I inherited professional management accounts at Fido when my dad died. I left it as is for about 6 months while I figured out how the market stuff worked and my asset allocation, etc...
I called up Fido and told them I wanted to self manage my accounts. They walked me through the procedure, which was basically:
1. Open new accounts for self-management (because the PAS accounts are coded differently) that corresponded to the types I had under management. So 1 taxable account, 1 IRA account, etc...
2. Because some of the mutual funds in the current managed accounts were exclusive to professional management (Strategic Advisors exclusives), they had to sell those off and turned into cash. Any other mutual funds that were available otherwise were left as is per my instructions (I wanted to handle the bulk of the sell-off myself).
3. Once funds were settled from sell off, they transferred the cash and remaining funds to the matching self-managed accounts. Then they closed the professionally managed accounts.
4. As soon as the transfers were completed, I initiated my own sells and buys to match up with the asset allocation I'd decided on.
That was it. Didn't seem to take much time either. Pretty simple in the end, and I had to fiddle with how my accounts displayed in the online formats, and of course if I needed to go get paperwork from the old accounts, it involved a few more steps, but I figured it out pretty fast, and in the event I didn't feel like noodling around, I could always call them up and tell them what I wanted, and they would either teach me how to do it myself, or do it for me.
Quick note: You get a dedicated adviser if you have enough invested without it costing you anything in management fees (I believe it's 250K and up). They are salary, they do not try to sell you on stuff if you don't want it, and are just there so you have someone that checks in with you periodically and always know that person is the one you can reach easily. But you don't have to deal with them if you don't want to; you can request someone else, but you'll always have an assigned person as your point guy/gal after you hit 250K or up and they'll expedite your call/issues once you reach that level of funds.
You can still call the regular number and speak to any Fido rep and they'll do what they can depending on their level/ability. If it's something the regular guys can't handle, they'll transfer you to someone that can (which may be the assigned rep, may be someone that is supervisor on duty at that time, whatever).
Everyone is going to be very nice, tend to be low pressure and super polite. Fido prides itself on stellar customer service.
When I told my rep I wanted to self manage and invest in index funds, he was encouraging and said he thought it was great I did so much research and learned how to do this stuff on my own. Basically Fido wanted to do whatever it took to make me happy so they were okay with me taking over even if it meant a loss of that fee, because my accounts still bring in a few bucks and there's always the chance I'll want to go back to managed accounts someday... they play the long game. ;)
