Schwab reveals US$53 billion in new client assets in March, seeking to calm investors

CHARLES Schwab’s top executives said core net new client assets hit US$53 billion in March, a month that rocked the company as turmoil engulfed the broader banking sector.

The March flows were the second-highest for that month in the firm’s history, its founder and namesake Charles Schwab and chief executive officer Walt Bettinger said in a statement on Thursday (Apr 6). They’ve been seeking to assuage concerns about Schwab’s outlook after investor attention turned to ballooning unrealised losses in its financial statements.

Investors dumped shares of Schwab, which lost more than 37 per cent of their value in the first three months of the year — making it Schwab’s worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis.

“While the first quarter was a challenging time, for sure, reflecting negative investor sentiment, ongoing interest rate hikes, and regional banking turmoil, Schwab’s client-centric growth model remains firmly intact and is performing well,” Schwab and Bettinger wrote in their statement.

Though Schwab is known largely for its brokerage, the company’s bank operations are pivotal to its health.

Schwab’s bank — one of the country’s largest — faces another problem as interest rates spike. Investors looking for higher returns on idle cash are increasingly seeking out products like money market funds, where they can earn much more interest than what’s on offer in other types of Schwab cash accounts. Schwab and Bettinger referenced that behaviour in their note.

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“That trend eventually reaches a plateau,” the executives wrote, adding that at Schwab investors tend to keep 5-10 per cent of their overall assets at the company in easily accessible “transactional cash”.

Schwab reports first-quarter results on Apr 17. BLOOMBERG