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transferring shares of closed funds to different accounts
Does anyone know if it's possible to transfer a share or two of a closed fund to start a position in a different account? If so, please describe how this works. Thank you!
Honestly if you hold the fund at a brokerage firm my first call would be there. The only evidence I can personally provide was that when I converted/transferred my T-IRA holdings to my Roth at Fidelity there were no issues at all. However there were no 'closed' funds involved. Good luck.
Should have explained it more clearly. Need to transfer shares from closed fund at one brokerage to account in different brokerage. I was hoping PRWCX would re-open during the sell-off...so far, not so good.
I would think that you'd be able to do that using the "in-kind" option on the transfer form. Again, easy at Fidelity and I have no knowledge of others.
Let us know what Schwab says. When I transferred my T. Rowe Price 401k to a Schwab IRA, I could not transfer in-kind. They told me the transfer would enter Schwab to a cash/sweep account and I would have to buy from that. Because of this, I kept money in my TRP 401k so that I could keep PWRCX.
Yes, most TRP funds are NTF at Schwab. Ok, so talked to someone at a branch who said she was helping out hq because they're getting slammed. She didn't know what I was talking about (yikes!), but she was very pleasant and got someone who did. Yes, you can transfer one or many shares. On the website, use the Transfers and Payments tab, then Transfer Account. Very easy to do.
@little5bee, are you taking about transfers from 2 different accounts both with-in Schwab? Or, to an account in Schwab from an account at a different brokerage?
There are a lot of different situations that are getting mixed together here.
@MikeM raises the question of employer plan rollovers in kind. Often employer plans require you to liquidate your holdings and transfer cash. If they make an exception, it is usually limited to rollovers within the same financial institution, e.g. a TRP-managed 401(k) to a TRP IRA. So rollovers have their own obstacles independent of whether funds are closed or not.
Then there are transfers of shares held directly with a fund company (not the situation here). Long ago, TRP was willing to do an in-kind Roth conversion for me of a closed fund to a new Roth account. More recently, it told me that it would not do an in-kind conversion of a closed fund to a new Roth.
At the same time that TRP was telling me this, Fidelity was telling me sure, they could do the Roth conversion of TRP shares in-kind. I never tested this and have my doubts about whether TRP would allow them to open the new account.
IMHO, the key question is how strict the fund company is with respect to opening new accounts, regardless of where that new account will be opened. The TRP examples above show how this can go either way, and also that a fund company's flexibility can change over time.
Regarding @little5bee's transfer request: Let us know what happens. Filling out a transfer request form is different from actually getting the shares transferred.
I own legacy shares of a fund that over the years transformed into institutional class shares at Legg Mason. It now has a $1M (or higher?) min, not technically closed. Legg Mason has informed me that it will reject any transfer request from another institution (such as Schwab) unless I meet the $1M min in the receiving account. Yeah, sure. I'm hoping that the new fund distributor, Franklin Templeton, will be more flexible.
Comments
@MikeM raises the question of employer plan rollovers in kind. Often employer plans require you to liquidate your holdings and transfer cash. If they make an exception, it is usually limited to rollovers within the same financial institution, e.g. a TRP-managed 401(k) to a TRP IRA. So rollovers have their own obstacles independent of whether funds are closed or not.
Then there are transfers of shares held directly with a fund company (not the situation here). Long ago, TRP was willing to do an in-kind Roth conversion for me of a closed fund to a new Roth account. More recently, it told me that it would not do an in-kind conversion of a closed fund to a new Roth.
At the same time that TRP was telling me this, Fidelity was telling me sure, they could do the Roth conversion of TRP shares in-kind. I never tested this and have my doubts about whether TRP would allow them to open the new account.
IMHO, the key question is how strict the fund company is with respect to opening new accounts, regardless of where that new account will be opened. The TRP examples above show how this can go either way, and also that a fund company's flexibility can change over time.
Regarding @little5bee's transfer request: Let us know what happens. Filling out a transfer request form is different from actually getting the shares transferred.
I own legacy shares of a fund that over the years transformed into institutional class shares at Legg Mason. It now has a $1M (or higher?) min, not technically closed. Legg Mason has informed me that it will reject any transfer request from another institution (such as Schwab) unless I meet the $1M min in the receiving account. Yeah, sure. I'm hoping that the new fund distributor, Franklin Templeton, will be more flexible.