Delivering Through Clients’ Eyes

Innovation in a New Era

Letter from Rick Wurster, President and Chief Executive Officer

At Schwab, we have innovated to put more money into our clients’ pockets for more than 50 years. The question at the heart of our Through Clients’ Eyes strategy has been and always will be: “Is this good for investors?” Whether we were lowering trading commissions, building out our leading research, expanding our suite of products and solutions, or adding expertise to our client experience, we have consistently delivered innovations that empower our clients to achieve better financial outcomes. This is why we have the privilege of being entrusted with our clients’ hard-earned dollars and financial dreams. This is the foundation on which we delivered growth across all fronts for stockholders in 2025. This remains our compass for meeting clients’ evolving needs as our industry enters a new era powered by four forces: the bull market for convenience, the rise of digital assets, the power of artificial intelligence, and the new expectations of the next generation.

Whether we were lowering trading commissions, building out our leading research, expanding our suite of products and solutions, or adding expertise to our client experience, we have consistently delivered innovations that empower our clients to achieve better financial outcomes.

Growth on all fronts: Delivering for clients and stockholders in 2025

Whether we are supporting an individual or a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), we are here to help investors weather the inevitable ups and downs of market cycles so they can grow, manage, protect, and pass on their wealth. 2025 was no exception, and it was quite a year for investors, with positive returns in equities and bonds. In April, our clients experienced the sharpest market sell-off since the pandemic, which was followed by a quick recovery. At year-end, market valuations remained high and the economy remained strong. Through it all, we were there for RIAs of all sizes and retail clients of all ages, wealth levels, and time horizons.

High levels of enthusiasm throughout 2025 led to tremendous client engagement. We saw record activity on Schwab.com and Schwab Mobile, and trading volume was up 31% over 2024. Traders used our industry-leading thinkorswim^® platforms to grow their wealth, engage in markets, take advantage of opportunities, and hedge their portfolios. Millions of investors consumed our educational resources and research insights. Our service professionals answered 30 million client calls, in an average of under 30 seconds. The environment sparked countless conversations about building and protecting wealth in every corner of Schwab.

We advanced our legacy of client-focused innovation, investing in capabilities that help clients grow and protect wealth while making it easier for them to conduct more of their financial life at Schwab. We hired hundreds more Financial Consultants and opened new branches in local communities across our country. We enhanced our industry-leading trading offer, hired more experts within Schwab Wealth Advisory™, and strengthened our alternative investment capabilities. We continued to build out an ecosystem to support advisors. We entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Forge Global Holdings, Inc. that will round out our ability to give clients multiple ways to access alternative investments and help us democratize private investing in the same way we helped broaden access to public markets in the 1970s.

With that backdrop—and supported by our proven strategy, best-in-class scale, and disciplined financial management—we delivered strong results in 2025. Clients trusted Schwab with $519 billion in core net new assets (NNA), representing an organic growth rate of 5.1%. We are number one in the industry as measured by total client assets,¹ giving us the ability to scale our business and deepen relationships with existing clients at a magnitude that can’t be easily replicated. In addition to growing NNA, investors of all ages, traders of all stripes, and RIAs of all sizes opened 4.7 million new brokerage accounts in 2025. Our existing clients continued to trust us with more of their financial lives, as we attracted record flows into our wealth solutions, and lending balances reached all-time highs.

Total net revenues for the year were a record $23.9 billion, up 22% over 2024. Pre-tax profit margin was 47.9% (50% on an adjusted basis²). Earnings per share reached a record $4.65 ($4.87 adjusted²), a 56% (50% adjusted²) increase over last year. We returned $11.8 billion in capital to our stockholders through share buybacks, redemption of preferred equity, and dividends. Our stock price grew from $74.01 at the start of 2025 to $99.91 at year-end, a total return of over 36%, counting dividends.

A new era: The forces redefining client expectations

Investors have more opportunities than ever to save, invest, and build wealth for their futures. At the same time, the industry is evolving. Four forces are rapidly reshaping investor expectations and transforming how our industry will serve clients in the future. Our Through Clients’ Eyes strategy and the central question we’ve asked ourselves throughout our history—“Is this good for investors?”—will anchor how we evolve while staying true to our mission.

1 - The bull market for convenience

The bar for ease and convenience continues to rise in all aspects of our lives. Instacart^® brings groceries to our doorstep, DoorDash^® solves for dinner on the nights we don’t cook, and Amazon^® delivers almost everything else. Investors want the same level of convenience in their financial lives. More seasoned investors juggle six to seven financial services relationships across banking, retirement, and brokerage accounts, on top of credit cards, insurance, taxes, and estate matters. One of the most impactful ways we deliver convenience is by helping those holding our 46 million client accounts conduct more of their financial lives in one place—at Schwab. Clients also expect to be delighted by the basics: Investors want their digital experiences to be easy, intuitive, and engaging. At the same time, when they are spooked by market swings or approaching life milestones, investors across generations want to talk with a person. While our clients embrace our easy and intuitive digital experiences, their engagement in 2025 makes it clear they want more than an app when their financial future is at stake.

The firms that help make their clients’ financial lives easier will be the winners in this new era.

2 - The power of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is just starting to transform the way we work and serve clients across industries. At Schwab, AI is already powering efficiencies behind the scenes, creating opportunities for our employees to become more productive in their daily work and more responsive to our clients. AI will help us accelerate our mission and extend access to investing insights and guidance to more clients while deepening our relationships with those we already serve. AI will also change the competitive landscape. The firms that harness AI’s potential to serve more investors effectively while preserving the personal relationships at the heart of our business will be the industry leaders of the future.

3 - The rise of digital assets

While modern cryptocurrencies have been around since 2009, the broader rise of digital assets captured the attention of investors and the media in 2025. The way digital assets will evolve, mature, and ultimately impact how the industry serves investors in the future remains largely unwritten. It is on our industry to meet evolving investor needs in a responsible and trustworthy way.

Schwab is ready to support our clients no matter how this plays out. We estimate that our clients already hold approximately a 20% share of the spot crypto exchange-traded product market.³ We know that clients who have allocated a portion of their portfolios to spot cryptocurrencies at other firms have shared an eagerness to bring those assets to Schwab alongside their existing investments and our banking capabilities. We plan to launch spot crypto in 2026, starting with Bitcoin and Ethereum. We’ll launch this offer the Schwab way—with the powerful combination of education, research, risk management, and service, all at great value.

If investor preferences shift to transacting more heavily on the blockchain, the firms that meet client needs while furthering the safety, security, and trust of the financial markets will be the ones that succeed.

4 - The new expectations of the next generation

The behaviors of younger investors are diverging sharply from those of prior generations, presenting an incredible opportunity to earn their confidence and trust. Young investors are entering markets earlier and more actively than any generation before them. Industry research shows Gen Zers are 45% more likely to start investing by age 21 compared to Millennials.⁴

We see these trends playing out at Schwab, where, in 2025, the average age of new-to-firm retail clients was in the 30s. They’re turning to us because we’re meeting them in the channels where they are, and we have the platforms, tools, education, coaching, expertise, and service they need to help them succeed.

Most invest thoughtfully—approximately one third of the financial plans we created last year were for retail investors under 40. Yet the youngest generation of investors is also being inundated with the message that investing and gambling are the same thing. Those who are sending this message make the experience look and feel like a casino, emphasizing how fun it is to place bets on nearly anything, while almost never mentioning the significant risks involved. This doesn’t create wealth over time—it destroys it. Statistics are clear: Fewer than 5% of online sports gamblers withdraw more money from their gambling apps than they deposit, and data show that in states where gambling has been legalized, there is an associated deterioration of credit scores and a rise in bankruptcies.

For those who understand the risks, responsible gambling can be a form of entertainment. But there is a bright line between placing a bet on a football game, or a player’s performance in that game, and investing to achieve better outcomes over the long term.

To be clear, there are investors and traders who use speculative vehicles successfully as part of their overall investing and trading plans. We serve these individuals at Schwab every day, where we see sophisticated traders executing high-probability and defined-risk strategies. Importantly, these active traders understand their strategies work over time, though not every time—and their approach to trading aligns to their individual goals and risk tolerances.

As the line between investing and gambling became increasingly blurred throughout 2025 at some brokerages, there were times when there was a lot of pressure to bring prediction markets to our clients. While we may someday offer prediction markets focused on financial events, the demand simply isn’t there today. Instead, more than 90% of prediction markets volume is in sports gambling. And gambling—even if someone tries to call it trading or investing—is in direct opposition to our mission. Over the long term, the gambler loses and their financial dreams evaporate.

As an industry, we have a responsibility to help all generations understand what investing is and what it is not. At Schwab, we’ll continue to provide investors with the education, resources, and tools to help them accumulate wealth over the long term. We will double down on educating Americans about the tried-and-true power of investing, in part by continuing to build momentum around National Investing Day, which we launched in May 2025.

The firms that help their clients succeed in achieving better financial outcomes, through market cycles, will be the ones who win the confidence and trust of future generations of investors.

Our Through Clients’ Eyes strategy and the central question we’ve asked ourselves throughout our history—“Is this good for investors?”—will anchor how we evolve while staying true to our mission.

Delivering for clients and stockholders in 2026 and beyond

Markets change. Investor expectations and preferences evolve. What remains consistent is our commitment to helping our clients in their financial lives.

Looking ahead, we are continuing to invest in our capabilities, technology, and client experience to meet evolving investor needs while delivering across four focus areas:

Growth: With nearly $12 trillion in assets and more than 46 million client accounts, doing more for our clients is as important a source of growth as acquiring new clients. In 2026, we’ll deepen relationships and continue to deliver capabilities that will help investors achieve better financial outcomes.

Scale and Efficiency: We’ll focus on making it easier for investors to do business with Schwab while investing in our efficiency.

The Brilliant Basics: We’ll strive to delight clients in every interaction they have at Schwab.

Our People: We’ll continue to foster our unique service-oriented culture while retaining and attracting the best team in the industry.

It is a privilege to work alongside 33,000 colleagues who bring their best to our clients each day with a simple goal: to help them achieve their financial dreams. We are here to help people get invested and stay invested, so they’re empowered to pay off their college loans, buy their first house, afford the experiences that are meaningful to them, thrive in retirement, and leave a legacy for their families. This work makes a real difference in people’s lives. It creates wealth over the long term and benefits individuals, families, communities, and society as a whole.

If we continue striving to delight our clients in every interaction, offer exceptional value with unmatched service, and remain innovative in helping investors achieve better outcomes, I am confident we will also continue delivering attractive financial returns for stockholders over time.

Thank you for being a stockholder. We will continue to work hard to earn your trust and reward your investment.

Warmly,