6 Schwab Integration Worries of TD Ameritrade Advisors: Advisors’ Advice

With less than two weeks to go before TD Ameritrade advisors and their clients’ accounts are scheduled to move to the Charles Schwab platform, there are still a few things that at least some advisors of each firm remain concerned about.

Schwab has been moving accounts in groups since February. The transition to the Schwab platform scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 2-5, represents the last major step to integrate the two companies as part of Schwab’s $22 billion acquisition of TD Ameritrade that closed in October 2020.

A few industry experts weighed in also. “The biggest impact for RIAs will be the ones at TDA switching over to Schwab,” Timothy Welsh, president, CEO and founder of Nexus Strategy, told ThinkAdvisor. “TDA RIAs should be very concerned that the conversion goes smoothly, as their clients won’t blame Schwab if there is disruption and things go wrong. They will blame their advisor.”

He added: “Advisors should also be extremely concerned that at this scale of thousands of advisors, millions of accounts and trillions of dollars moving, something will absolutely go wrong and again, clients will blame the advisor. These RIAs through no choice of their own, are about to enter a high-risk operating period, the likes of which they may have never encountered before, and they need to be prepared.”

But Chip Roame, head of Tiburon Strategic Advisors, said: “While many like to predict doom, I do not think there is any reason to believe it will not go well. Schwab has spent billions of dollars in preparation and has retained the best features from both platforms.

“Nothing of this size ever goes perfectly, but industry gurus have been predicting doom and gloom for over three years and they have been wrong each time,” Roame added.

And Joel Bruckenstein, president of Technology Tools for Today (T3), said: “I am not overly concerned in general. I think the vast majority of the move will go fine, but there will be a few outliers. If your firm is one, you must be prepared.”

See the gallery above for the top concerns about the Labor Day weekend integration among six Schwab and TD Ameritrade advisors.