401(k) Financial Institution Changed

unknown

The company I work for has recently changed from a 401(k) provider that doesn't allow downloaded transactions.  So I had them setup as a retirement account and I would input quarterly statements.  Now we have switched to a new provider that does allow this data to be downloaded.  I have tried several things:

1. Created new Account w/ new provider and linked everything  (worked great), then I attempted to set the balances on my old account to (0).  This showed that I still had shares of funds with no balances. (Unsuccessful)
2. Close the old account and create a new.  This worked, however when I look at my investment history the value of the old account was gone  (Unsuccessful)
3. Take my existing account, edit account details and link it online.  This forced me to create new each time (Unsuccessful).

Please advise the best way to handle this situation.

Jim_Harman

In option 2, simply closing the old account is definitely the wrong thing to do, because as you have seen all the history will be lost. You can hide it in the account bar if you don't want to see it any more, but you will want to transfer the assets from the old account to the new and get the balance down to zero.

I think you will find that option 3 is the best way to go, but please explain what you mean by "create new each time". Assuming that your manually entered share balances and any cash in the account were correct at the time of the conversion, you should be able to start downloading transactions and everything should reconcile.

You will probably have to delete the downloaded transactions that deal with transfers from the old provider, since the securities are already in your account.

As always, make sure you have a recent backup before making any of these changes.