Chief Information Officer
Charles Schwab Corp.
[PNR]
For Brad Peterson, who heads Charles Schwab Corp.’s Schwab Technology Services, the future is shaping up to be both social and mobile. San Francisco–based Schwab has been hiring talent away from the likes of EBay and Google to develop new products and client channels along these trendy lines. “We’re modernizing how people think of their financial services,” says Peterson, 52, who came to the company in 1996 to help build an Internet trading platform. He left in 2000 for Internet investment bank Epoch Partners, moving to EBay in 2003 and returning to Schwab in 2008. In May, Schwab launched iPhone and Android applications that take in deposits using the smartphone camera as an image-processing device. “We happen to have the only integrated mobile bank and brokerage offering,” says Schwab’s chief information officer, who has a BS in systems science and economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MS in management studies from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Schwab’s retirement group has undercut competitors by offering commission-free exchange-traded funds and developing a new 401(k) platform that couples index mutual funds and ETFs with advice for clients. In March, Schwab introduced enhancements for active traders and agreed to purchase Chicago-based brokerage OptionsXpress for about $1 billion. For the 6,000 independent advisers in its network, the firm is in the process of building Schwab Intelligent Integration to more seamlessly connect the multiple technology solutions in their offices.
