How do I transfer an investment account from one firm to another?
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.
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.
@Paul4907 please see the FAQ post for your question:
One additional note with regard to the Shares Transferred rarely applicable - The Shares Transferred will not transfer a short position in a security. You will need to cover the short in the old account and create the short in the new account manually. I am not sure how that would get handled in the real world.
IF all of the securities are being moved, and not sold with only cash moved, I'd simply disconnect the account from downloads from the old brokerage and then re-connect to the new brokerage … which I've done previously.
To ME, it was the same account … which is why I didn't bother to create a new account in Q and move the securities in Q.
Hello @Paul4907,
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Check back and let us know! Thank you.
Thank you Jim for the detailed instructions. However, I have a brokerage account that I tried to transfer to another brokerage account and only two of the three securities transferred using your suggested method. My account summary at the new FI shows that all three securities transferred successfully. In Quicken, my old account still shows the transactions for the security that did not transfer, but if I try the transfer again for the one security, I receive a message that there are not enough shares for this security in the account I am trying to transfer from. If I specify all securities, I receive a message that there are no securities available for transfer. I have 81 transactions for the security that did not transfer in Quicken, and I hope I will not have to enter them manually. Any suggestions?
@rlbaker Re: shares that did not transfer, are there any short positions in the security that did not transfer? If so, see this post by @q_lurker
Or you may be able to click on the gear at the top right of the old account and select Move transactions to move them.
Be sure to back up your data file first in case you do not like the result.
@rlbaker Please clarify.
In your Quicken in the old account, is there a Remove Shares for the third security?
Is it removing the number of shares consistent with the real world holding?
If you go to a Portfolio view (Ctrl-U) for that account, how many shares for that security are shown before and after the intended transfer date?
In the old account transaction list, are there any placeholders involving that security? Be sure preference settings include showing hidden transactions.
I had no short positions. I tried the Move transactions and it appeared to work. However, the file would not validate and would not repair. Glad I had the backup.
My transaction list does not include any Shares Removed for the third security. Quicken has not removed any of the shares. In the Portfolio view before and after the intended transfer date, the number of shares is the same. This also matches the actual number of shares transferred to the new FI.
@Jim_Harman and @q_lurker Thanks again for your suggestions. FYI, I discovered a prior transfer of shares that I had made several years ago. I did not use the Shares transferred between accounts. I probably just removed the shares from the old account and then added them to the new account. After deleting those transactions, the transfer was successful using the method you described.
