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I need to consolidate my financial assets over $1M (mainly brokerage account and retirement account). Who offers the best promotional incentives (for e.g. cash bonus, gifts, special access to securities such as IPOs, etc.) for asset consolidation? I was looking at Schwab, Fidelity, etc. but would like to get a comprehensive perspective. Thanks
Hi there! Thanks for asking for a comparison of promotional incentives for asset consolidation. The most useful sources I found to answer your question are the March 2017 Best Brokerage Bonuses table from Hustler Money Blog and the individual websites of each company. The short answer is that I have created the attached spreadsheet with detailed information on promotional incentives across six companies. A deep dive of my methodology and discussion of my findings is presented below.
METHODOLOGY
After researching across trusted media sites, user forums and review sites, as well as corporate websites, I found that only two of your six firms for examination offer promotional incentives: Schwab and Fidelity. The remaining four - WellsFargo, Morgan Stanley, First Republic, and Vanguard - do not advertise or offer promotional incentives.
Given these initial findings, I used Hustler Money Blog's Best Brokerage Bonuses table to identify four additional companies for examination: Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, Banc West, and E*TRADE.
I then further researched all six identified companies for comparison in order to create the attached spreadsheet, which lists available bonuses, bonus offer expirations, cost of trades, contact numbers, and source links for each company.
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS
Which promotional incentive is the best option for you might come down to whether you are planning to consolidate your assets into a single account or whether you will still need to maintain multiple accounts at the brokerage firm.
If you are planning to consolidate all of your assets into a single account, you have a lot of options to choose from, as five of the six companies included in the attached spreadsheet offer a $2,500 cash bonus for deposits of $1 million+ into a single account. Schwab is the only firm which offers a bonus lower than this amount, but as you noted, Schwab might be willing to match these higher bonuses.
However, if you will still need to maintain separate accounts after consolidation, Fidelity appears to be the only firm with an offer that extends to deposits across multiple accounts. If you are learning towards working with Schwab, it would be worth talking with them directly to see if they will match the full terms of Fidelity's offer.
Both Schwab and Fidelity offer the same pricing for trades, which is also the lowest cost per trade across all examined companies. As such, Fidelity's offer seems to be the strongest, with a $2,500 cash bonus compared to Schwab's $500 bonus, and the ability to receive the cash bonus when distributing your assets into multiple accounts.
However, if you will be depositing into a single account and intend to do at least 30 trades per quarter, E*TRADE is worth considering. E*TRADE's promotional incentive includes the seemingly standard $2,500 cash bonus, as well as 500 commission-free trades in the first 60 days. After that, you will achieve per-trade costs as low as those offered by both Schwab and Fidelity once you make at least 30 trades per quarter (with higher pricing for the first 29 trades). Note that Fidelity's pricing for options is the least expensive amongst all six companies examined, but only after you make at least 30 trades.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, promotional incentives for six companies have been presented in the attached spreadsheet. Further analysis indicates that Fidelity's offer is the strongest overall, but given that Schwab might be willing to match that offer, both companies are strong contenders. If you intend to do high-volume options trading, E*TRADE is worth a closer look.
I hope this helps! Thanks for asking Wonder. Please let us know if we can help with anything else!