At a gathering of some of the nation’s largest independent investment
advisors, Charles Schwab today unveiled a series of new initiatives
designed to help them fuel their growth and add scale by managing costs
and improving their efficiency.
In the challenging environment brought on by disruption in the financial
markets beginning last year, many affluent investors are poised to
establish new relationships with independent advisors but are hesitant
to act during turbulent markets; at the same time, current clients of
advisors are requiring more of their time, accelerating the need for
greater efficiency in their businesses. On the occasion of its annual
EXPLORE event, Charles Schwab, the leading provider of custodial,
operational and trading support for more than 6,000 independent
fee-based investment advisory firms announced a series of steps it is
taking to support advisors in the current environment.
Beginning next month, Schwab will waive commissions on electronic equity
trades and reimburse transfer of account fees charged by contra brokers
for up to one year for new-to-Schwab clients of independent investment
advisors who open accounts by the end of the year. In addition, Schwab
Performance Technologies® will waive the next year’s maintenance fees
for its portfolio management software PortfolioCenter® for any advisory
firm that custodies client assets with Schwab Advisor Services and
licenses PortfolioCenter through Schwab. More than 2,200 of Schwab’s
advisor clients currently use PortfolioCenter.
Schwab is also investing in an array of new service and technology
projects that will begin to benefit advisors by the end of the year:
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A newly redesigned technology platform that integrates and centralizes
the features of Schwab’s web site and the SchwabLink desktop
application and helps advisors explore and use client data with
greater flexibility;
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Secure email functionality between select advisors and Schwab’s
service representatives;
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Operations consultants who will share best practices with advisors’
back-office staff to improve their productivity and efficiency; and
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The debut of a new program offering classes to help advisor
back-office professionals become highly proficient at managing
custody, account servicing and operations processing.
A number of other longer-range technology enhancements are also in the
works, including enhanced reporting technology and straight-through data
file download and updates to PortfolioCenter.
