Years of planning come to a head as Schwab’s TD migration approaches

investmentnews.com:

The warm months of 2023 haven’t been a vacation for Charles Schwab Corp.

Investor scrutiny of Schwab began in March after the collapse of several midsize banks. In July, Schwab reported a data breach had occurred in May that may have impacted up 61,000 TD Ameritrade customers and could bring on a class-action lawsuit. More recently, the company reported temporarily lower net flows of money as a result of retail investor and financial advisor attrition from TD, as well as a plan to cut $500 million in annual costs through layoffs and office closures.

Now Schwab is facing one of the biggest milestones in company history. Over Labor Day weekend, Schwab will transition more than 7,000 registered investment advisors and nearly 4 million client accounts off TD’s custodian platform and on to Schwab Advisor Services.

The expectation is that RIAs will come to work on Tuesday and find all their clients, accounts and holdings displayed accurately on Advisor Center, Schwab’s digital dashboard for advisors. Success could go a long way toward righting the ship; getting it wrong could accelerate advisor attrition and make an already tough 2023 even tougher.

So how is Bernard Clark, managing director and head of Advisor Services, feeling?

“I’m feeling very, very confident, very good about where we are,” Clark told InvestmentNews in an exclusive interview.

Part of that confidence comes from Schwab’s market position. With the TD advisors officially in the fold — the culmination of a process that began in October 2020, when Schwab closed on the $22 billion acquisition — Schwab will have, by far, the largest support, asset custody and trading platform for independent advisors in the industry, Clark said. This is especially important in what