Charles Schwab is planning on keeping a large number of staffers from TD Ameritrade’s RIA service division, but can’t promise that all advisors affected by the $22bn merger will keep their service teams.
‘We’re not making any guarantees in terms of whether an advisor will keep their same service team. We have announced that we’re keeping two TD Ameritrade locations,’ Schwab senior vice president Tom Bradley (pictured) said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
Bradley indicated that Schwab plans to keep TD Ameritrade’s RIA service center in San Diego — which has roughly half of the company’s service staff — intact, and that the company will retain staffers from TD Ameritrade’s office in Southlake, Texas. He did not say specifically how many staffers will be retained.
Charles Schwab has gone through two rounds of layoffs since its all-stock merger with TD Ameritrade closed in October of 2020. It let go of 1,000 people that month and another 200 people in February.
‘There have been zero layoffs on the service side,’ Bradley said. ‘I want to get that point across. Zero layoffs on the service side on the advisor custody business. In fact, we’re hiring quite aggressively.’
Schwab has been open about the fact that life for TD Ameritrade advisors will be quite different once the 18-36 month integration period wraps up. Bradley said that Schwab’s existing technology will be the default for the combined advisor platform unless ‘there was a material advantage on the TD Ameritrade side.’ He reiterated that both TD’s iRebal portfolio rebalancing tech and thinkpipes trading tool will survive the integration process.
Bradley indicated changes to RIAs’ service teams won’t be quite as drastic.
‘I think we’re going to have very little change, although there might be some changes for certain firms,’ he said, explaining that RIAs with less than $100m in assets under management will likely work with a call center, mid-sized advisors will likely share teams of service staffers, and large RIAs will likely have their own dedicated service teams.
This article originally appeared on Citywire.
