Hacker News Reader

Charging to close an account? Is that even legal?

It is in the US for brokerages. Many are at $150 to close the account, and they’ll debit your balance if you transfer assets out, thereby creating a negative cash balance at your new brokerage if you didn’t have enough cash to cover it.

thereby creating a negative cash balance at your new brokerage if you didn’t have enough cash to cover it

Do brokerages really agree to "buy a loan" like that?

Basically, yes. I’d have to check the ACAT standard , as I don’t know if it’s baked into the spec or a different agreement.

Keep in mind that there are typically thousands of dollars of assets coming over as well, so you only need to sell a tiny bit to cover the negative cash balance.

Also, I’ve never seen an account move over that had a total value of less than the closing fee, so I don’t know what happens in that case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com