How do I transfer an investment account from one firm to another?

Paul4907

How do I transfer an investment account from one firm to another?

Jim_Harman

There are a couple of ways to do this, but I would use the method below because it mimics what happened in real life. This assumes that your holdings were moved "in kind," i.e. the shares were transferred directly, not sold in the old account and re-purchased in the new one.

It will enter one Removed transaction for each security held in the old account(s) on the transfer date and an Added transaction in the new account for each tax lot of each security. It preserves the cost basis and acquisition dates of the securities transferred. The pre-transfer cash and security transactions will remain in the old accounts and the new account will only have transactions for your current holdings. This is also a good method to use if there are many thousands of transactions in the old account and the performance is slow.

1. Make sure the holdings in your old account(s) prior to the transfer are up to date and accurate. 
2. Back up your data file in case something goes wrong.
3. In the old account(s), click on the gear, pick Edit account details, and on the Online Services tab, click on Deactivate.
4. If there are transactions in the old account(s) that remove the holdings for the transfer, delete them.
5. Set up the new account in Quicken if you have not already. If there are already transactions that transfer the holdings into the account or transactions that duplicate ones that are already recorded in the old account, delete them.
6. In the old account(s), click on Enter Transactions and pick Shares transferred between accounts. Set the date for the Shares Transferred to the actual date the securities were transferred.
7. Select All securities and click on Enter/Done.
8. If there is any cash in the old account(s), enter a Cash Transferred out of account to move it to the new account.
9. If you are entering the transfer after the fact and there are transactions in the old account(s) after the actual transfer date for the securities that were moved, you should use the Move Transactions operation to move those transactions to the new account.

When reporting on performance over a period that includes the transfer, include both the old and new accounts in the analysis. 

The alternate method redirects your existing account so that the current holdings remain there and new transactions are downloaded from the new financial institution (FI). With this method, the result in Quicken will be as if was with the new brokerage from the beginning.

Follow steps 1-4 above, then re-activate the account for downloading, using the new financial institution. When it finds your new account, be sure to choose the option to link it to the current account, not add a new account. If transactions are downloaded to add the current holdings, delete them.