Charles Schwab's incoming chief executive officer, Rick Wurster, said the firm is looking to offer spot cryptocurrency trading once U.S. regulations make doing so easier — something that's more likely once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
"We will get into spot crypto when the regulatory environment changes, and we do anticipate that it will change, and we're getting ready for that eventuality," Wurster, currently Schwab's president, said in a Bloomberg Radio interview Thursday.
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Competition for retail investors' dollars has intensified since the pandemic and even more so since the U.S. presidential election, which spurred the "Trump trade" and its explosion of market activity. Schwab has long been in the space, alongside Fidelity Investments and Interactive Brokers Group, and they face challenges from newer firms such as Robinhood Markets Inc. and Webull. Both upstarts and incumbents have competed to roll out new product offerings for investors.
Cryptocurrency has played a part in that competition. Schwab, for example, currently offers crypto-linked exchange-traded funds and crypto futures.
"Crypto has certainly caught many's attention, and they've made a lot of money doing it," Wurster said. "I have not bought crypto, and now I feel silly."
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Wurster said he's not planning on investing in crypto for the time being, but he supports Schwab clients who wish to do so.
Schwab is facing a leadership change at the start of the year as Walt Bettinger cedes the CEO role to Wurster. Bettinger turns 65 next year and has led Schwab since 2008, and Wurster's been with Schwab since 2016 and president since 2021.
Also in Thursday's interview, Wurster said artificial intelligence is likely to have a substantial impact on the wealth-management business.
"It used to be that 60,000 times a month, we would have a phone rep spend more than three minutes searching for a piece of information to answer a client question," he said. "Now we have built an AI capability that finds that information in seconds."
