Fidelity Investments & Direct Connect Possibly Going Away?

I have gotten no response from the Moderator (or any Quicken employee for that matter) regarding what is going on regarding Fidelity and clarification of this Alert.

But I am now seeing more posts from others that they are being pushed to reauthorize their Fidelity accounts (again, no one says anything about which Fidelity financial insitution it is that is affected). Here is a QMac thread on this if you wish to read it:

I think the most disturbing part for me is the number of people who posted that reauthorizing changed their Fidelity accounts from Complete Investing to Simple Investing with no ability to switch it back to Complete Investing. That would be a deal-breaker for me if/when Fidelity pushes me to reauthorize.

At least for now, we can keep DC for at least the time being.

Complete Investing is the traditional account register view showing all the transactions and details.

Simple Investing does not have a register. It simply reports the positions (i.e., shares held, current price & value, etc.) and total account value in a dashboard format that looks like this:

When an account switches from Complete to Simple, the transactions history is retained but it is no longer visible. By switching back to Complete from Simple that historical data will again be present but any transactions that were completed after Simple was implemented will not be in the register because they were not imported. So, it is not a good idea to switch back and forth between them.

Simple was requested by users who really don't care to see all the investments details. All they want to see is the high level summaries shown in this dashboard. But for many users (like me) I want and need to see all of the transactions details for a variety of reasons so Simple Investing is simply an unacceptable option.

One investment company (Vanguard?) took the jump last year and stopped downloading in anything except for Simple. Now it sounds like perhaps Fidelity is starting to head down this same path. I really hope that is not going to be the case because for me it removes a big incentive for me to keep my accounts at Fidelity (yes, I will drop them like a hot potato) and to also question the long term relative value of Quicken if this is the path that most/all investment companies will be taking.

Thank you @Quicken Kristina. I suspected this and it is helpful confirmation. But it still leaves a big question unanswered: Which "Fidelity" FIs are affected?

There are 33 different Fidelity FIs in QWin. Some are totally different businesses from each other but others are simply different FIs for the same corporation. Some have EWC accounts set up but others have have only DC set up.

Based upon what you said here, I'm assuming that Fidelity Investments and Fidelity NetBenefits are not affected because they are set up only with DC. I've also gotten no reauthorization notification for my Fidelity Investment accounts so that is making me feel better.

But every time I ask someone who has been pushed to do this reauthorization which "Fidelity" it is for, they always come back with just "Fidelity". That is rather meaningless. Do you have any insights into which "Fidelity" FIs are affected? That would be really helpful.

Thanks, @Quicken Kristina. What is "BID"? I haven't seen that acronym before. I've always referred to all the listings in the FIDIR list as FIs. Are they the same thing?

Some comments regarding the list you provided:

• 66600 - Fidelity Netbenefits: This number is not in QWin but there is a 10482 Fidelity NetBenefits in QWin but it is DC only so no QWin user should be affected by this change, then, right?
• 70419 Fidelity - Investments & Retirement Accounts: This is not in the list you provided but it is in the QWin FIDIR and in QWin's Add Account. It is also shown only as EWC (EWC+?). I do not recall seeing this FI in QWin before this week. Several posts have been made by people saying their connection was changed to this FI and it is causing them all kinds of problems. Some have said they were able to go back to the old FI and set up with DC, again, but others say they have not been able to do that. The URL listed for this is nb.fidelity.com. In the past "nb" meant "NetBenefits" so maybe this is a replacement for Fidelity NetBenefits? But then why would people be prompted to switch from Fidelity NetBenefits which is DC only to this new FI EWC connection? I didn't think that was supposed to happen.
• 65942 - Fidelity Rewards Credit Card: There is a 65942 zzz - Fidelity Rewards CC listing in the QWIn FIDIR but that "zzz" prefix usually means it is being obsoleted or taken out of service. And Fidelity Rewards Credit Card no longer shows up in Add Account. It was an EWC connection and a couple of people have commented that they had to reauthorize but I think they were QMac users. I wonder why no QWin users have been complaining about how they lost their Fidelity Rewards Credit Card connection with nothing to replace it? (Maybe we were more successful this last Sep-Nov than I thought in people following our recommendation to stop using the Fidelity Rewards Credit Card FI and use instead the Elan Financial Services FI?)

None of the other BID numbers and BID names in that list you provided are found in the QWin FIDIR list nor in QWin's Add Account.

One last comment: It appears that almost all of the FIs in your list, except for the CC and Fidelity NetBenefits, are different employer retirement or savings plans. These types of accounts historically have fallen into the realm of Fidelity NetBenefits. So, except for the CC, does this mean that it is really Fidelity NetBenefits plans that are affected by this EWC+ change?