Does Fidelity close your account if you move back to Canada?

[LJBill]

OttawaSenators wrote:
> Thanks for sharing your experience! I'm assuming when you cash the IRA,
> they'll send you a check to your Canadian address because they don't do
> international ACH or wire transfer.

Several years on from this previous post. I am a Canadian resident (PR) US citizen. I have an IRA and Roth at Fidelity, set up years before moving to Canada. I was told several times by Fidelity that they could make my IRA distribution, exchange to CAD$, and wire to my Canadian bank. Well, when it came time to do so a couple months back they suddenly couldn't do it. They started the process but realized the next day that they couldn't wire the funds out of the particular cash account. I believe they were trying to wire directly from a cash account inside the IRA, and due to the restrictions on taxable accounts I couldn't have a non-IRA money market fund. And I had clarified this process with them several times in the preceding months. So the distribution was made to my US bank and I used Wise forex for the exchange and wire. (In fact, being able to exchange and wire to Canada was the deciding factor in transferring our Vanguard IRA accounts to Fidelity last year; Vanguard could not do this ...well, neither can Fidelity.)

And actually this worked to my benefit. The forex rate + expenses that Fidelity wanted to charge was around 2% more than using Wise.

I suppose Fidelity might mail a cheque; I have no idea about that.

[steveh2]

For what it's worth my mother has a Roth IRA at Fidelity. She uses RBC Bank (US) and Royal Bank (Canada). The fidelity Roth account is linked to her RBC Bank (US). She transfers $ from Fidelity Roth to RBC Bank, then cross border transfers it to her Royal Bank (Canada) $US account. She can then exchange it inside Royal Bank (Canada) between her $US account and her $Cda account. There are no transfer costs associated with this, only exchange rate conversion "fees".
No taxes are withheld at Fidelity since none are payable on her Roth distributions.
It is very simple to use this set up. She is 89 and does it herself.
I believe an earlier post referenced RBC as well.
Other banks my have similar arrangements available.