What is an ACATS transfer?

An Automated Customer Account Transfer (ACAT) is used to transfer securities between brokerage accounts held at different brokerage firms. These transfers are automated by a system called the Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (ACATS).

An ACAT is initiated when a customer submits a transfer request to a brokerage firm they want to transfer securities to (also known as the ‘receiving firm’). Once the instructions are submitted, the receiving firm will communicate with the firm the assets will be transferred from (also known as the ‘delivering firm’) through the ACATS system. Once the delivering firm receives the instructions, they begin the transfer process.

The delivering firm will review the instructions and can reject the transfer for a variety of reasons such as the information on the transfer request does not match or is incorrect or the transfer will create a credit violation (transferring assets would create a margin call). If the delivering firm finds no issues with the instructions, they are required to promptly transfer the securities to the receiving firm.

Not all brokerage firms participate in the ACATS system. If the brokerage firm where you wish to transfer from does not support ACATs, please contact help@frec.com for more information.

Prior to transferring securities from your external brokerage account into Frec, you will need to connect an external brokerage account to your Frec account. You can do this in two ways, with Plaid or manually. See instructions on both ways to connect below.