After a summer break, the Advisor Innovations podcast is back. In the new season’s inaugural episode, David Armstrong, director of editorial strategies at Informa Connect’s Wealth Management group, is joined by Rick Wurster, the president of the Charles Schwab Corporation, along with Bernie Clark, managing director and head of advisor services. The conversation was held on the eve of the firm’s Impact conference, and weeks after the final Labor Day marker which concluded the conversion of $1.3 trillion in TD Ameritrade assets, including those from some 7,000 advisory firms, into Charles Schwab, making the firm the dominant custodian to independent advisors.  

Rick and Bernie talk about how they viewed the integration as a challenge to bring together the “best of both worlds,” including adding the prized trading features of TDAI’s trading technology into Schwab’s Advisor Services platform, while integrating Schwab’s larger breadth of advisor services in banking and support for HNW clients, a growing focus of the firm’s advisor support services. 

Specifically, Rick and Bernie discuss:

• How the competitive landscape has evolved since Schwab made its announcement four years ago, including the arrival of Goldman Sachs and Envestnet as custodial competitors.
• How M&A in the RIA industry may be down, but “joins,” or advisors joining an independent advisory firm under different employment models, are on the rise. 
• What advisors need to understand about Schwab’s cash-sweep accounts.
• How more sophisticated banking services, like its recently unveiled digital securities-based lending platform, are helping its advisor clients keep more assets inside the firm. 
• What motivated Schwab’s significant investment in Dynasty Financial Partners, and how they are open to making more investments in firms or platforms that help grow the RIA channel – including possible opportunities in financing next-generation advisors. 

Resources:

RIA Edge Podcast

Connect With David Armstrong:

• WealthManagement.com
• LinkedIn: WealthManagment.com
• LinkedIn: David Armstrong 
• Twitter: @djamesarmstrong
• LinkedIn: Informa

Connect With Rick Wurster & Bernie Clark:

• LinkedIn: Rick Wurster
• LinkedIn: Bernie Clark
• Company Website: Charles Schwab Advisor Services

About Our Guests:

Rick Wurster

Rick Wurster was appointed President of The Charles Schwab Corporation in October 2021. In his role, Wurster oversees Investor Services, Advisor Services, Workplace Financial Services, Digital Services, Schwab Asset Management, Third-Party Platforms, and Investor Advice Solutions.  

Wurster joined Schwab in early 2016. He was most recently head of Schwab Asset Management Solutions which provided money management and portfolio advice solutions, wealth management services, financial research, and market insights. He previously served as CEO of Charles Schwab Investment Advisory, Inc. (CSIA), as well as CEO of ThomasPartners, Inc. and Windhaven Investment Management, Inc. prior to their integration into CSIA.

Before joining Schwab, Wurster was employed at Wellington Management and McKinsey & Company where he was a leader of the asset management practice and an Associate Principal.

Bernie Clark

Bernard “Bernie” J. Clark is Managing Director, Head of Advisor Services and a member of Charles Schwab’s Executive Committee. He oversees the business that provides custodial, operational, and trading support to nearly 15,000 independent investment advisory firms with $3.67 trillion in assets under management. In addition to custody services, Schwab Advisor Services provides practice management and consultative support to help independent advisors start, build, and grow their firms. A recognized industry leader, Clark has been named as one of the “IA 25” by Investment Advisormagazine, which annually ranks the 25 most influential people in the industry.

Clark has more than 30 years of financial industry experience serving individual and institutional investors. He began his career at Schwab in 1998 as Senior Vice President of Trading and Operations for Schwab Institutional. He later worked on the retail business as leader of the client services organization before returning to the advisor business to lead the sales and relationship management organization. He took on his current role as head of Schwab Advisor Services in 2010.

Prior to joining Schwab, Clark was with the London office of Deutsche Morgan Grenfell. There he held the position of managing director in charge of global sales support, hedge fund operations, and technology, including managing client service support in Asia, Europe, and the U.S. He also spent 13 years with Salomon Brothers as a member of the executive committee responsible for North American operations.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS | More

Tim Maurer is a financial advisor and author who most recently took on the role of Chief Advisory Officer at SignatureFD. In this episode of the Advisor Innovations podcast, Maurer talks with David Armstrong about what, exactly, a Chief Advisory Officer does, and how he sees the lessons of life planning and qualitative financial advice being tactically implemented in advisor-client relationships. 

Tim  discusses:

• Why he made the move to fast-growing RIA Signature FD after years at the larger Buckingham Wealth Management.
• How he sees his role as a Chief Advisory Officer, and what it means to sit at the nexus between advisor development and the client experience. 
• How he’s attempting to embed the lessons from behavioral finance and psychology into the relationship between clients and advisors. 
• Why advisors who focus more on the qualitative side of financial planning, as opposed to the quantitative, are more successful.
• How he makes a distinction between advisors as financial therapists, and financial coaches: Most advisors should follow the coaching model. 
  
• What he’s learned from pioneers in the “life planning” field like Kinder Institute’s George Kinder and Money Quotient’s Carol Anderson
• Most importantly, how the sometimes softer side of financial planning is being coded into advisory firm’s workflows and processes in a scalable, efficient way. 

Resources:

• Listen to the latest episodes of Advisor Innovations
• Tim’s book: Simple Money: No Nonsense Personal Finance

Connect With Tim Maurer:

• LinkedIn: Tim Maurer
• Tim Maurer’s Website
• Follow Tim on Twitter

Connect With David Armstrong:

• Email: david.armstrong@informa.com
• Website: WealthManagement.com
• LinkedIn: Informa
• LinkedIn: David Armstrong

About Our Guest:

Tim Maurer is a speaker, blogger, author, and financial advisor. As Chief Advisory Officer at SignatureFD he serves as an industry leader to the media and an educator to both consumers and financial advisors. He is a regular contributor to CNBC, Forbes, Time/Money.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS | More

For many advisors, Larry Swedroe needs no introduction; He’s the author of numerous books on investing, a frequent columnist in advisor publications, including Wealthmanagement.com, and the Head of Financial and Economic Research at Buckingham Strategic Wealth, one of the largest RIAs in the country.

He’s also active on social media where he can be found in sometimes heated debates with other industry luminaries on the merits of different compensation models for financial advisors, the dire prospects for most active stock managers, and what the latest academic research on investment management and the markets tells advisors about how to build better portfolios.

In this edition of the Advisor Innovations podcast, Swedroe describes how he views his work, why it is getting harder for active managers to generate alpha in the publicly traded markets, and where he sees opportunities for income in the increasingly accessible private markets. 

Swedroe discusses:

• Why, in the face of growing evidence of subpar long-term returns, retail investors and active stock managers are proliferating.
• How a three-year track record tells investors almost nothing about a manager’s long-term prospects.
• Why “dumb indexes” don’t solve the investors’ problem, and why “smart beta” is an oxymoron and how investors are best served by “intelligently designed” portfolios. 
• How some research shows stock turnover and management fees are the two variables that can determine active managers’ outcomes. 
• Why easier access to private markets for investors, including interval funds, are a good option for some investors—himself included.
• Where he is placing some of his investments now.

Connect With Larry Swedroe:

• LinkedIn: Larry Swedroe
• Buckingham Strategic Wealth

Connect With David Armstrong:

• david.armstrong@informa.com
• WealthManagement.com
• LinkedIn: Informa
• LinkedIn: David Armstrong

About Our Guest:

Larry Swedroe is a principal and the director of research of Buckingham Asset Management[1] and BAM Advisor Services. Previously, Larry was Vice-Chairman of Prudential Home Mortgage, the nation’s second largest home mortgage lender. He has held positions at Citicorp as Senior Vice-President and Regional Treasurer, responsible for treasury, foreign exchange and investment banking activities, including risk management strategies. Larry has an MBA in Finance and Investment from NYU, and a BA in Finance from Baruch College. He is the author of 17 books.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: RSS | More