A look at Schwab’s TD migration, 8 months in
It’s been eight months since Charles Schwab pulled off the biggest data migration the financial advisory world has ever seen, moving $1.3 trillion among 3.6 million accounts at 7,000 registered investment advisors that had previously custodied at TD Ameritrade.
Such a massive undertaking inevitably would have hiccups – something the company acknowledges – but even those who are critical of Schwab’s relationship with RIAs credit it with accomplishing something on a scale that was never before attempted.
Some advisors who relied on TD Ameritrade’s user-friendly technology were unhappy, and others cited customer-service headaches or the threat of competition with Schwab for clients as reasons to change custodians. However, most have stayed put – the company has seen attribution of former TD client RIAs of 4 percent to 5 percent, which is roughly what it had projected.
Today, Schwab has more than 15,000 independent financial advisors, representing about $4 trillion in assets under management, according to figures from the company.
“Change is something that we all have to take in cycles, and we were all in the thick of it as we headed into the conversion,” said Jalina Kerr, Schwab’s head of advisor experience.
Since then, the company has focused on delivering on promises it made to the advisors who used TD Ameritrade, she said. That has included changes to its systems to “remove friction for advisors.”
Initially, there were complaints about the firm’s Docusign process, which could take two hours per client but now can be done in about 30 seconds, Kerr said. That has made the experience closer to what advisors had under TD’s platform, and feedback has been positive, she noted.
The company has also updated the Move Money
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