IRA Exchange. One transfer rail for retirement accounts.
Custodian-to-custodian transfers, plan-to-IRA rollovers, and force-out placement move on one governed rail. Every leg carries its own directive, state machine, and evidence record, so the receiving institution can prove what arrived, from whom, and under whose instruction.
What moves on the rail
Four transfer families, one set of records.
Custodian to custodian
A direct trustee-to-trustee transfer between institutions. Not a distribution, not a rollover, and not a taxable event.
Plan to IRA
Direct rollovers out of a qualified plan into a receiving retirement account, with the rollover notice and withholding treatment recorded.
Force-out placement
Small vested balances distributed on separation, placed into an automatic-rollover IRA under the plan’s own procedure.
In-kind asset transfer
Alternative and unique assets re-registered to the receiving custodian, coordinated with custody rather than liquidated.
What the rail guarantees
The properties every transfer shares, whichever family it belongs to.
A directive per leg
Each leg is an instruction with its own state machine, so a transfer that stalls has a state and an owner rather than an open ticket.
Evidence at every step
Requested, accepted, assets identified, delivered, received, reconciled — each with an actor, a timestamp, and a document.
Tax character preserved
Pre-tax, Roth, and after-tax basis travel with the money, and the Roth five-year clock travels with it.
Legacy identity retained
The delivering institution’s own account identifier is kept alongside the new one, so a record can always be referred back.
A transfer rail, not a securities exchange
The word means interoperability between institutions.
IRA Exchange is a transfer and portability utility for retirement accounts. A8 Core™ is not a broker-dealer, not a securities exchange, not an alternative trading system, and not an investment adviser. Nothing on this rail matches buyers with sellers, quotes a price, or executes a trade. It moves an account, or the assets inside one, from one institution to another under instructions the account owner has given.
Not a fund exchange, and not a rollover you carry yourself
Three movements the word “exchange” gets attached to, and where each one actually lives.
Fund exchange or rebalance
Moving between funds inside one IRA at one provider is an instruction within an account, not a transfer between institutions. It is not reportable and generates no tax form. On A8 Core™ it is an account-core instruction, not a rail transfer.
The 60-day rollover — what the rail is designed to avoid
When funds are paid to the owner, they must be redeposited within 60 days; only one indirect IRA-to-IRA rollover is allowed per 12 months across all of a person’s IRAs; an eligible rollover distribution paid to a plan participant carries mandatory 20% withholding; a missed deadline makes the amount taxable, with the 10% additional tax before age 59½. Every leg on the rail is direct, so none of this applies to it.
Roth conversion
A conversion deliberately changes tax character and is taxable and reportable. It is an account-core instruction, not a transfer family. The rail can sequence a transfer and then a conversion — two instructions, two records.
Recharacterization and in-kind distributions
Recharacterizing a contribution remains available; recharacterizing a conversion ended for tax years after 2017. An in-kind distribution — property taken out of the account — is a distribution, not a transfer, and is reported as one.
Nothing on this page is tax advice. Institutions rely on the current IRS instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498, IRS Publication 590-A, and their own counsel.
Where the receiving institution’s duty begins
Acceptance is a decision, and it is recorded as one.
Acceptance due diligence
Whether the delivering arrangement is what it says it is, recorded before assets are accepted rather than reconstructed afterwards.
Asset eligibility
An incoming asset is tested against the receiving account type and the institution’s own authority before it is credited.
Like-to-like eligibility
Traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE money moves to a Traditional IRA (SIMPLE only after its two-year period); Roth to Roth; pre-tax and designated-Roth plan money to the matching IRA types. An inherited IRA moves only by trustee-to-trustee transfer with its beneficiary titling preserved — a non-spouse beneficiary cannot use a 60-day rollover. After-tax basis travels with the Form 8606 record.
Identity and instruction
Who gave the instruction, in what capacity, and under what authority — the same question the Investor Passport answers everywhere else.
The transfers that do not arrive
The operational problem the rail exists to solve.
Why transfers take weeks today. ACATS automates account transfers between NSCC-member broker-dealers and banks. Many retirement custodians, trust companies, and self-directed IRA administrators are not members, so their transfers still move by transfer-of-assets form, letter of acceptance, medallion signature guarantee, and check — and a transfer with no reply has no state. That is the gap a directive per leg is designed to close.
Unresponsive counterparties
A transfer with no reply is a state, with an age and an escalation path, not a folder someone remembers to check.
Missing account holders
Force-out placement and lost-participant search are the same problem seen from two sides, and both need a documented, escalating series of steps.
Partial and in-kind arrivals
Cash lands, the asset does not, and the two legs reconcile weeks apart. Each leg carries its own state so the gap is visible.
Character disputes
When the delivering institution’s basis and the receiving institution’s differ, the discrepancy is an exception with an owner.
The records behind the forms
What each movement produces, so the reporting is a consequence of the record rather than a reconstruction.
| Movement | Forms, under current IRS instructions | Taxable? |
|---|---|---|
| Direct trustee-to-trustee transfer | No Form 1099-R from the delivering custodian; not reported as a rollover contribution on Form 5498. | No |
| Direct rollover from a plan | Form 1099-R from the plan with the direct-rollover code; Form 5498 rollover contribution at the receiving IRA. | No, when direct |
| Indirect (60-day) rollover | Form 1099-R with withholding from the distributing institution; Form 5498 rollover contribution if redeposited in time. | Not if completed in 60 days |
| Roth conversion | Form 1099-R from the distributing side; Form 5498 conversion amount at the Roth IRA. | Yes |
| Force-out placement | Direct-rollover Form 1099-R from the plan; Form 5498 at the automatic-rollover IRA. | No |
| In-kind transfer | Reported as the family it belongs to; fair market value on Form 5498 for hard-to-value assets. | Same as its family |
Codes and boxes follow the current IRS instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498; the rail carries the character and basis that populate them. See tax data and reporting and Form 5498 & hard-to-value assets.
How it fits the rest of the platform
The rail is a capability of the account operating system, not a separate product.
Accounts
Account core holds the receiving account and its statutory constraints.
Custody
Custody command fabric re-registers the asset at the receiving institution.
Ledger
Every leg posts through the immutable ledger; correction is reversal and re-post.
Tax
Tax data and reporting carries the character and the basis forward.
Integrations
Integration Exchange governs the partner connections the rail runs over.
Migration
Migration factory handles the book-level equivalent: an entire portfolio, once.
Related capabilities. Transfers of assets is the general asset-transfer capability; IRA Exchange is the retirement-account rail built on it. Withholding carries the 20% rule on eligible rollover distributions. The SDIRA compliance center applies the account-type constraints an incoming asset is tested against.
Controls and measures the rail is specified to carry
A transfer is an authorized instruction first and a movement second. The specification names the controls on the instruction and the two numbers every receiving institution is designed to see.
New-destination approval
A delivery to a counterparty or account the owner has never used requires approval regardless of amount, with an optional cooling period before first use. Instructions to known destinations run under the owner’s thresholds.
Count caps beside value caps
Rolling-window limits on the number of instructions sit beside the value thresholds, so a stream of small transfers cannot do what one large one may not.
Per-instruction signature
Each instruction carries the signature of the party that gave it, captured in the decision record with the policy result, so the evidence answers who instructed what, and under which grant. See the Investor Passport.
Idempotent instructions
Every submission carries an idempotency key. A retried transfer is the same transfer, never a second one.
In-kind alternative assets
Re-registration checklists per asset type — private placements, notes, real property, LLC interests — so an in-kind transfer moves the paper the issuer or registrar needs, not a generic form.
Delivering-side status
The delivering institution is designed to see the same timeline the receiving one does: what was requested, what is outstanding, and what arrived.
The two measures. The rail is specified to report, per institution and per transfer family, median days to complete and the not-in-good-order rate. A8 Core™ publishes no figures for either today; they are defined here so that when they are measured, they are measured the same way everywhere.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers, with the status stated.
Is an IRA transfer taxable?
Not when it is direct. A trustee-to-trustee transfer between institutions is not a distribution and not a rollover; it produces no Form 1099-R from the delivering custodian and is not reported as a rollover contribution.
What is the difference between a transfer and a rollover?
A transfer moves the account directly between institutions. A rollover involves a distribution — direct, from a plan to an IRA, or indirect, paid to the owner with 60 days to redeposit and one indirect IRA-to-IRA rollover allowed per 12 months. The rail carries transfers and direct rollovers.
Is IRA Exchange the same as exchanging funds inside my IRA?
No. Exchanging or rebalancing between funds inside one IRA at one provider is an instruction within an account and is not reportable. IRA Exchange moves accounts and assets between institutions.
Does the rail do Roth conversions?
Not as a transfer family. A conversion changes tax character and is taxable and reportable, so it is an account-core instruction. The rail can carry the transfer and the account core the conversion — two instructions, two records.
Can an inherited IRA move on the rail?
Yes, by trustee-to-trustee transfer only, with the beneficiary titling preserved. A non-spouse beneficiary cannot use a 60-day rollover, which is one more reason every leg is direct.
What does “product specification” mean here?
That the rail is described as designed, not as available. No part of it is generally available today, and availability for any institution also depends on its own authorities and its agreements with delivering counterparties. See product status.
Status
Published capability status, from the product registry.
IRA Exchange is a product specification. The transfer families, records, and controls above describe the specified design, not shipped functionality, and no part of it is generally available today. Availability for any institution additionally depends on that institution’s own authorities and its agreements with delivering counterparties. See product status for how A8 Core™ labels capability maturity.
Build on the account operating system.
See how the transfer rail fits your institution’s account, custody, and operations model.