[Tiffany]

Is Fidelity still holding people’s money in their Cash Management accts?

I’ve just opened an account there but stumbled upon a reddit thread discussing that Fidelity had been locking people’s money and not letting them use it.

I certainly don’t want to put my entire amount of cash in there if this is still happening today.

[Suzanna]

Money was transferred on 1/6 and it still hadn’t settled. The rep told me it should settle on 1/29.

At which point I’ll be sending it right back to my bank because I can’t have them holding it interest free for this long.

[Rick]

It’s not as bad as described.
Fidelity makes it clear that holds are happening and external push ach helps reduce it.

So, we have some personal responsibility in how we chose to move money and the holds that may result.

This has happened at chase and regions banks and others in the past 6-9 months. And will happen at others as they deal with fraud which is unrelenting.

Sure avoid or manage best you can but this is not a fedelity issue but a banking structural issue. You can run and it can find you at another bank.

You can stay and it can persist for a while.

Lots of ways this plays out.

[Daniel]

What is the strategy behind putting money in fidelity for such short periods of time?

[Brian]

Yes. If you request an ACH from a bank Fidelity will hold your funds for 30-60 days.

I have an advisor there and had to get a senior manager involved to release the hold.

If you wire funds or push the funds from the bank (instead of pulling it using Fidelity) you won’t be subject to the hold.

[Ron]

You get to pick the fund where your money is held. Most people pick spaxx and fdrxx which are currently yielding 4%. You can take your money out at any time.

The only hold period that I know of is for cash transfers after a deposit.

Like all banks and brokerages, they do not let you transfer money out of an acct until the deposit clears.

Depending on the type of deposit it can take 3-days (typical minimum) to a week or more before the money can be transferred out of Fidelity to another institution.

[Amy]

Fidelity isn’t preventing anyone from accessing their money. New money transferred into Fidelity is available to trade immediately, as usual.

New money transferred into Fidelity is available to leave the account as soon as it has settled, as usual.

What changed is an increase in settlement time (up to 3 weeks) but only for ACH pull transfers into Fidelity accounts.

This is in response to a massive check fraud campaign that hit Fidelity, Chase and some other small banks in 2024.

The easy workaround is not to transfer money into your Fidelity account using ACH pull but to instead use ACH push by initiating the transfer at the sending bank.

This was always the better way to transfer money between two institutions.

Now there is just more incentive to use ACH push.

[Beat]

The issue is temporary and the hold is only if the transfer into the Fidelity account is initiated from the Fidelity side or with check deposits.

It’s not an issue if you initiate the transfer from the intuition sending the money.

[Melanie]

Yes, this is happening, be careful. I have referred several people not realizing they were holding funds for 16 days.

Even on kids accounts. I think if you have other assets in the account, it frees it up but it can be a huge inconvenience

[Steve]

I just left them end of December for this reason.
It was anything not direct deposit was held for 2-3 weeks.

[Jesse]

I have my bank account linked to Fidelity and haven’t had any issues.

[Janet]

If I transfer money from a linked account or deposit a check from a reoccurring account, I don’t have a problem.

I did have a 3 week hold on from a new check.
There’s been a lot of fraud recently

[Jen]

No issues. I pre did our taxes 1/14 and noticed a short payment and needed to transfer $6k quickly to catch the last estimated tax payment date 1/15.

By 3 PM 1/15 the money hit my bank account.

[Callie]

I use Fidelity and transfer from 2 other financial institutions. I haven’t had my money held yet.

Not sure if this is something that happens with new accounts but I haven’t experienced it and I transfer quite a bit.

[Lax]

Farud attempts are rampant and the accounts are flagged and dollars are held until research is completed.

Heard it on Clark podcast about this new (deposit/withdraw) scam and what banks and investment companies are doing now.

[Tushar]

Whenever I transfer any amount, it reset my available to withdraw balance to zero.

So, if I do it again every alternate week then I would never have any amount which I would be able to withdraw.

[Author]

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