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May 22, 2024 at 05:34 PM
What You Need to Know
- The chief brokerage officer of competitor Robinhood recently criticized Schwab's mobile app.
- Audited complaints have totaled about 55 per million converted accounts, Schwab says.
- Investor services head Jonathan Craig likened the complaints to a BMW driver waking up to find a Mercedes in the garage.
Charles Schwab & Co., facing criticism from a Robinhood executive and others that its investing app “sucks” and has disappointed clients picked up in the TD Ameritrade deal, indicated Wednesday that relationships with most former Ameritrade customers are going well.
The retail investor services leader at Schwab acknowledged what he described as a “very, very small” number of audited complaints received since the brokerage transitioned millions of TD Ameritrade client accounts to its platforms, saying the criticisms mostly reflect people’s difficulties with change.
User Complaints
Many former Ameritrade customers whose assets migrated after Schwab acquired the firm in 2020, including a final group converted this month, have complained on social media that they preferred their old investing platform to Schwab’s app.
They decry the Schwab app as unappealing and unintuitive in comparison, among other derogatory adjectives, saying it lacks features and performance they enjoyed at Ameritrade. Some indicated they have moved their assets from Schwab, or plan to do so.
The work “clunky” has come up in several posts on X, formerly Twitter. The r/Schwab Subreddit has a dedicated “Schwab Sucks” thread that has been active for seven months.
The chief brokerage officer of competitor Robinhood, Steve Quirk, told Dow Jones MarketWatch recently that his platform had gained some dissatisfied former Ameritrade customers from Schwab since the last client migration.
“TD Ameritrade had a decent mobile offering — Schwab’s sucks, and they know it,” Quirk, who previously worked at TD Ameritrade, told MarketWatch. “It’s a concern, but you can’t fix it that quickly.”
Schwab Responds
At Schwab’s Institutional Investor Conference on Wednesday, Jonathan Craig, managing director and investor services head, painted a more promising picture.
He said Schwab had fielded about 55 audited, written complaints per million converted accounts within the first four weeks after migration, excluding the client group that Schwab moved this month as it shuttered the old Ameritrade platform.
“I will tell you, as the head of retail … I can look at every single one, and I do look at every one,” Craig said. “What the complaints tend to be, almost always, or most of the time, they’re about change. Change is hard. People don’t like change and that’s understandable.”
