Schwab’s CEO says his company will attract new customers by building wealth instead of meme coins and gambling
Charles Schwab ( SCHW ) CEO Rick Wurster says his company’s stock deserves a higher valuation.
The investment services giant aims to close that gap by incorporating AI into its tried-and-true wealth-building recipe while avoiding the so-called “transaction business” smaller startups are running on.
“We’re in the results business,” said Wurster, who spoke to Yahoo Finance from Schwab’s Westlake, Texas, headquarters. The brokerage does not plan to add meme coins, prediction markets, or an AI-powered currency filter, he added.
In February, Schwab began to address investor concerns that he might end up on the wrong side of the AI era. Stock drama ensued after a smaller competitor unveiled an AI model for tax planning. The market reaction of walloped wealth management stocks. During the week, Schwab’s stock fell from $107 to $94. It’s down 16% from that high to $90.
“Some are in the business of getting people to participate, come to the stage to bet and do it regularly, in ways that may not benefit them all their wealth. That’s how they make money,” said Wurster.
Schwab can avoid the brokerage business as it draws a much smaller share of revenue from trading compared to its younger competitors. “I would think it’s difficult to sustain that level of activity over time … if your goal is to make people better off, to call gambling an asset class alongside stocks, bonds, commodities, I think is incredibly misleading and absurd.”
The 53-year-old CEO, who has been in his role for a year and a half, prefers compounding returns like Warren Buffett to meme stock mania like Roaring Kitty. But his company is no longer the one that Charles Schwab launched 50 years ago as a budding competitor to Wall Street’s biggest dealers.
Instead, Schwab is currently the largest publicly traded company in the country, managing $12.6 trillion in client assets in more than 47 million client accounts. It is now battling today’s fintech startups and other big banks in a new era of deregulation and AI advancements.
At Schwab’s investor day earlier this month, Wurster and the team laid out big growth plans, raising their 2026 revenue forecast by 4.5% to $27.3 billion to $27.5 billion, compared to $24 billion in 2025.
Along with a strong push for lending, wealth advisory, and workplace offerings, Wurster sees AI as a big enabler of that growth. Schwab has an AI model coming later this year that will be the “front door” for its clients and advisors.
In a demo at the investor day, the Chat-GPT-like model provided portfolio-relevant market updates such as ‘what does the new Fed chair mean for my portfolio?’ and ‘I also have equity in the company, are those involved?’
