SAN FRANCISCO - Charles Schwab & Co. announced Wednesday that it will provide administrative trustee services to independent investment advisers.
Schwab will offer the services - which became available Monday - through the institutional services division of New York-based U.S. Trust Corp., which Schwab bought in June. Schwab already provides trading and custody services to some 6,000 independent advisers nationwide, and has $243 billion of assets under management.
The investment advisers will continue to manage their clients' assets, while U.S. Trust will handle administrative functions such as dividend and interest collection, fiduciary accounting and record-keeping, and filing fiduciary tax returns.
A Schwab spokesman predicted that there would be great demand among the advisers for trust services, and cited this as a key reason for the U.S. Trust acquisition.
He declined to speculate on whether providing trust services would produce net new assets for Schwab, but said that separating trust duties would enable advisers to continue to manage assets after a client's death.
