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Industry Spotlight > RIAs

All Eyes on Schwab: 8 Things Experts Are Watching on TD Integration Weekend

By Jeff Berman

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As TD Ameritrade advisors and their clients’ accounts were about to move to the Charles Schwab platform as part of the long-planned conversion over the Labor Day weekend, a few industry experts told ThinkAdvisor they were keeping an eye out for any positive or ominous signs about whether the integration was running smoothly or not.

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.

Below are eight of the most significant issues and other things that advisors, consultants and others said they were looking for this weekend and the near future, or that TD advisors should be looking for.

1. Will the conversion go as smoothly as Schwab, TD Ameritrade advisors and their clients hope?

“This has been in the works since November of 2019. I expect a smooth transition this weekend,” said Jay Coulter, president of Resilient Advisor and partner and chief investment officer at Resilient Wealth in Atlanta. “I expect it to be seamless for advisors who have prepared.”

Coulter uses Altruist as the custodian and is working to also custody client assets at Schwab.

Joel Bruckenstein, an expert on applied technology for financial professionals, publisher of the T3 Technology Hub and producer of the annual Technology Tools for Today (T3) Conference, told ThinkAdvisor: “I expect it to go smoothly for the vast majority of advisors. But in a project of this size, there are bound to be some issues. Given that Schwab has been preparing for this for years, I expect a mostly smooth transition.”

Grier Rubeling, founder, owner and operator of consulting firm Advisor Transition Services, said she expects to “see all the TD accounts hit the Schwab platform and for Schwab Advisor Center to become the system for which all new requests are made.”

But she said of the integration’s success: “I definitely think it’s going to be a mixture. For those who were already on the Schwab platform, I imagine they will be more equipped to handle the new adjustments. For those who strictly used TD, they will need to learn to navigate the new platform, and they will have a lot of questions.”

Not quite as optimistic was Derek Notman, founder and CEO of Intrepid Wealth Partners in Madison, Wisconsin. He predicted “a lot of problems will occur and [advisors] will be swamped with questions coming from consumers not understanding what’s happening and what they should be doing.”

After seeing what his mother-in-law experienced recently with her account, Notman said: “It feels like a mixed at best integration. The tech felt wonky and the customer support folks didn’t seem to be up to speed with everything.”

Consultant Mark Tibergien, ex-CEO of BNY Mellon Pershing Advisor Solutions, predicted: “There will likely be mistakes. Advisors and service folks at Schwab need to be prepared and manage with a cool head. I am sure Schwab will do what’s right when mistakes or problems occur. All that said, the experience will be different for both advisors and clients.”

But Tibergien added: “The good news is they have plenty of options for alternative custodians. I think this is why you see so many RIAs recommending several choices with their clients.”

2. Have TD advisors made sure to take care of the little things that may not be so little?

Most TD advisors have likely alerted their clients about the shift to Schwab. But it remains to be seen if they’ve all taken care of small issues — or not-so-small ones.

“One of the most important things is to make sure that clients who used TD for direct deposit make changes with their employer,”  Coulter pointed out. “Nobody wants to miss a paycheck!”

Charles “Chip” Roame, managing partner at Tiburon Strategic Advisors in Tiburon, California, noted that “we may quickly see which RIA firms have not been attending the Schwab training programs.”

Roame explained: “When those RIAs show up Tuesday morning at work and struggle to operate their businesses, they may be looking for someone to blame.”

3. Will somebody on the advisor side make sure that everything needing to be moved to Schwab actually moves to Schwab?

“It should just be the moving of accounts” that happens this weekend, “but that is not as simple as it sounds,” said Bruckenstein. “Somebody on the advisor side needs to make sure that everything actually moves, including pending orders, dividend payments, etc.”

4. Will new staff Schwab hired ahead of the final integration be up to speed by this weekend?

“While Schwab has provided a lot of resources, many advisors prefer to just pick up the phone and call someone,” noted Rubeling. “Schwab has been hiring and training new staff in anticipation of this event but a lot of that staff is going to be new and not very experienced themselves. So there could be a significant strain on human resources during the first few months of this change.”

She provided a tip for advisors: “The important thing will be for advisors and staff to retain records for everything they do and follow up on each step of the process to make sure the work is being done timely and accurately.”

5. Every single report

If Rubeling was a TD advisor, she said, “I would be going through every single report that TD provides and downloading them in case information is not readily available or easily locatable on the Schwab side.”

She added: “I’d also be setting expectations with clients for what they’re going to have to do to get logged into Schwab to see their accounts.”

6. Email

Asked what he would be watching over the weekend, Bruckenstein joked: “The U.S. Open results?”

But he added: “Seriously, I’ll be watching email to see if there is a major uptick in complaints from advisors but I suspect I will not hear much till Tuesday.”

7. Client chatter

“More than anything,” Notman said he would be keeping an eye out for “consumer chatter” over this weekend about their experiences.

8. Personal experiences

Notman will also be making note of the “experience for myself and how it goes when I go to login after the change,” he said.

Jeff Berman

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