# Charles Schwab Corporation Charles Schwab Corporation is an Asset Manager based in Westlake, United States. ## Overview - **Organization type:** Asset Manager - **Headquarters:** Westlake, United States - **Region:** North America - **Address:** Westlake, TX, United States - **Founded:** 1971 - **Assets under management:** Undisclosed - **Website:** schwab.com - **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/charles-schwab ## Regulatory record - **Reports private funds:** No ## About Charles Schwab Corporation was founded in San Francisco in 1971, defying the Wall Street establishment by offering lower trading commissions during an era of federally fixed rates. Founder Charles R. Schwab steered the firm through the deregulation of 1975, and by the 1990s, it had evolved from a pure-play broker into a diversified financial services company. The firm went public in 1987, and over successive decades, it absorbed rival TD Ameritrade, expanded into banking with Charles Schwab Bank, and built an RIA custody operation that now serves roughly 7,500 independent advisory firms. Schwab's investment posture centers on gathering assets through its brokerage and banking operations and monetizing them via net interest income, asset management fees, and payment for order flow. The firm's own proprietary funds and ETFs, including the Schwab S&P 500 Index Fund, are among the cheapest in the industry, with expense ratios as low as 0.02%. Its strategy is not active fund management but low-cost asset aggregation and cross-selling. Its RIA custody arm, branded as Schwab Advisor Services, holds approximately $3 trillion of that $8 trillion total, making it the largest technology and operations provider to independent US financial advisors. As of late 2024, Schwab employed roughly 33,000 people and operated major campuses in Westlake, Texas, and multiple other US hubs, following a headquarters relocation from San Francisco. In January 2025, President Rick Wurster succeeded Walt Bettinger as Chief Executive Officer, while Bettinger and Charles Schwab remained Co-Chairmen. The transition was planned, part of a multi-year succession process. The firm's philanthropic vehicle, the Charles Schwab Foundation, is focused on financial literacy, affordable housing, and workforce development, distinct from the public company's balance sheet. Schwab's structural differentiator is its self-reinforcing flywheel: it acts as a low-cost asset gatherer, a bank, and a technology platform for the very independent advisors who might otherwise be its competitors. This hybrid architecture subjects Schwab to Federal Reserve stress tests under the enhanced prudential standards of the Dodd-Frank Act, a regulatory posture none of its brokerage-only peers face. The firm's scale in client cash sweep accounts — a critical source of bank profitability — makes it uniquely sensitive to the Federal Reserve's rate cycle. ## Sectors - Retail Financial Services - Wealth Management - FinTech ## Offices - San Francisco, CA - Austin, TX - Indianapolis, IN - Jersey City, NJ - Phoenix, AZ - Chicago, IL ## People - Charles R. Schwab — Founder and Co-Chairman - Walter W. Bettinger II — Co-Chairman and former CEO - Rick Wurster — Chief Executive Officer ## Questions ### Who runs investment decisions at Charles Schwab Corporation? Schwab is not a traditional asset manager making concentrated investment decisions. The firm operates primarily as a brokerage, bank, and custodian. Its proprietary asset management arm, Charles Schwab Investment Management, designs and maintains passive index mutual funds and ETFs managed by a dedicated portfolio management team led by Jonathan de St. Paer. The majority of the $8 trillion in platform assets sits in self-directed accounts or is managed by the 7,500 independent RIAs Schwab custodies. ### How does Charles Schwab Corporation make money, and what is the role of client cash? Schwab earns revenue through three main channels: net interest income from client cash sweep accounts and bank lending, asset management and administration fees on its proprietary funds, and order flow revenue from routing equity and options trades. Client cash in sweep vehicles is swept to Charles Schwab Bank, where it is reinvested into securities and loans. This makes the firm's earnings highly correlated to Federal Reserve interest rate policy, a dynamic that drew significant investor scrutiny during the rapid rate-hiking cycle of 2022–2023. ### What is the relationship between Charles Schwab Corporation and the independent RIAs it serves? Schwab Advisor Services is a division that provides custody, technology, and operational support to roughly 7,500 registered investment advisory firms. These firms are independent businesses, not subsidiaries of Schwab, but they rely on Schwab's platform for trade execution, client account safekeeping, and back-office functions. Schwab competes with Fidelity and Pershing in what is known as the RIA custody market. ### How did the TD Ameritrade acquisition alter Schwab's structure? Schwab completed its acquisition of TD Ameritrade in October 2020, a deal valued at roughly $26 billion. The integration, completed over 2023–2024, brought millions of additional retail accounts onto Schwab's platform and combined two of the largest RIA custodians. The resulting entity is the dominant player in independent advisor custody, with a combined book of more than $3 trillion in aggregated RIA assets. ### What is Schwab's regulatory posture as a bank holding company? Unlike pure broker-dealers, Schwab is subject to Federal Reserve oversight as a bank holding company due to Charles Schwab Bank. This classification triggers enhanced prudential standards, including capital adequacy and liquidity tests under Dodd-Frank. Schwab's status as a systemically important financial institution is closely watched, particularly after the 2023 regional banking crisis focused market attention on unrealized losses in held-to-maturity securities portfolios, a metric on which Schwab was frequently cited alongside other large regional banks. ## Related profiles - [TJX Companies](https://altss.com/profile/tjx-companies-inc-de) - [Corning](https://altss.com/profile/corning-inc-ny) --- Last updated: 2026-06-03T20:00:00.000Z Canonical page: https://altss.com/profile/schwab-charles-corp Maintained by Altss — https://altss.com — methodology: https://altss.com/methodology