Schwab Cuts 200 More Jobs
The latest reductions follow the more than 1,000 job cuts the firm announced after the TD Ameritrade deal closed.
Charles Schwab disclosed it has slashed another 200 or so jobs as part of its ongoing integration with TD Ameritrade following the completion of Schwab’s acquisition of its rival in October.
The job cuts are in addition to the more than 1,000 jobs that the company already said it was eliminating across the two firms following the finalization of that deal.
“As we’ve previously communicated, achieving the goals of our integration with TD Ameritrade also means we must make difficult but thoughtful decisions that enable us to meet our expense synergy targets,” Schwab spokeswoman Mayura Hooper told ThinkAdvisor on Tuesday.
“We are taking another step in that work and have notified approximately 200 of our colleagues that their roles are being eliminated,” she said. “We’re committed to providing everyone who is impacted with support to help ensure the smoothest transition possible, including reemployment assistance and severance benefits.”
The latest job reductions are “part of our continuing efforts to reduce overlapping or redundant roles across the two firms,” she explained.
The company did not specify how many of the jobs cut were at Schwab vs. TD Ameritrade. Nor did it specify what departments the cuts were made in.
However, “at the same time, we are continuing to hire in strategic areas critical to support our growing client base and evolving product and service offerings,” Hooper added. “Employees whose roles are eliminated as part of the integration have early access to all newly opened positions and are treated as internal candidates for the more than 1,400 currently open positions at Schwab.”
Earlier Layoffs
The company started “notifying individuals that their roles have been eliminated and they will be leaving the firm,” the Schwab Executive Council wrote in a statement in October. “This will result in a reduction of approximately 1,000 positions or about 3% of the combined workforce of Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade,” it said at the time.
In November, Joe Martinetto, senior executive vice president and COO at Schwab, said the firm was closing almost 80% of TD Ameritrade’s network of about 260 branches that serve investors. “We’ve aligned the management structure, and across management in the branch network eliminated over about 1,000 roles,” he stated at the time.
The job reductions cited by Schwab in October and November were the same and not two sets of reductions, Hooper clarified Tuesday.
Service Challenges
Although Schwab remains upbeat about its ongoing integration with TD Ameritrade this year, it is reviewing some of the decisions it’s made on that front as part of its efforts to improve client service, Walt Bettinger, the firm’s CEO and president, said during the firm’s recent Winter Business Update webcast.
“We want to ensure that we don’t take steps that would risk any further degradation in our service quality,” he said. “As part of that, we’re examining locations that we might have previously thought we wouldn’t maintain” that Schwab may opt to keep open.
His comments came after advisors reported 45-minute wait times on the phone and weeks-long delays on service tickets, among other service problems with Schwab and TD Ameritrade in recent months.
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