Bloomberg “The Close”

October 17, 2025

Scarlet Fu: It is time for the stock of the hour, and we’re looking at Charles Schwab. Its stock has gained 27% this year, outperforming its financial peers and the broader market. In its latest quarterly earnings, the firm reported more than $134 billion in total net new assets. That is a 48% increase from a year earlier. Schwab benefitting from a surge in retail investing activity, which means there’s no better time than to speak with Rick Wurster. He is President and CEO of Charles Schwab. And I’m pleased to say Bloomberg The Close Anchor Romaine Bostick joins us for this conversation. Rick, let me start with you, of course. The third quarter results topped estimates overall, and the big number was the total net new assets surging, as I mentioned, growing 48% year-over-year. What was the single biggest contributor to that? 

Rick Wurster: I think it’s that we’re delivering for clients. We’ve seen our clients have contribute $356 billion of net new assets to our company this year, and it's, I think it’s a reflection of there are no trade-offs when you work for Schwab, with Schwab. We meet you where you are digitally. We are here for you if you want to call in. We are in 400 branches across the country where we are helping people navigate their financial lives every day. We are in the outcomes business. We put our arms around our clients and help them get to where they want to be in their financial life. And that’s why clients continue to trust us with their assets. 

Scarlet Fu: And we certainly saw that with the big bank results, where trading desks are just minting money here. There’s a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of engagement markets right now, but what are some of the structural reasons that’s driving this higher level of engagement? 

Rick Wurster: I think there are a couple of things driving the higher level of engagement. First, in the pandemic, a lot of people became interested in trading. My daughter, who’s 21, traded for the first time in the pandemic and continues to be excited about investing in stocks. And I think that she is typical of many young investors. I also believe that there is a lot of news flow in this administration. The government is moving quickly. That creates activity for investors. I also think the elimination of commissions in our industry has allowed anyone to be an investor. It used to be that you had to pay every time he wanted to trade. If you had $100 or $500, that was a big barrier. That barrier was removed. I think it's a combination of things driving a lot of interest in investing. Importantly, the markets being up a lot the last couple of years is also likely playing a role. 

Romaine Bostick: There is also a question about keeping those people tethered to the platform, even when markets are down, even when they are not necessarily trading. And you know, we have seen some of the newer entrants into this market trying to be the everything app for all things financial. Does Schwab fall into that category? 

Rick Wurster: Well, we, I think there is a bull market for convenience in our country. People want to handle more of their financial life in one place. And so we’re seeing incredible growth of our wealth business, of our lending businesses. What we see with our clients is a real demand to do more with us. They want help to guide them to where they want to be in their financial life. And if we’re dealing with active traders, they want thoughts on what looks interesting, and they want our research and our service and support. There is a lot of demand for convenience, and that includes handling more of your life in one financial institution. The average 50-year-old in our country has seven financial services relationships in their lives. So I think that people would love to have fewer, and Schwab is all about making that possible. 

Romaine Bostick: There is also the question about having broader access to a broader array of assets. I think we’re all from a certain generation where people had stocks, people had bonds, maybe you had some real estate or something else. But now you have crypto, you have private assets, you have commodities and things like that as well. How are you structuring the platform right now to get people greater access to that, particularly with some of their newer assets like crypto as well as private assets, alternative assets? 

Rick Wurster: For 50 years, we've always stood for investor choice. We want clients to be able to come to Schwab and be able to participate in the assets and the securities that they want to participate in. I do think at the moment we’re not talking enough about the benefits of long-term investing. The merits of owning equities, sticking with them, watching earnings grow and watching the company become more productive and the equity growing. That has worked, you know, over many decades and I think will continue to. 

Romaine Bostick: But what about in the private space now? When you look at the number of big companies that are still private? I mean you talk about, take any company over $100 million, 90% of them are in the private space right now, and a lot of people want access to that. They want that growth and development that we used to look to the public markets for. They want access to that in the privates as well.

Rick Wurster: I agree. And privates are growing interest for our clients. The way we’re bringing that is through a retail alternatives platform where we have opportunities to invest in private equity and private credit, in hedge funds. And so, our investors are taking advantage of that. We also just announced a new partnership with an Indian-based company called Qapita, which allows us to manage the cap tables for private companies. And now we’re serving that group of private companies and allows us to help with their investors and their management teams that are creating wealth, and we’re able to help them with that. So, I do think there is demand for that and we are here for our clients to help them. 

Scarlet Fu: So there’s demand for crypto. There’s demand for private assets. What about demand for binary trades like prediction markets? A lot of similar platforms are making arrangements, making deals with exchanges to do more of that. Is that something you are looking into? 

Rick Wurster: You know, we’re going to keep an eye on the prediction markets. We, for 50 years, have always wanted to be the firm where we can deliver what clients want and need. To date, we haven't seen a lot of interest in it or clients asking for prediction markets. And if you look at the data at the folks that have gotten into prediction markets, there hasn't been a lot of volume in the things that I would say are related to financial metrics. Like what’s going to happen with the employment report or the inflation report. All the action is around events like sports or elections. And that, at this point, is not something that we’re pursuing. But we’re going to keep an eye on the prediction market, and if that is something we hear more and more that our clients want, then we’ll be there, because we always want to deliver what they want. 

Scarlet Fu: This week we had some nervousness. Of course, we’ve heard about the bankruptcies of Tricolor and First Brands, and of course, then you had banks revealing that they are victims of loan fraud, and it definitely caused concern yesterday. It’s come back a little bit here, but I'm curious how that shows up in the nervousness of your retail investor base. Certainly, prices have gotten extended and there is a lot of concern about whether there is an AI bubble. What does that mean for Charles Schwab's clients and how are you addressing those? 

Rick Wurster: You know, I was in a branch a couple weeks ago in New Jersey, and I was visiting with my colleagues there, and a couple came in who had been a client of Schwab for 30 years. And we had helped them pay off their student loans. We helped their kids learn how to invest. And their wealth had grown far beyond what they had expected, in part because the markets have done so well. And they were coming in to ask us, “We’ve got more wealth than we expected to have. How do we protect it?” And I would say that’s one of the number-one conversations we are having to clients, particularly related to concentrated positions in stocks, because there’s a lot of stocks that have created a lot of wealth that have become a meaningful proportion of people's portfolios, and they’re coming in and asking, “How do I deal with this large position?” And we have lots of ways to help them. 

Romaine Bostick: Are you confident right now in the stability of financial markets and the economy? 

Rick Wurster: I think you look at the economy, I like to look at markets. You look at the 10-year, it’s still near 4%. The real yield’s about 1.7% on the 10-year. To me, that’s not indicative of an economy that is near or in recession. Credit spreads are still pretty tight. Employment reports are reasonable. So I think we’re in a window where the economy is performing just fine. And you see that in markets. I mean, we are just a couple of days off of markets hitting all-time highs, and that’s rare for that to happen if you are in a difficult period of economics. 

Romaine Bostick: And you see the ability of that to continue, or at least you see sort of the makings, the underpinnings, the foundations for that to continue? 

Rick Wurster: I think as we sit here today, the economy seems to be in fine health. We’ll keep a close eye on it. The thing that makes me perhaps the most nervous is there's not a lot of hiring at the moment. There’s not a lot of layoffs either, but if there were to be layoffs, there’s not enough hiring to offset that. So I think that would be something that, if that were to happen, that could create some weakness in employment, and that would spill over likely in the markets. 

Scarlet Fu: Are your clients taking on a lot of risk, in that you mentioned concentrated positions, but are they borrowing money to get into those positions, and continue building on those positions? 

Rick Wurster: I think clients are trying to be thoughtful about where they invest and how they make money. We have seen our margin loans grow to an all-time record around $97 billion at the end of the quarter, but we have to put that in proportion to the $11.6 trillion that our clients hold. So, it’s less than 1% of their assets, so I wouldn't say that they are overextended, but they want to maximize wealth, and they are looking to take advantage of opportunities as they see them. 

Scarlet Fu: As volatility increases, like we’ve seen this week, are they trading more, are they engaging more, or are they backing off in those instances? 

Rick Wurster: You know, our clients trade more when there is more volatility, and they tend to be somewhat countercyclical. I would say that last few weeks, they’ve been buying dips and selling rips. And so we do see on days like yesterday and the more volatile days, we’ve seen in the last week or two, we see an elevated level of training. 

Romaine Bostick: Long-term, where is your growth going to come from for the company? 

Rick Wurster: We have tremendous growth opportunity in a number of fronts. Number one, we serve 16,000 advisors and are the number one supporter of independent advisers in our country. We expect that to be a really robust growth market because of the bull market for convenience and the desire for clients to have a fiduciary help in their financial life. So that has been a growth market, and I expect it to continue to be. On the retail side, we are leaning into an old story, which is having physical branches and real relationships with people. Because we find when we do that, that we have stronger client outcomes, greater client satisfaction. When we have a personalized relationship with a client, their satisfaction score goes up 10 points, and they do more business with us. They bring about twice the amount of net new assets to us. So we’re leaning into relationships. 

Romaine Bostick: Where are those branches coming up regionally? Where’s the biggest concentration? 

Rick Wurster: You know, we did a quantitative analysis of where our clients were and where our branches were. And the places where we were underpenetrated were Florida, Texas, and some parts of the West Coast. So we’re moving to where the wealth sits and where we have an opportunity to serve them. But also lots of growth opportunity in things like alternatives. We’re gonna launch crypto in the first half of next year, so we’re winning with our core client and expanding into other areas, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. 

Scarlet Fu: You mention launching crypto in the first half of next year. As you close out 2025 and look ahead to 2026, what is the single biggest challenge that you anticipate for next year? 

Rick Wurster: Well, the biggest thing we focus on every day is nailing it for our 46 million clients. I go to bed and wake up in the morning thinking about, ‘How do we do the best job for our clients?’ Because we’ve got 46 million clients that rely upon us to nail it for them, and they count on us to help them in their financial life. And we want to do everything that we can to help them. We’re not just an app. We want to sit side-by-side with our clients and get them to where they need to be in their financial life. 

Scarlet Fu: Rick, thank you for joining us today! Rick Wurster, President and CEO of Charles Schwab, and our thanks as well to Romaine Bostick.

Forward-Looking Statements

This contains forward-looking statements, which reflect management’s expectations as of the date hereof. Achievement of these expectations and objectives is subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Important factors that may cause such differences are described in the company’s most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, which have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and are available on the company’s website (https://www.aboutschwab.com/financial-reports) and on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website (https://www.sec.gov). The company makes no commitment to update any forward-looking statements.

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