Charles Schwab is rapidly expanding technology offerings this year, including several new artificial intelligence initiatives, to help advisors and investors, President and CEO Rick Wurster said Thursday.
The financial services giant also is planning a new spot crypto offering, Schwab Crypto, and the employee pilot is underway. Schwab expects a phased client rollout starting in the coming weeks, with pricing set at 75 basis points on each trade's dollar value.
Wurster, speaking to analysts after Schwab reported first-quarter results, outlined the company's push to expand AI and other digital experiences.
Schwab stock slid over 5% Thursday, trading at $95 a share midday after the company's revenue missed Wall Street estimates, although total client assets increased 19% year over year to $11.77 trillion.
The company's chief financial officer, Mike Verdesdchi, said that Schwab now expects 2026 earnings higher than the $5.70 to $5.80 earnings per share range suggested in January.
Schwab plans to launch several AI initiatives this year, including advisor and investor AI assistants, a personalized client experience dubbed Portfolio Insights, generative AI search on the company's digital channels and AI coaching on the thinkorswim platform.
"Just as we embraced and flourished during other periods of seismic technology change, we are doing the same now, benefiting from our massive scale, data and technological prowess," Wurster said.
"AI will accelerate our strategy on the growth front. AI opens up new distribution channels and allows us to create personalized relationships with clients we have not been able to serve with a person-to-person relationship," he said, adding that AI already is helping to drive scale and efficiency.
The company will roll out the first iteration of its Investor AI Assistant in June, Wurster said. The agent will answer general questions, and Schwab will test actions that it can take, such as helping clients set beneficiaries.
"We're ensuring clear handoffs to human agents and strict guardrails. This agent and others like it will get smarter with each release as we introduce new skills. We are working with a leading AI agent firm on this buildout and look forward to sharing more details soon," the CEO said.
AI will help Schwab serve more clients and is already reaching more investors through the answer engine optimization work that its marketing team is doing "to ensure we show up on the AI platforms where investors are turning. We are working with these platforms now and you'll see us do even more," Wurster said.
AI also will help the company deepen existing client relationships at scale, he said. While over 90% of U.S. investors prefer human involvement with their AI, 77% use AI today, Wurster said.
"Next month we will begin the rollout of Portfolio Insights, an AI-enabled experience that will deliver tailored insights to our clients about their investment portfolios, how they are performing relative to indices, the news about their holdings and the relevant proprietary research from Schwab," he said.
A generative search capability for clients looking for information on the Schwab website will launch this summer, he added.
Schwab can meet clients' trust needs with an AI-powered capability from wealth.com, Wurster noted.
"We will do the same with tax," he said. "Over time these efforts will create opportunities for enhanced experiences and new fee-based offers that will create value we believe our clients will be willing to pay for."
Schwab increased its strategic investment in wealth.com, which it's already using to bring AI-powered estate planning tools to clients, and is working to launch its AI-powered tax planning capability in the near future, he told analysts.
In Advisor Services, Schwab has introduced large language learning models to analyze millions of calls to provide better coaching to branch service professionals, and is launching a financial consultant relationship management assistant, Wurster said. Advisor AI assistants are expected to launch this year, too, and the company already rolled out an AI service assistant in retail.
"If an FC has a client meeting coming up, this capability quickly summarizes past client interactions using AI, shares a view on actions that would help the client, records the client meeting and prepares an action-based summary of the meeting for the client," he said.
All 33,000 employees have been equipped with AI tools and the company is "seeing tremendous creativity as they are developing fluency in AI and embracing the ways it can transform how we work. We are accelerating the pace at which our Schwab engineers build technology," Wurster said.
"We are confident that we are incredibly well positioned to continue unlocking the benefits AI can bring to our clients and our business," the CEO said.
Schwab is also making business easier in Advisor Services, "continuing to enhance our digital experiences across RIA workflows" like "move money," "account open" and "account maintenance" while modernizing tools on its Advisor platform, Wurster said.
Wurster, responding to a query, also said that Schwab will look into prediction markets tied to financial events, although they're not a high priority for clients.
"We're ready to move when and if needed, and when we do, we'll stay away from gambling," he said.
In terms of growth, Schwab continues to hire financial consultants and wealth advisors while expanding its branch footprint, with about a dozen new branches planned for this year, Wurster said. When clients have a direct relationship with a financial consultant, they trust Schwab with 2.4 times more assets, according to the CEO.
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