Contacts associated with old exchange account, can't import to iCloud

I had an Exchange account with my previous job, no longer have access to it. I was not aware that my personal contacts, as i created them in my phone, were being associated with this account. I mistakenly thought that simply backing up to iCloud (before the account became inactive) would be enough. When i deleted the email account, of course the contacts went too. I was able to get them back from another device (old iPhone 4) so i do have the contacts. I recently got a new iPhone 6 64g 8.4.1. In order to have the contacts on my new phone, the old Exchange account is there too, and keeps asking me to sign in, but i no longer can. I realize now that i should have exported the contacts via vcard before the account was inactivated (hindsight). The majority of my contacts will not back up to iCloud: I am assuming this is because they are associated with Exchange.

Can anyone explain if there is a way for me to disassociate these contacts from Exchange and get them into iCloud so i can delete the account without losing the contacts? I no longer have access to the Exchange account itself. I understand that there may be 3rd party apps that might do this. I am trying to avoid manually entering 400 contacts into iCloud.

thanks in advance!