Financial Advisor wants us to MOVE our investments | RRSPs and RRIFs | Discussion forum

Cdn Catlady said
Anyone else experienced this, need some guidance. Just had a phone call from our Financial Advisor regarding our RIFS etc. We have been investing them in GIC's for the past few years and now the FA (company we have been dealing with for over 40 years) wants us to move our investments to a bank as she "doesn't make enough $ off of us to make it worth her while" I don't want to move them. I am so annoyed and insulted right now. Also involves, TFSA's & RESP's . Any advice on how you would handle this situation?  

I would move it in a heart beat without hesitation, if ur FA dont care about ur business, why keep it there ???

I agree with savemoresaveoften, I never stay anywhere I'm not wanted, I'm gone before they know it.

If you only want to buy GICs, i.e. no need for Advisor, maybe your bank's discount broker is an option, very easy to manage within each account, no account fees unless total balances very small (which I'm assuming is not the case as you've been doing this for over 40 years). And depending on the size of your accounts they will reimburse all or part of the $135 per account you're being charged by your present broker, ask about that at time of looking into opening accounts with them.

On the other hand if you're going to get back into the markets soon you could tell your existing broker that, they may want to retain your business if their fees earned go back up again.

I guess the question though is whether the OP is ready to go DIY rather than keep accounts with a full service advisor. If her current FA is no longer willing to manage the accounts, there is reason to believe most others may not do so either, at least the big firms.

AFAIK, all brokerages, whether full service or discount DIY, will reimburse account fees up to $150 per account but that needs to be ascertained in advance. Even if a new firm balks at 8 x $135 if certain accounts are 'small', covering the bulk of them would still be very helpful.

There should be no fees when you did nothing and are being forced to leave for (it appears) one person's own selfish purposes. So I would first demand they put in writing that all transfer fees are waived before doing anything.

Maybe its just me, but this all sounds fishy to have this happen as described. Does this one person who contacted you have a supervisor?

They want you to move. No way should you be paying transfer fees. I would be livid. That kind of treatment after 40 years is cold, very cold.

Cdn Catlady said

I would move all investments or nothing and that would involve fees of 8 x $135.00
I'm thinking should I pay a penalty to make her happy??  

Not sure the size of your accounts, but most brokerage houses will fully reimburse the transfer fee if the assets coming over from each account is $100k or more.
You can start calling the new ones you prefer and advisors may be able to waive all fees as long as all accounts being transfer over is $100k or some threshold they may set. It IS negotiable.

As for GIC, just wait for it to mature and then cash out. Your existing advisor can not force you to transfer those.

To be fair, I believe the OP has a full service relationship with a financial advisor. FAs with full service firms incur substantial staff and office expenses so they cannot survive with accounts that only contribute some minimal amount to offset office services. Anecdotally, I see online where many full service FAs draw the line at circa $500k @ 1% AUM ($5k per year) relationships for new accounts, or even higher amounts in some instances. Anecdotally as well, few FAs use the commission model any more, i.e. they rely on the % of AUM model. We simply do not know how much fee revenue is generated by the OP's accounts.

It is somewhat different though for existing, long standing relationships where the FAs continue to service the accounts despite low fee generation. My spouse's bro and sis have had their brokerage accounts with a long time FA that used to also be their parent's FA. They don't generate much in the way of fee revenue best that I can tell, so the FA is probably being courteous keeping the relationship.

None of this is comparable to the comment about utility bills. There is no real live servicing of such accounts, and the utility generally does not make money off the commodity anyway, i.e. it is the asset base, distribution and connection charges where the money is made.