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For the RIAs Fidelity is about to push out, a custody move is a repapering job before it is a pricing decision. Fidelity plans a $100 million custody minimum with a June 2027 deadline, and 706 of the 986 RIA relationships it counts sit below that line. Fidelity puts the number of advisory firms affected at a few hundred. What decides a move is which custodian will hold the accounts and the record that comes with them.
The principal whose book sits under the line has the least time. A breakaway team picking its first custodian has the most leverage. And the chief operating officer who runs the transition while the practice keeps billing does the actual work.
So far the offers have been about price and capacity. Betterment waived custody fees through Dec. 31, 2028 for RIAs transferring from Fidelity. Schwab said it already serves 11,000 sub-$100 million RIAs, and Jon Beatty, who heads its $6 trillion custody unit, said the firm is ready to take at least some Fidelity accounts, though no terms are in writing. One is a price promise with an end date. The other is a capacity claim with nothing signed.
Our read is that clients notice the forms and the app long before they notice the custodian's name. The firms that come through a move whole treat it as a records-and-consent project from week one.
The mechanics are plain enough. A custodian holds the assets and keeps the record; an RIA keeps the relationship and, at best, the data. Split the two and everything the record encodes has to be rebuilt somewhere else. That rebuild, far more than the transfer of securities, eats the quarter.
Seven in ten Fidelity RIA relationships sit under $100M
Fidelity RIA relationships by assets, Oct. 2026 (986 total)
| Part | Value | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 706 | 71.6% | |
| 280 | 28.4% |
Fidelity's line, not the fee grid, forces the decision#
Custody switches in this cycle start at a threshold. A firm under Fidelity's minimum has until June 2027. Its problem is the calendar.
Betterment's waiver answers the wrong question. Those two things decide whether a book can move at all. Schwab's answer is scale, still with no written terms for taking Fidelity's accounts.
Truing Capital Advisors is the clean case. When Russell Price and Sam Mineo left UBS with about $750 million to launch the firm in Las Vegas, the client assets went to Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions, one of the custodians available to Elevation Point partner firms through its arrangement with Goldman. Price said the new structure gives the team "greater control over how we serve clients". Custody was settled inside the launch, not after a request for proposal.
A breakaway team gets that leverage once. An incumbent working to someone else's deadline does not.
For the principal under the line, the waiver is the least valuable term on the sheet.
One offer has an end date, the other has no terms
What each custodian has put in writing for Fidelity RIAs, Oct. 2026
Betterment
Fees waived
- Waiver runs through
- Dec. 31, 2028
- Applies to
- RIAs leaving Fidelity
Schwab
$6T custody unit
- Sub-$100M RIAs served
- 11,000
- Written terms
- None
Show as table
| Betterment | Schwab | |
|---|---|---|
| Figure | Fees waived | $6T custody unit |
| Waiver runs through | Dec. 31, 2028 | |
| Applies to | RIAs leaving Fidelity | |
| Sub-$100M RIAs served | 11,000 | |
| Written terms | None |
The move rebuilds the client record, and clients see only the paperwork#
What gets rebuilt is the record around the assets: the forms and the client record. The holdings look much the same on the first statement. The record does not.
Schwab's own platform makes the point. From Nov. 2 it stopped accepting paper forms from RIAs and required Docusign. The paperwork is the interface. The first month of any move is documents.
Alternative assets are where it gets hard. Alto agreed to buy Forge Trust Co., a South Dakota-chartered self-directed IRA custodian, and its parent from Schwab, a deal that would leave the combined business with more than 60,000 self-directed IRA accounts. A self-directed IRA carries the same tax treatment as a standard IRA, except the custodian can hold assets beyond publicly traded securities. The deal still needs approval from the South Dakota Division of Banking.
That is the constraint in small. The charter and the account type decide whether a book can move. A custodian that will not hold the holding is not a cheaper option. It is no option.
Data is the other half. Analysts quoted by RIABiz put Altruist's lead in AI at roughly five years or more. Vanguard has agreed to buy Altruist, which will operate as a standalone business keeping its leadership and brand. The five-year figure is an analyst's estimate, and the logic does not depend on it. Whoever holds the data holds the workflow. A firm that leaves its data behind has to rebuild it.
Clients judge on what they can see. Fathom Advisors, the $1.3 billion Bloomington, Minn., team that left Ameriprise after 30 years, chose Schwab as its custodian according to its Form ADV, and joined the Protocol for Broker Recruiting. On its new site the team told clients: "As an independent RIA, our team has greater freedom and flexibility in how we serve you" and "We can choose the technology, tools, platforms, and investment solutions we believe are best for you". A client will remember that second sentence. Almost nobody will remember the clearing arrangement behind it.
Schwab's record quarter is the best case for staying put, and for most firms it wins#
The strongest argument against all of this is that the big platforms are not losing. Schwab reported record net new assets of $190.4 billion for the third quarter, up 38% from a year earlier, with $120.1 billion in Advisor Services, up 47%. Rick Wurster, Schwab's chief executive, said the firm brought in triple the number of third-party RIA firms. The segment Fidelity is pushing out is one Schwab says it already serves.
On that view, renegotiate and stay. A transition swallows the operations calendar. If statements arrive on time either way, the client-visible gain from a new custodian is small. The incumbent already holds the account types, and its fee schedule is a negotiating document.
That case is strong. For a firm above the line, it is usually right.
It breaks exactly where Fidelity has drawn its line. A custodian that will not hold the assets is not a negotiating counterparty. Under $100 million, the question becomes where to go, and Schwab's scale does not settle it, because its capacity claim comes with no terms. A book carrying self-directed IRAs or other alternative holdings needs a destination chartered to carry them. That is the business Alto is paying for.
Data is the second exception. A firm that stays for the pricing and later finds its workflow tied to a custodian's roadmap has made a different trade than it thought. Altruist's whole pitch is built on that worry.
So the counterargument wins for most firms and loses for the ones with a date. Scale is a reason to renegotiate a schedule. It is no promise that the account types will still be there at renewal.
Advisor Services grew faster than the whole firm
Schwab net new assets, Q3 2026, change from a year earlier
What it means for advisors: move only after the client record passes four tests#
For a principal working to June 2027, this is weeks of diligence. Finish it before any letter goes to a client.
Start with an inventory. List every registration type and asset class in the book, then ask the prospective custodian to name in writing which ones it will accept. Alto's deal for a South Dakota-chartered self-directed IRA custodian is the reminder that charters and account types govern what can be held. No fee schedule substitutes for them.
Data rights come next. Ask who owns the client record and what happens to it at termination. It should belong to the firm that generated it.
Then get the transition in writing, with a named conversion team and a cutover date. Treat the waiver as a contract too. Betterment's runs through Dec. 31, 2028. Budget time for the shopping itself: LPL's Praxis team, the $1.1 billion Alpharetta group, said it weighed more than a dozen firms before moving.
Pilot one cohort last. Move the simplest registrations first, script who calls each client and in what order, and measure the time to a correct first statement. Fathom pitched its move to clients as the freedom to choose technology and tools. A pilot tells you whether your own pitch survives contact with the paperwork. Commit the rest of the book only after it does.
After that, the choice is not close. A firm above the line whose only issue is price should stay and renegotiate. A firm whose issue is account types or data should move, and should expect the work to land on the operations desk rather than the investment committee. Where legacy holdings cannot move, ask Schwab to turn its readiness to take some Fidelity accounts into terms. Until it does, a split book is an idea.
Hold every counterparty to June 2027. The same date tests this argument. If firms under Fidelity's line make the deadline on standard terms and call the repapering the easy part, the fee grid mattered more than this piece allows. If they miss it on account types and data, the record was the job all along.
Written by PWD Editors. Published . Corrections · All long reads