Executive Summary
ESI recently re-negotiated its clearing arrangement with National Financial Services (NFS) under which ticket costs on traditional brokerage accounts and its legacy advisory accounts were reduced.
Details
ESI is passing along savings to its representatives and clients for transactions occurring after May 15, 2021. In summary, ticket charges on mutual fund transactions have been reduced by $0.50 and tickets on equity transactions have been reduced by $1.00 for both representatives and clients. For clients, transactions fees are reflected on the attached “Client Brokerage Transaction and Service Fee Schedule”. For representatives, the fees are shown on the “Registered Representative and Investment Adviser Representative Brokerage Transaction and Service Fee Schedule”.
ESI must provide clients with prior notice of changes to fee schedules. The “Client Brokerage Transaction and Service Fee Schedule” will be sent to all existing clients with NFS brokerage accounts in the March 31st quarterly brokerage account statements.
For the period of April 1st through May 15th, both the old and the new fee schedules will be included as part of the Customer Agreement and Disclosure form, provided to clients as part of the account opening paperwork, to ensure that clients receive disclosure of current and upcoming account fees as required. After May 15th, the old fee schedule will be removed from the Customer Agreement and Disclosure form.
Important Note: This updated schedule also discloses the new fee for paper delivery of statements and confirmations, which was announced in Field Notice 2020-30. The fee for paper delivery will be implemented in the second quarter of 2021, with charges reflected on June 30, 2021 statements. This fee will be $5.00 per account per quarter, i.e., $20.00 per account per year.
NEW RESOURCE! As a reminder, clients can avoid this fee by enrolling in electronic delivery of paper materials (referred to as eDelivery by NFS) through Wealthscape Investor. To assist clients with enrollment, a short, instructional video is available on the ESI section of the National Life public site The direct link to the video is https://myonlinebrokeragecentral.com/app/home. NOTE THAT THIS IS A NEW VIDEO LINK.
We’ve also updated the miscellaneous brokerage fees to reflect increases in costs incurred by ESI, such as overnight charges, legal returns and non-DRS transfer and ship fees.
The new fee schedule will be included as part of the Customer Agreement and Disclosure form. The form will include both the old and new schedules from April 1st through May 15th, after which the old fee schedule will be removed.
QUESTIONS
If you have any questions about this requirement, please contact the ESI Brokerage and Advisory teams at 800-344-7437.
TC120179(0321)1