Why Charles Schwab’s CEO strives for “less revenue per dollar.”
Corner Office from Marketplace
Marketplace
4.8 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 31 October 2018
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the dawn of the financial crisis, Walt Bettinger took over as president and CEO of Charles Schwab from the company’s founder and namesake. “It was an intense period. At that point in time, your actions weren’t likely to change the trajectory of your company,” Bettinger said. But under his leadership, he did change one of America’s largest banks, taking it to an even larger scale. With millions of new accounts holding trillions of dollars, the company has seen record growth and earnings. He sat down with us to explain why, despite this growth, his company makes less profit off every dollar invested than its competitors — and why he takes pride in that.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody. It's Kai Rizdahl. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Corner Office podcast. |
| 0:13.3 | Charles Schwab is one of the biggest banks in the country. Today, I'm talking with Walt Bettinger, the president and CEO of that company. |
| 0:20.2 | Ten years ago, Walt Bettinger took over the company from Mr. Schwab himself. |
| 0:25.4 | And now ten years later, he's grown the company, hit record numbers of clients and accounts, |
| 0:29.3 | and earnings are doing really well. |
| 0:30.8 | He has taken the company pretty far, especially considering the past decade in this economy. |
| 0:35.7 | But he did tell me that Charles Schwab makes a little bit less than its competitors do, and he is okay with that. |
| 0:41.2 | Should tell you here, full disclosure, his company is an underwriter of this program. |
| 0:45.3 | Here then is my conversation with Walt Bettinger, president, and CEO of Charles Schwab. |
| 0:50.9 | We're expecting you. |
| 0:52.3 | What do you have a seat? |
| 0:53.4 | Ready to go to work? |
| 0:56.1 | Well, Bentinger, welcome to the program. |
| 0:58.2 | Thanks a lot, Kai. |
| 0:59.1 | It's great to have the opportunity to spend time together. |
| 1:01.4 | As I noted in the introduction, you've been at this company 10 years, which means you took over 10 years ago in the middle of the worst financial crisis this country is seen in a generation or more. |
| 1:13.6 | What were those days like for a financial services company guy? |
| 1:17.6 | You know, at that point in time, there was very little that you could do. |
| 1:21.1 | The outcome that your company would experience as a result of that crisis was more the result of the decisions you made prior to, |
| 1:29.5 | prior to when you were deep in the middle of that crisis. |
| 1:32.2 | So were you going into work every day just kind of hanging on for the ride? |
| 1:36.7 | No, it wasn't quite like that. |
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