LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Charles R. Schwab: Customers
built 658 days ago
To reach the wealthy, Schwab purchased U.S. Trust, an old-line money manager. More recently, the broker introduced a stock-rating system and a private client business where customers could pay to meet face-to-face with an advisor. The company stepped up efforts to refer clients to a list of advisors.
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Schwab continues to bleed customers, losing 44,000 accounts in the second quarter. It now has a total of 7.5 million accounts. The number of trades has ... declined, to an average of 127,00 a day in June from 215,000 a day in January.
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Schwab's help and advice service has become the third "revolution." This consulting service targets customers at the opposite end of the investment spectrum from those who Schwab has historically served. These customers want financial planning and retirement planning advice from Schwab. And Schwab is obliged to provide it.
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The board believes giving the helm to the still-beloved Chuck Schwab will allow the organization to heal. To leverage Schwab’s conspicuously indifferent administrative skills, the company is crafting an “Office of the CEO” comprised of three or four senior managers. The goal? To revive Schwab’s core business of providing high-quality, reasonably priced trading services for retail customers and financial advisers while adjusting its cost structure to allow it to serve these customers at a profit. An immediate issue is how best to unload Soundview and the company’s market-maker operations, as well as US Trust, the private bank that Pottruck bought near the peak of the bubble in 2000 for $3.2 billion.
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Early on, she and her colleagues ... worked hard to end resistance from Schwab's branch staff, who felt threatened by the online unit. The company sent frequent E-mails to employees highlighting the rapid growth in online trading. And the branch staff was trained first, so they, not the tech staff, trained customers to use online services. Lepore says that ensured that ''they felt like part of the change.''
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The discount brokerage firm that Mr. Schwab, 66, founded 30 years ago holds nearly $1 trillion in customer assets. It still has one of the most recognized brands in the financial services industry, analysts said.
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