Wells Fargo PMA: lower-cost stock trades

Minimum combined balances (including 10% of mortgage balance) $25K to qualify for a Portfolio Management Account (PMA). Not bad, especially at the $100K threshhold.

Among those who might like the Wells Fargo PMA are folks who have a 401k with a former employer's plan and various IRAs and brokerage accounts. Wells Fargo's combination of low brokerage commissions, waived maintenance and service fees, preferred loan pricing, and better-than-standard FDIC-insured deposit rates for PMA clients is attractive.

Talking to a Wells Fargo agent, I learned that some "promotional" CD rates offered to PMA clients aren't advertised online. Also, the PMA checking account, with balances of $5000+, pays a 1.93% interest rate. While not as high as some Internet-only banks like BofI, FIBI or PC Banker, 1.93% interest on FDIC insured checking is much healthier than nearly all B&M banks or credit unions.

Technically speaking, most of us could shop around and find slightly better deals on many of the Wells Fargo investment, loan and savings products. However, from further investigation I realize that Wells Fargo offers much better deals to their PMA clients than to the general public, and the "opportunity cost" of having multiple statements from multiple service providers might outweigh the minor pricing benefits of having separate accounts.

Obviously, if you can gather $100k or more of assets under the PMA umbrella, you get even better unbeatable value from WellsTrade with $2.95 trades.

Can anyone identify possible drawbacks of the Wells Fargo PMA?

Mikedizzle wrote: I just upgraded to PMA and I'm thinking about bringing my Ameritrade and Scottrade accounts over too so I can break the $100k barrier. I also upgraded to PMA and am similarly migrating more of my assets to Wells. I had been very skeptical about whether it would be a worthwhile move, but I've been very pleased by Portfolio account services. My initial experiences have been very good, the WellsTrade interface is somewhat different than Scottrade but I'm quietly impressed.

In additon to very competitive trade commissions, WellsTrade offers a far better selection of brokered CDs than Scottrade or Ameritrade - i.e. today I bought a 9-month CD (from a third-party FDIC-insured bank) at 3.8% APY.

tylr said: I just opened a PMA, have a few questions if you don't mind.
1. Do you have to call to get information on what's available with brokered CDs? Or is there a place on the website that listed them?
2. Is there a way to transfer money directly from an external bank to your brokerage account? I explored the site but found that you could only transfer money from internal deposit account only. Not a big problem but cutting out an extra step would be nice since with Ameritrade there is a direct link to external banks.
3. The investment CSR stated that WF reinvests stock dividends even at partial shares at no charge and they will not count as one of the 50 annual transactions. Find this abit surprising since Ameritrade only selectively reinvest dividends for only certain issues and at whole share only. Anyone has this done and can verify that this is correct?

Overall, good experience..can't beat those commission rates especially for mutual funds. The transfer was faster than expected, abit under a week. No transfer fee on either end. Only watch-out is that if you do trading, there's not alot of services (ie. streamers, levelII quotes etc.) available that I can find for free or otherwise, correct me if I miss something here? So it's good to have a MB or IB account in addition to this account.
For #2, I was told that WF bank does not allow links to external banks. You can go through an intermediary such as ING, MetLife, ED, etc by linking the intermediary with WF Bank and the other bank you are trying to link with. A little extra step like you said. Not sure if the brokerage side (WellsTrade) allows external links but I'll try to find out.

Be great if #3 is true.

May I ask what you transferred and from where? Wells Fargo Advantage Funds (the MF only side) wanted $25 to transfer an IRA from them over to WellsTrade which I find ridiculous as they are all WF. I was told that they use different IRA custodians and are pretty much separate entities. I opened the PMA yesterday and my personal banker told me they started a new promotion and will give me a $10 Amazon GC for opening up the account. Nice surprise. He also mentioned that they are having a $10k giveaway drawing which you automatically get entered in by doing stuff like viewing your account on-line, using billpay, etc. Since the promo was new, he didn't have all the info so YMMV.

The PMA account seems pretty nice so far. Hard to beat getting free checks (they will send you more checks for free once you've used up first box) for life of the account even though I don't write many checks anymore. You also have the option of getting your checks sent back to you w/o fees.

I am not too thrilled about their web interface for trading though as you have to remember your available cash while placing trades since the trading sceen does not show it. But for the price of the commissions, I am willing to put up with it.

Update on ability to do external transfers: You can add any external account that accepts ACH transfers to your Wells Trade account by requesting deposit on demand (or something like that) forms from them to provide them with the routing #s and account #s of your external accounts. However, you will then need to request transfers over the phone or with paperwork as their site currently does not allow it to be done online.

BTW, I just noticed that you can get your cash balance while in the trading page by clicking on the quick tab for balances. I've made a request for them to improve their site as well as to look into adding advance trading options such as bracketed trades.

Hi Fellas,

I also signed up for a PMA account (a month or so ago) and transferred assets from BrownCo and Harrisdirect as they are being acquired by E*trade, I'm looking forward to the free trades in both a brokerage and IRA account (50 per year per account).

My question -- did you sign up for a WF credit card product? Which one did they put you in? The Platinum or the Signature Visa? I'm told you can't get the "Enhanced Reward" program (annual fee waived for PMA) with the Signature card, only the Prime Rewards which you must pay a $70 annual fee for.

Buddy

i like my new platinum wells fargo atm card =)