches the $60 annual charge, not the $125 you pay when the account itself transfers or terminates.
The fee table lists “Full account transfer out $125.00” alongside “External legal transfer $150.00” and “Transfer and ship certificate/non-DRS $500.00”, but no line item is labeled as a partial-transfer-out fee distinct from a full account transfer.
Compare your next step
Just comparing fees? Keep reading the fee guide.Optional next step
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Source: WiserAdvisor’s service descriptionThe 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.
Two more ways to find an advisor without paying a flat AUM percentage: Retirable, a capped-fee retirement-planning platform, and AdvisorFinder, a paid advisor directory that does not vet who is listed.
Want to know what Truist Wealth charges before you decide whether to leave? See the dollar breakdown from Truist Wealth’s own fee disclosure.
Before you decide to leave Truist Wealth, check whether it owes you a fiduciary duty in the first place.
Weighing whether to move ahead? Read the full Truist Wealth review, including its fiduciary status and what it costs to leave.
Three more exits from RIAs where the custodian, not the firm, sets the transfer cost: Modera Wealth Management, Coldstream Wealth Management, and Pure Financial Advisors.
Leaving a different firm? See the exit guides for all 189 firms, with the four steps every exit shares.