In a move foreshadowed for months, Schwab has fired another, as yet unofficial, number of employees in its latest round of layoffs.
RIABiz and the Wall Street Journal both reported Monday evening that as many as 2,000 employees were being laid off in a year-end cost-reduction previously alluded to in an August notice to the SEC.
The Journal piece referenced an unnamed source as having seen an internal email referencing the cuts.
A WealthManagement.com source, who is a former Schwab employee but who did not want to go on the record, said that no internal memos had circulated, rather managers had one-on-one phone-calls or meetings with those affected by the cuts.
Even as laudatory posts and photos of Schwab's latest national IMPACT conference, which concluded last week, continued to populate advisory- and wealth management-related feeds on LinkedIn, a Schwab spokesperson emailed the following statement on Tuesday regarding the layoffs:
"In July, we shared our intent to take certain steps to remove cost and complexity from our organization. These steps include some changes to our real estate footprint, streamlining our operating model, and staffing reductions, largely in non-client-facing areas. We are now in the process of sharing organizational changes with employees. While these steps are necessary to ensure Schwab remains a highly competitive and efficient company well into the future, they nonetheless impact people personally. This is a difficult day for our firm, and our priority is ensuring that all employees are treated with care and the utmost respect. Out of respect for our employees and the ongoing notification process, we will refrain from making further comments."
Hundreds of layoffs were announced among TD Ameritrade Institutional employees, including several senior executives, the day before Schwab's Impact conference in October 2020; another round followed in May of 2021.
Over the Labor Day Weekend in early September, Schwab migrated more than 7,000 advisor firms, 3.6 million client accounts and $1.3 trillion in assets from TD Ameritrade's accounting system to its own. Completion of that migration and the merger of the two firms had been ongoing for more than three years, having been first announced in Nov. 2019.
This is an evolving story, and will be updated with additional developments.