As most of us here, I am a self-directed investor. Most of our savings are at Fidelity, consisting of IRA, Roth, IRA and TOD accounts. A few years back, Fidelity opened a new office near us. It was about the same distance as the one we had been using. Fido asked us if we would like to change to the new office. We declined and kept our existing relationship. We have had very little need or contact with our named advisor, especially since the beginning of Covid. The last contact was when DW opened an inherited IRA about a year and a half ago and that was via Phone and with our advisor’s assistant. At least I think she was his assistant.
Fast forward to this month. We were contacted by that new office to come in for a complimentary financial review. I said we had an assigned advisor and asked about that. The new person said that, in the Fidelity computer we were unassigned. What? What happened? I checked online and it still shows we are part of the Private Client Group.
We went to visit the new office this week for that review. I told him that I was very concerned about being dropped without being notified. He said he had heard the same concern from several of his new clients. He is new to that office and Fido but been with a couple of investment houses for over 20 years, so is not new to the business. Nice enough guy. Straight shooter from what we can tell from that 1 meeting.
He didn’t know why we were dropped but shared his thoughts as to what might have happened. Since we were not depending on Fido to make suggestions and certainly not making changes based on them, within Fido we were considered “Self-directed”. As such, we had no need for an advisor, I said we were surprised at not being notified. We believe that we were dropped sometime between Jan ’22, our last contact, and Jan ’23 when we didn’t get our free Turbo-tax. He knew no way of seeing when it happened. We showed up on an AI report indicating unassigned clients.
Pay attention Fido people. Things have changed.