This year’s Schwab IMPACT 2022 conference returned to an in-person format for the first time in two years due to Covid and hosted 5,000 live attendees at the Colorado Conference Center, with somewhere around 2,500 of those attendees being advisors.
What’s even more significant with this year’s IMPACT was that the this was the first time in conference history of bringing together advisors on both the Schwab and TD Ameritrade custodial platforms under the same roof since TD Ameritrade was acquired by Schwab back in 2019.
For both reasons above, there was a great deal of hype, enthusiasm, and everything else in-between that had been building up amongst the two, soon-to-be one, Schwab/TD Ameritrade ecosystem leading up to this year’s conference.
While there has been very good reporting on the speakers and key themes discussed at this mega-conference, we asked Institute Founding member Kristian Borghesan of FutureVault — a leading provider of secure document exchange and Digital Vault solutions for the financial services and wealth management industry — to provide us with a conference participant review from his perspective as a FinTech CMO.
Key Takeaways From The Schwab IMPACT 2022 Conference by Kristian Borghesan, CMO, FutureVault
At the beginning of November, our team here at FutureVault exhibited at Schwab Advisor Services' annual IMPACT conference in Denver, Colo. Widespread excitement and contagious energy filled the conference center over the course of the three days and not once did this level of energy dissipate or fizzle out.
The energy levels were high, the people were amazing, the keynotes and presentations were thought-provoking and rich with insight, the events and socials were buzzing, and most importantly, there was optimism and encouragement for a bright future ahead.
While there are many important takeaways, there are a few that stand out more than others and areas that really seemed to “click” and resonate with the majority.
1. The Schwab and TD Ameritrade integration will be complete by Labor Day 2023. Charles Schwab’s acquisition of TD Ameritrade has been the single largest story and development in the RIA custodial space in the last few years. The deal, which was announced in late 2019 and officially closed in the Fall of 2020, brings together two multi-trillion-dollar RIA custodians and their ecosystems, creating a massive integration process to transition advisors and clients from the TD platform to Schwab.
This multi-trillion-dollar integration of the two platforms makes Schwab the largest RIA custodian, by a landslide. To put it into perspective, the two platforms are responsible for more than half of all assets managed by Registered Investment Advisors.
And now, the complete integration of the Schwab and TD Ameritrade platforms and ecosystems has a final date — Labor Day 2023. This means that the transition for advisors currently on TD Ameritrade Institutional over to Schwab Advisor Services will likely take place over the 2023 Labor Day weekend.
An applauded moment during the IMPACT opening remarks was when Schwab’s Head of Advisor Services, Bernie Clark, confirmed with the audience (advisors) that Schwab does not intend to implement a custodial fee that some other RIA custodial competitors have been considering amidst market headwinds.
While there is certainly lots that can happen from now until the Labor Day 2023 weekend, the industry will certainly be playing close attention to the progression and eventual completion of the Schwab and TD Ameritrade integration.
2. Personalization continues to be a critical theme for advisors. The significance of the topic, or rather the theme, of Personalization continues to be echoed across the country and throughout conference halls everywhere.
During the opening ceremony and remarks, Bernie Clark and Walt Bettinger signaled just how significant personalization is and how this "theme" is central to everything in modern-day wealth management. Bettinger even called and compared personalization to that of a freight train for Advisors.
Meaning this shift in consumer behavior and new client expectations are coming at Advisors faster than many may realize and/or acknowledge. This is very telling of where the industry needs to go and where it is very evidently headed.
The Digital Client Experience, and Personalization as an extension, needs to be prioritized across every single level of the organization. Plain and simple.
This is no longer an Advisor-only duty and obligation, but rather an organization-wide strategic narrative that simply must be baked into the DNA of modern financial services and wealth management firms.