CNBC Money Movers with Schwab CEO Rick Wurster, July 18, 2025

Sara Eisen: We’ve got a lot to talk about now in the CNBC exclusive with Charles Schwab CEO Rick Wurster. Rick, welcome back. It's good to have you. 

Rick Wurster: Sara, nice to see you. 

Sara Eisen: So the double-digit growth, new assets of $80 billion dollars, double-digit trading commissions. What was the primary driver this quarter?  

Rick Wurster: I think it was how we delivered for clients. This was a quarter in which markets went down. Clients were nervous. We saw the two highest trading days we've ever had at Charles Schwab in April, we had our highest call volumes that we've ever seen, and it was a quarter in which our award winning platforms, our service, our advice, the insights that we provide all came to bear for the client to help them get to where they need to be in their financial life. So that's what stood out for me in the first quarter. And the second thing that stood out was our growth, we grew $80 billion dollars of net new assets. We had $43 billion dollars in June, which was up 46% over the last June. And our financial results followed with record earnings, record revenue. The primary thing was that we delivered for clients in the second quarter. 

Sara Eisen: Where do those new assets come from? Is it from traditional retail? Is it from financial advisor assets? 

Rick Wurster: The nice thing is we see our growth across the spectrum of channels. Our advisor channel continues to be a strong source of growth, as does our retail channel. And we saw our retail net new assets go up 50% in the first half of the year versus the first half of last year. And that's nice to see. And some of that's coming from our legacy Ameritrade clients who have now been with Schwab for a little while. And the more time they spend with us, the more they're telling us they like us, and the more they're bringing assets to us. So it's just a strong quarter across the board in both our advisor channel, our retail channel, and in our workplace channel, where we had record net new assets as well. 

Sara Eisen: I remember you and your predecessor, Walt, every quarter, I had to ask about this cash sorting issue, I mean, it looked like the transactional cash isn't as big of a focus for investors right now. Is that issue over with?

Rick Wurster: I think that issue is over with. We've paid down our wholesale borrowings. 75% of it's gone. We're down to $28 billion dollars of wholesale funding. We've seen a real acceleration in our earnings from the paydown of the liability side of our balance sheet. As we look forward, we see continued earnings acceleration because now it will be an asset side of the balance sheet story, as our bonds mature and we're able to invest some at higher yields, and we're able to lend to our clients. More importantly, what we see is growth in what we can do for clients in the ways we serve them, and we see our clients' satisfaction at all-time highs, and we're thrilled about that.  

Carl Quintanilla: Rick, it feels like we're really in a moment where, at least at the household level, the retail level, like the picture of your assets, is changing. When we're talking about the White House, maybe allowing retirement funds into private investments, when we're talking about maybe letting crypto assets be part of your mortgage application. I wonder how you're thinking about that psychology changing at the household level for retail investors? 

Rick Wurster: Well, for 50 years, the reason we've been successful is because we've innovated on behalf of retail clients. We've always tried to find a more efficient, more cost-effective, and easier way for clients to get access to everything that they want to access. And our hope with alternatives in retail and potentially in the defined contribution space, along with crypto, is that those innovations take us forward in serving retail clients.  

Carl Quintanilla: Is there a space for consumer protection, so investors don't get burned, we don't have repeats of past episodes? Or do you think the guardrails are sufficient and that investors at this point have seen the markets been democratized for so long that people are street smart, even on their own?   

Rick Wurster: I think investor protection around crypto is critical. We have built up the most transparent, most efficient, and liquid capital markets in the world. If we move forward with tokenization and crypto, we want to make sure that as those innovations take place, that we move forwards, not backwards, and we don't get around important investor protection rules that make sure execution is done well to protect against money laundering and the like. And so we're all for any innovation that creates a better environment for retail clients. And customer protection is going to be really important as all these new innovative ideas come to market.   

Sara Eisen: What is your crypto strategy, Rick? As we are set to see the president sign the GENIUS bill today, into law.   

Rick Wurster: Well, our clients are invested in crypto today. In fact, our clients hold more than 20% of the exchange-traded product crypto in the entire industry, so they're invested. It's still only about $25 billion out of the $10.8 trillion that our clients have. So it's still relatively small. But our clients own a big part of the market. We also anticipate launching Bitcoin and Ether sometime soon so that our clients have access to that. And we think that will be an acceleration of our growth, because what we hear from many of our clients are that they have 98% of their wealth here at Schwab, and they might hold a percent, or 2%, at some digital native firm to hold their crypto. And they really want to bring it back to Schwab because they trust us. They want it to sit alongside their other assets. And so we think we'll see some real growth when we bring those to market.   

Sara Eisen: So you would be directly competing with them with someone like a Coinbase on that front?   

Rick Wurster: Absolutely, if they're buying their crypto at Coinbase, we would love to see them bring their crypto back to Schwab.   

Sara Eisen: It gets to another question I had which is Robinhood. I know the CEO is on later and they've been big in crypto. How much overlap is there, and how much of a competitive threat are those sort of brokers that cater more to the younger, more tech savvy crowd?   

Rick Wurster: Our big focus as a firm is helping clients in their financial life get to where they want to be, to live out their financial dreams. We have always stood behind clients to bring our capabilities, our platforms, our service, and our advice to market. And we do that across our 400 branches in communities across our country. We do it through our 10,000 licensed professionals. We are working with a client base that values the breadth of what we can do. And in that regard, we think we're set apart from the competition.   

Sara Eisen: What are you seeing right now, generally from the retail investor, you mentioned that they had the confidence during the April volatility around tariffs to be in the market, what does sentiment look like right now?   

Rick Wurster: Clients have been persistently engaged and have returned to being bullish. In early April, there was some nervousness. We saw more calls in early April than we'd ever seen with clients asking a very simple question: “What do I do now? I was saving to buy my first house. Do I need to sell everything? I'm going to retire in two years, what do I do now?” And I think we've since then seen markets rebound. We've seen the margin grow, and we've seen the confidence of our clients grow along with it, so engaged with markets and more bullish than we've seen.   

Carl Quintanilla: Which is one of the most fascinating turns for anyone who's followed markets for a while. You know, we think back to the diamond hands of a couple of years ago and the chase for meme stocks. And even though those got corrected, Rick, if you could make an argument that earlier in the year it was the retail investor who was the smart money, and it was the institutions that freaked out.  

Rick Wurster: Carl, I think you're absolutely right. I think sometimes retail investors get a bad rep, but we see many that take a very long-term view. We talk about the ups and downs of markets. When you look at a long-term chart of stocks, the broad market indices over 20 years, some of these periods that in the moment seem really volatile and scary, you can't even see on a 10, or 15, or 20-year stock chart. It's why we continue to remind our clients that there's all these new ways of investing in new forms of investing, but a really powerful one that has stood the test of time is being invested in equities and taking a longer-term horizon. That's really worked out for clients.  

Sara Eisen: I've asked every bank CEO that we've had on this week, regional, big bank, or financial services company, what the new regulatory backdrop means for you. And I am curious how you're thinking about that, and whether M&A is on the table, and how else you might be thinking about capital? 

Rick Wurster: Well, the regulatory environment, I think, one of the things that's been under-focused on as it relates to the Federal Reserve is the appointment of Miki Bowman. And I think we've seen the Fed really focused on high-level issues around safety and soundness, and that's where they're focusing their time and attention. And I think that's great for the banking sector, and it's great for consumers in our industry. As it relates to M&A, at our firm over the last five years, we've done five big deals, and they've all added significant value to our clients and to our shareholders. And so certainly we keep an open mind, but we also know that doing big deals, like Ameritrade, crowds out other investments that we'd like to make. So we like to keep a high bar, but we're always open to ideas for anything that we can do to bring new capabilities to our clients that are going to help them be better off in their financial life.   

Sara Eisen: Well, it's really good to talk to you about all the hot topics out there, Rick. Thank you very much, including your stock and your earnings. We appreciate it.   

Rick Wurster: Thank you, Sara. Always nice.

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