Intuitive Investor® Account FAQs

In short, Intuitive Investor accounts offer low-cost, online investing with personalized service and professional advice. Based on your answers to our short questionnaire, we’ll recommend a well-balanced portfolio of cost-effective funds that can meet your personal investment objective, time horizon, and risk tolerance.

We’ll take it from there — monitoring your portfolio daily, rebalancing when the portfolio veers from its target asset allocation, and reinvesting any dividends to keep your money working for you. And when you have questions about your investments, our Financial Advisors are available by phone to help. For eligible accounts, you can choose to use our Tax Loss Harvesting (TLH) service (at no additional charge) that identifies potential investment changes in an effort to lower your tax bill (when applicable).¹

Intuitive Investor accounts aren’t charged commission, transaction, or trading fees. Instead, you pay an annual advisory fee of 0.35% on the account balance, divided into a fee that is charged quarterly. Customers who link an Intuitive Investor account to a Wells Fargo Bank Portfolio by Wells Fargo® program receive a discounted advisory fee on the Intuitive Investor account of 0.30%.²

There are also management fees and other expenses associated with the funds in your portfolio (as explained in each fund’s prospectus in the fees and expense section).

View the full Intuitive Investor account fee schedule (PDF).

Open an Intuitive Investor account in a few steps:

1. Answer 8 easy questions about your investment goal, time frame, and risk tolerance.
2. View your recommended investment portfolio right away.
3. Open an account online. Choose from these brokerage account types: Individual, joint, trust, custodial (UGMA/UTMA), Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, SEP IRA, or Inherited IRA (Roth or Traditional).
4. Sign your account documents, and then add at least $5,000 to your account.

And we take it from there. Our intelligent technology invests, monitors, and rebalances your portfolio — all while keeping you updated and informed along the way.

We offer Intuitive Investor portfolios for these brokerage account types:

• Individual account
• Joint account
• Trust account
• Custodial (UGMA/UTMA) account
• Traditional IRA
• Roth IRA
• SEP IRA
• Inherited Traditional IRA
• Inherited Roth IRA

Looking for a different account type? To explore other account options, call 1-866-224-5708, Monday – Friday, 8:30 am – 9:30 pm ET.

Your Intuitive Investor account’s Brokerage Cash Services feature enables you to conveniently transfer money and make deposits, which we then invest into your Intuitive Investor portfolio. For example, you can: Transfer money between your Wells Fargo accounts. Make teller deposits at any Wells Fargo Bank branch.* Deposit checks with your smartphone through Wells Fargo Mobile® deposit. Send and receive money with Zelle® transfer service. Add cash directly through automated clearing house (ACH) or wire transactions. Your Intuitive Investor account will display as “Intuitive Investor Cash” within Wells Fargo Transfer & Pay and Wells Fargo Mobile deposit. *Teller deposits are processed through an associated limited-purpose Wells Fargo Bank account in your name, which is automatically opened upon establishment of your Intuitive Investor account (at no additional charge).

Your recommended portfolio will be comprised of 7 – 11 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), carefully selected to meet your recommended asset allocation and intended portfolio objective.

In addition to traditional low-cost ETFs that seek to track market-weighted indexes, we also offer ETFs that are designed to track the performance of alternatively weighted indexes, such as equally weighted, fundamentally weighted, and volatility-weighted indexes, in an effort to achieve higher returns and better long-term diversification. Our industry-leading team of research analysts and market strategists at Wells Fargo Investment Institute select, monitor, and make all necessary changes to the selection of ETFs offered through Intuitive Investor portfolios. You’ll be able to review the individual funds in your portfolio before opening an account, and download their prospectuses. And if you have questions, call a Financial Advisor at 1-855-360-4407 (Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm ET).

Yes. After completing the short questionnaire, you can view an online breakdown of asset classes and individual funds that are in your recommended portfolio. If you have specific questions about the individual funds in your recommended portfolio, call a Financial Advisor at 1-855-360-4407 (Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm ET).

A $5,000 initial investment is required to open an Intuitive Investor account. And you have 180 days to meet the $5,000 minimum. You may begin the account set-up process with less, but any cash or transferred securities won’t be invested until your balance reaches $5,000.

It’s simple to request a one-time withdrawal or set up recurring withdrawals. After signing on to your Intuitive Investor account, select Withdraw Funds from the “I would like to” dropdown menu. Then follow the instructions to request your withdrawal.

Note: If the withdrawal amount would bring your balance below $500, we will liquidate all holdings and the entire balance will be available in cash.

To select a portfolio for your investment needs, we’ll guide you through a short set of questions designed to help us understand your investing goal, measure your comfort with risk, and determine your investment time frame. Using your responses, we’ll suggest a portfolio that we believe matches your investment objective, risk tolerance, and time horizon.

Call us at 1-855-283-5565, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – midnight ET.

If you’re not satisfied with your Intuitive Investor account, you can activate the satisfaction guarantee within 90 days of your portfolio being invested. We’ll refund all advisory fees paid during this period, and we’ll also waive any outgoing account transfer and IRA termination fees. Please note that this guarantee does not protect you against market losses. Call 1-855-283-5567 for more information.

If your balance falls below $4,000, whether through market declines or withdrawals, we will suspend trading activity (except for client-requested withdrawals) until your balance is at least $4,000.

The $4,000 minimum helps ensure we’re able to keep your portfolio balanced, diversified, and properly invested across multiple asset classes. For example, if your balance falls below $4,000, there aren’t enough funds available to invest the correct percentage in your portfolio’s various asset classes. And that would create a situation where we can’t keep your portfolio balanced and aligned to your investment goal, time frame, and risk tolerance.

Ongoing, if your balance remains below $4,000 for 30 days after the end of the calendar quarter, we will remove your account’s advisory features and convert it into a WellsTrade® self-directed brokerage account (in accordance with your Intuitive Investor account terms). View a list of brokerage fees that apply to WellsTrade accounts.

If you’re considering closing your account, you have 2 options:

1. Convert your Intuitive Investor portfolio into a self-directed WellsTrade brokerage account. Your account would no longer incur the Intuitive Investor account annual advisory fee, but it would be subject to the WellsTrade account brokerage fees. And we do not charge a conversion fee.
2. Close the account completely and instruct Wells Fargo Advisors to either sell your holdings or transfer them into a different brokerage account. This option could incur a $95 fee for processing an outgoing account transfer.

To discuss account-closing options, call us at 1-855-360-4407, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm ET.

We monitor your portfolio daily, rebalancing as often as needed to maintain your portfolio’s target asset allocation within prescribed thresholds.

All rebalancing activity is included in your annual advisory fee of 0.35%.² If your account balance drops below the minimum balance threshold or has another administrative issue not addressed within the required time frame, rebalancing will stop, and we will remove the advisory features of your Intuitive Investor account and convert it into a self-directed brokerage account (in accordance with the terms of your Intuitive Investor account). Learn more about what happens if your account falls below the minimum balance in the General Questions section of the Intuitive Investor Account FAQs.

If you fund your Intuitive Investor account with an existing brokerage account, we’ll evaluate your current holdings (selling any that do not align with your Intuitive Investor account objective) as we invest your recommended portfolio.

For example, if you already hold a fund that matches a fund we may otherwise purchase within your portfolio, we will retain some or all of your existing shares of that fund to fulfill the relevant portion of your asset allocation. For more information about this process, call 1-855-283-5567, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET.

The Intuitive Investor portfolios are designed to seek the highest possible returns in relation to the portfolio’s risk level, and strive to meet that goal by efficiently diversifying across many asset classes. Properly diversified portfolios are built to help withstand market fluctuations by including various types of investments with varying degrees of risk. But keep in mind that diversification cannot eliminate the risk of fluctuating prices and uncertain returns.

The team of research analysts and market strategists at Wells Fargo Investment Institute work together to design the Intuitive Investor portfolios. They consider historical risk, return, and correlation information to combine asset classes in proportions that target the highest return potential at different levels of risk. Based on these prescribed allocations, the research and strategy teams seek cost-effective funds to best fulfill the asset allocation targets and intended portfolio objectives.

Your questionnaire answers provide insight into your investment objective, time horizon, and risk tolerance, all of which factor into the portfolio we recommend for you. For example, even if you indicate a willingness to take on a lot of risk, your stated investment objective or time frame may cause us to recommend a portfolio with a lower level of risk as we evaluate your responses holistically.

Portfolio changes are to be expected as your financial situation and investment time frame change. To help ensure your investments continue meeting your needs, you can retake our investment questionnaire to get an updated recommendation whenever your situation changes. Note: If your account balance falls below $4,000, whether through market declines or withdrawals, you will not be able to retake the questionnaire until you increase your balance to at least $4,000.

Keep in mind that some portfolio changes will require rebalancing, which may result in tax consequences for taxable brokerage accounts.¹ Because Intuitive Investor portfolios are designed as long-term investments, frequent changes can negatively affect your portfolio’s performance. If you’d like to discuss your account, call our Financial Advisors at 1-855-360-4407, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 8:00 pm ET.

Any dividends or other distributions from the funds in your account will accumulate as part of your portfolio’s cash allocation until we purchase additional shares for you.

Since we last rebalanced your portfolio, your current holdings may have shifted slightly away from your target asset allocation. We monitor your account daily, allowing allocations within your portfolio to drift within pre-determined, risk-based ranges to help limit the potential for ineffective or unnecessary trading. Also, any ETFs in your portfolio cannot be purchased in partial shares, so the share price of individual ETFs will affect how closely your portfolio can be allocated to the target percentages.

Online security is a top priority for Wells Fargo. Because threats are ever-changing, Wells Fargo is proactively advancing our security to help protect your financial information with evolving technology and committed support. Find our procedures for identifying you online, protecting your data, and protecting against unauthorized transactions at our Fraud Information Center.

Only you can add or withdraw funds from your account, or request Wells Fargo Advisors to do so on your behalf. The one exception is the annual advisory fee of 0.35%, which is divided into a quarterly amount and subtracted from the cash portion of your account.²

Protecting our clients’ privacy is a top priority for Wells Fargo. View details about our privacy policies.

Call us at 1-855-283-5565, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET.

You have several choices for making your account-opening investment:

• Transfer or wire cash from any Wells Fargo or external checking or savings account.
• Transfer assets from an existing investment account (individual, joint, trust, custodial, 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, Inherited Traditional IRA, Inherited Roth IRA).
• Combine funds from these different accounts to reach $5,000.

We’re ready to help you with this process. Call 1-855-283-5567, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET.

Yes. Complete the online account-opening process using only one of your investment accounts. Then, to add funds from your other internal or external brokerage accounts, call 1-855-283-5567, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET.

Yes, you may directly roll over a 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), or other qualified retirement plan to fund your Intuitive Investor IRA. Note: You may directly roll over an inherited qualified retirement plan into your new Intuitive Investor Inherited IRA. But if you’ve already received a lump-sum distribution as the beneficiary, you may not use these funds to contribute to an Inherited IRA.

If we don’t support your existing account type, you may fund your Intuitive Investor account by transferring or wiring cash from any checking or savings account.

You can also call 1-855-283-5567 to discuss your funding options (Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET).

When transferring a taxable brokerage or investment account, any holdings that do not match the funds used in our portfolios will be liquidated and reinvested according to your recommended allocation. Liquidating your assets could trigger short- and long-term gains or losses that could affect your taxes. Consult your tax advisor with specific questions.¹

While we cannot transfer and hold the security in an Intuitive Investor account, you can choose to only transfer a portion of your taxable account to your new Intuitive Investor account. You may then transfer the remaining balance once you’ve determined the gain will be considered long-term. Consult your tax advisor with specific questions.¹

To initiate a partial-account transfer, call 1-855-283-5567, Monday – Friday, 8:00 am – 9:30 pm ET

TLH is offered within eligible Intuitive Investor accounts, at no additional charge. This optional service looks to strategically offset a portion of your realized capital gains by selling investments for a loss — potentially reducing your taxes. This process allows us to “harvest” the loss for you by selling a declining fund and then purchasing a replacement fund to keep your asset allocation on track. If you have no capital gains to offset, or if your losses outweigh your gains, you can also reduce your ordinary income (up to $3,000 per year) by claiming harvested losses on your tax return, potentially lowering your tax obligation.

If you turn on TLH, it will be applied to all of your eligible Intuitive Investor accounts. Wells Fargo Advisors cannot assume responsibility for any accounts that are not Intuitive Investor accounts — whether held elsewhere or within Wells Fargo Advisors.

While no one wants their investments to lose value, in a diversified portfolio some asset classes may increase in value while others fall. It is these offsetting gains and losses that balance your portfolio’s exposure to risk. By selectively selling funds that have declined, we attempt to offset any taxable gains with realized losses, all while maintaining your portfolio’s asset allocation and risk level.

TLH is available for individual and joint accounts. The service is not available for IRAs, trust accounts, or custodial accounts.

We offer our TLH service to Intuitive Investor account customers at no additional charge.

After signing on to your Intuitive Investor account, you can learn more about TLH and access TLH services by selecting Manage Settings from the “I would like to” dropdown menu. Once you confirm your selection, we’ll start looking for TLH opportunities or stop harvesting losses in all of your eligible Intuitive Investor accounts right away.

We look for opportunities to harvest losses every day the markets are open, as defined by our TLH methodology. To minimize excessive trading and churn, we only sell when the loss is at least 1% and over $500.

If we sell one of your investments for a loss, we replace it with a different investment that seeks to maintain your recommended asset allocation.

The upside to TLH is that you can claim harvested losses on your tax return, either offsetting realized capital gains or lowering your ordinary income by up to $3,000 for the tax year. And while our TLH service seeks to optimize your tax efficiencies within your Intuitive Investor account(s), be sure to consult your tax advisor to understand how TLH could affect your broader tax picture.

The potential downside of TLH is that you’re effectively deferring your taxes into the future, so when you finally liquidate your portfolio, you may face a higher tax bill than a traditional buy-and-hold strategy if capital gains tax rates increase.

Intuitive Investor accounts aren’t charged commission, transaction, or trading fees, and all TLH trading activity is included in the 0.35% Intuitive Investor account advisory fee.²