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September 05, 2023 at 02:32 PM
Schwab Advisor Services executives said Tuesday that this past weekend’s conversion of TD Ameritrade advisors to Schwab’s custodian platform went remarkably well, with no significant problems.
“This weekend, we moved [over] 7,000 advisor firms from the green platform, [which is] the TD Ameritrade platform to the blue, or the Schwab, platform,” Bernie Clark, head of Schwab Advisor Services, said during a media phone briefing.
Schwab Advisor Services also transitioned 3.6 million accounts held by advisors’ clients and about another 3.6 million on the retail side also, with “$1.3 trillion in assets moving overall,” making it the largest conversion weekend for the company among the three it did, Clark said.
As of now, “80% of all clients have now transitioned over to the Charles Schwab platform,” with the advisor transition completed entirely over the past weekend, he said.
Not Out of the Woods Yet
But, during the Q&A, fintech expert Joel Bruckenstein, producer of the annual Technology Tools for Today (T3) Conference and publisher of the T3 Technology Hub, said: “From where I sit, I see one more day at least of hurdles, which is the first day of trading,” one day after Labor Day, and “reconciliation and all of that.”
Therefore, he said: “Before you circle the wagons and say this has been a total success, we need to see how tonight goes.”
However, Bruckenstein noted: “I certainly appreciate the complexity of what just happened. So congratulations. I think it’s a major accomplishment.”
On Monday, the technology expert told ThinkAdvisor by email: “I’ve talked to a number of vendors. For the most part, all is going well (I predicted there would be some minimal outliers). [The] next test will be tonight/tomorrow morning when all the RIA firms finalize their side. Then, Tuesday evening/Wed morning with the first full day of Schwab trading/recon.”
“Minor” Issues
Whenever there is a conversion from one custodian to another, “there’s always some things where maybe a position doesn’t transfer exactly as expected or sometimes there’s issues with timing where something comes in after-market and pricing doesn’t come in there,” Jess Heffron, managing director of Advisor Services Integration at Schwab, said in response to a ThinkAdvisor question.
“We were able to address a lot of that over the weekend but there’s some items that may be processing tonight and will be there tomorrow,” she said. But, when you think about the millions of conversions that were done over the weekend, the number of problems are “very minor in the big picture,” she added.
