Introducing Investments Move: A better way to transfer assets and grow AUM

Liam Plambeck
Product Manager, Personal Finance

Liam is building solutions that help people better manage their finances and share their complete financial picture.

Funding a new financial account should be a seamless process, where account information is verified instantly and transfers are initiated quickly. While moving cash balances can be straightforward, transferring investment holdings to a new account continues to be a cumbersome and manual process. Today, we’re announcing Investments Move, a new product to help change that.

Already used by fintech brokerages like Robinhood, Frec, and Public, Investments Move employs Plaid’s account linking experience that over 100M consumers are familiar with. It quickly captures the data needed to move investments from one account to another—without selling securities and incurring taxes. It can be used when opening a new brokerage account, transferring IRAs, or even switching to a new wealth manager. 

Investments Move streamlines the data collection process for the Automated Account Clearing and Transfer Service (ACATS), which is how US investments are moved without being converted to cash. 

Reducing manual processes and increasing conversion

ACATS currently requires users to manually enter information such as account numbers, institution details, account types, and more. For partial transfers, users also have to manually indicate positions and quantities. Just like manual bank account authentication was back in 2013, this process is ripe for automation.

Using Plaid to connect accounts and retrieve information for an ACATS transfer eliminates the need for manual data entry. Users no longer need to download brokerage statements and type information into a form. With Plaid, they can gather the required information to initiate the transfer in just a few clicks. 

Gather and verify data for an ACATS transfer via Plaid

Fixing incorrect data issues and reducing rejection rates

Based on conversations with our customers, 30-50% of ACATS transfers get rejected. This is largely because of the errors that come from manual data collection processes. Issues such as account name mismatch, account type mismatch (e.g., IRA vs brokerage), or account numbers not matching are common. Also, not all brokerages support the same kind of assets, so there can be unsupported holdings issues as well.

Better and faster data can reduce ACATS rejection rates. By providing source-of-truth data from brokerages on both sides of a transaction, Investments Move allows companies to take action to stop rejections before they happen. 

Decreasing support tickets

High rejection rates create more customer support inquiries and a high burden for support teams. With the decreased rejections due to Investments Move, customers are spending fewer operational hours processing transfer errors and resolving support tickets. 

Increasing assets under management

The reduced rejection rate means more account transfers are completed successfully. This higher success rate leads to more assets under management (AUM) over time as more new customers successfully fund their accounts. 

Streamlining ACATS submissions with broker-sourced data

Investments Move retrieves data from the highest quality source: the brokerages themselves. That means when a user wants to transfer funds to their new brokerage account, we ensure that you have the most complete and accurate data for initiating an ACATS transfer—while minimizing manual steps in this process. 

Creating a comprehensive account opening experience

Account funding for new brokerage accounts involves two separate processes: adding cash and adding existing investment holdings. Rather than creating two separate account funding experiences, Investments Move enables companies to give customers the same superior experience for both through Plaid Link. 

Modernize your investments onboarding flow

For more information, read our API docs. To get started today, look for Investments Move in your Plaid dashboard, or contact our sales team or your current account manager and ask about integrating Investments Move.