Charles Schwab

www.schwab.com

Hoping to cash in on the Internet stock hysteria, Charles Schwab (San Francisco, CA) released figures comparing its e-commerce impact to other Internet players. Schwab has seen its market value fall by $2.5 billion (25% decline) in the past 90 days while AOL, Dell and Amazon.com gained a combined $35 billion.

Source: Schwab, Online Banking Report, 6/20/98

Despite its industry-high price of $29.95 per trade, Schwab continues to have more online users than any financial services company, bank or brokerage. As of May 31, Schwab reported 1.74 million active online accounts, an increase of 500,000 compared to 1.24 million at the beginning of the year. If they were to continue that pace, its account total would be 2.8 million by year-end.

Source: company reports

Schwab’s interbank transfer (demo) screen at www.schwab.com/Trading/demo/html/mainmenu.html Choose an account, enter the amount and date in the screen below and press enter.

MoneyLink screen #2.

In a sign of things to come, Schwab is one of just a handful of major financial institutions that makes it simple and easy to transfer funds to and from other banks. Its MoneyLink Transfer feature allows users to establish current and future-dated transfers by simply checking a box, entering the dollar amount, date and pressing enter.

We understand why you might drag your feet on this, what’s the business case for making it easier to take money out of your bank? But five years from now every online banking program will offer this feature. It might pay off to be first, encouraging account consolidation with in-bound transfers.

Contact: Beth Sawi is EVP Electronic Brokerage, (415) 627-7000.