Firing FA

[Rocky mtn high]

Question, my FA told us if we decide to fire them, we can just tell Fidelity and discontinue the FA relationship and keep the same accounts. Fidelity is pretty insistent on opening new accounts. Anyone been through this? Thanks

[Aerides]

Is your current FA with Fido or not?

In our case, we fired ours (non-FIDO) by having FIDO pull it all over. We were able to keep the same funds largely because I didn't have anything proprietary with the old place. We had to create a new account with fido to do the pull, but not new funds. No buy/sell, just transfer.

[OldShooter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocky mtn high Question, my FA told us if we decide to fire them, we can just tell Fidelity and discontinue the FA relationship and keep the same accounts. Fidelity is pretty insistent on opening new accounts. Anyone been through this? Thanks

Speculation: Reps get paid for bringing in new money. Is it possible that opening a new set of accounts for you would qualify as new money where the rep you're talking to gets paid? I would escalate the question inside Fido, maybe to a branch manager. A veiled threat to open the new accounts at Schwab might increase Fido's flexibility.

[RetiredAt49]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocky mtn high Question, my FA told us if we decide to fire them, we can just tell Fidelity and discontinue the FA relationship and keep the same accounts. Fidelity is pretty insistent on opening new accounts. Anyone been through this? Thanks

I just went through this process last month. I fired my FA too. What needs to happen at fidelity is that your accounts (being managed by your FA) are called "professionally managed" so in order to be able to see everything and do everything, you need to setup new account(s) within Fidelity and move everything from your professionally managed accounts "in-kind" to your new accounts.

[CRLLS]

I am assuming that the FA is not with Fidelity and the assets are held by his brokerage or one he is associated with. Of course, you will have to open a new account with Fidelity if you don't already have one. It is likely that once that is done, the "Assets" (a.k.a funds and stocks) can be pulled from your current holder to Fidelity.

Definitely ask Fido for some sort of bonus for moving your assets to them.

[Ncc1701]

Your assets are kept on the institutional side at Fido where the advisor has trading authority over your account. All you have to do is tell the advisor to terminate their management and move the accounts to the retail side. Give them a written letter instructing them of this. They can forward to their Fidelity relationship manager who will process. You will maintain the same account numbers, You do NOT have to open new accounts.

[Rocky mtn high]

My fidelity accounts are managed by a third party not fidelity, so I wanted to just fire the third party and keep accounts with fidelity and manage by my self.

[Rocky mtn high]

Thanks

[braumeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rocky mtn high my FA told us if we decide to fire them, we can just tell Fidelity and discontinue the FA relationship and keep the same accounts. Fidelity is pretty insistent on opening new accounts.

I'm pretty sure you just spoke to the wrong person at Fidelity. This should be as simple as revoking the FA's access to your accounts. Recommend you try again and ask to be moved up to a higher level of Fidelity support if you get the same answer.

[Cheesehead]

Is the OP referring to the Fidelity Partner Program? We just signed up, will cost .7%, after a lifetime of doing it ourselves we now want to switch to an income model and have not been successful. May I ask why the OP and others who fired their FA, assuming it wasn’t the FIDO staff FA, what made you do it?

Thanks

[Rocky mtn high]

Considering firing due to performance the last four years and the cost, over 30k a year and has not meet market performance. This has been a long term relationship but now my advisor is working part time and taking overseas vacations. The FA had BEAT the market performance for many years but not anymore it seems.

[savory]

I ended up with new accounts but perhaps I could have insisted to maintain the old account. I was under the impression as others mentioned that FIDO has a professional and self managed structure and they are not seamless.

If you end up needing to start from scratch, you will lose your history. If that is important, you will need to capture it b4 the change.