At Impact 2026 in Boston, InvestmentNews’ James Burton sits down with Julian Lopez, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Schwab Advisor Services. They discuss what Schwab offers advisors considering independence, and what the largest, private equity-backed RIAs need from their custodian.
Lopez says those firms want the “brilliant basics” done well, including account opening, money movement and trading, so they have the capacity to pursue growth. He notes that while enterprise firms still pursue inorganic growth, organic growth has become a higher priority. He also says many firms are using acquisitions as a talent strategy, not just an asset strategy.
00:00 - Julian Lopez
We don't have contracts. We don't have uh loans, forgivable loans, anything that holds them to us. We have to earn that relationship every single day. Most of them are using acquisition as a talent strategy, not just as an asset strategy.
00:15 - James Burton
Hello everyone, James Burton here from InvestmentNews at Impact 2026 in the wonderful city of Boston. Delighted to be joined by Julian Lopez, Head of Enterprise Solutions Group at Schwab. Julian, thanks for joining us.
00:35 - Julian Lopez
Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here.
00:46 - James Burton
For advisers who are thinking of going independent uh or in two minds or at that stage of their career, what's the appeal there? What can you offer those people?
01:00 - Julian Lopez
Yeah, it's such a good question. I mean, look, one of the great things about this industry, one of the most challenging things about this industry is the complexity that's out there. The enormous amount of solutions and options is pretty incredible. What we like to say is we try to simplify the complex within Advisor Prodirect. And so, we've studied over the last several decades the very best firms that are in our industry and that we have the pleasure of serving. They've created a blueprint that we then use as a framework and the foundation for how Advisor Prodirect operates. And so when we start with the basics of just uh creating a strategic plan, it's really simple, not always easy. And so if you're a new firm coming into this space and a first-time business owner, we really try to bring them the tools, the knowledge, and the resources to give them a shortcut to success a little bit faster.
01:46 - James Burton
Okay. Fantastic. You mentioned there the complexity of this industry.
01:50 - Julian Lopez
Yeah.
01:52 - James Burton
Uh now it was uh very uh noticeable to me that complexity uh trumps AUM size for example in what you do. So given uh the recent news of Fidelity for example introducing uh client asset minimums um how do you feel your message resonates uh versus imposing such minimums?
02:13 - Julian Lopez
Yeah it look we like to say that we like to meet advisers where they are. We don't bring them to our world we go to them. Um, the complexity of this business is very real. We serve 17,000 advisers and we would probably get 17,000 opinions around technology and growth strategies and different ways of finding success. Um, what we really focus on at the very high end of the of the AUM scale though is really meeting the advisers in the way that they're designing and thinking about their business on a go forward basis. And there's a little bit of an interesting dynamic and a differentiation. The enterprise clients are really well-resourced. They're backed by private equity. They have an enormous amount of data. They're the first firms that we're seeing go international. Uh and what they're looking for us to do is to help them make sure that the foundation of the business is as stable and as efficient as possible. That allows them the capacity to then go explore the opportunities in the landscape. But of every firm that we work with, there's a little bit of a variance in how they like to approach the market.
03:08 - James Burton
Yeah. Okay. The enterprise level clients. This is interesting. The big beasts if you like what is it that they demand or they need help with?
03:25 - Julian Lopez
The first thing that I would say is the technology integration and foundation. We really focus on we like to call the brilliant basics. Um it's the opening of accounts. It's the processing of money movement. It's the trading. Those elements have to be done exemplarily well for them to find the space to do the other work that they're really interested in. Um, so the technology and integration is really important. What they're looking for at that point in time is a way to partner on growth. If you talk to advisers in our benchmarking study, you'll find that over 87% will rank that as a top three priority. The enterprise firms are no different. They're very interested in growth. The difference is they're really seeking inorganic growth strategies as much as they're seeking organic growth. What we found lately is that the organic growth strategies have maybe become more important in their list of prioritization. And so now we're coming to them saying, "Hey, we should talk about what it means to grow organically. Let's talk about sales concepts. How do you take your financial consultants, your advisers that do such a good job of servicing clients and switch that to maybe thinking more acquisition focused, which then brings me to the last point, which is people development. Um, this is still a people business. They're looking for the talent. uh most of them are using acquisition as a talent strategy, not just as an asset strategy. And so they're constantly coming to us saying, "How do we develop our people? How do we uh begin to create the leadership of the future that we can lean on uh as a firm?"
04:42 - James Burton
Yeah. Fantastic. The custodian market uh feels, and correct me if I'm wrong, it feels like it's maybe the most competitive it's been for quite a while.
04:52 - Julian Lopez
Yeah.
04:55 - James Burton
what do you, what are advisers looking for? What are RIAs looking for in their custodian? Because it's probably evolved quite a lot of over recent years.
05:04 - Julian Lopez
It has. Um, look, I we believe that competition makes us better. Um, we like competition because it really brings us to the table every day. Finding new ways, better ways to work with our advisers. Our space is completely independent. We don't have contracts. We don't have uh loans, forgivable loans, anything that holds them to us. We have to earn that relationship every single day. And so the custodian of the future is going to be one that does all of the basic blocking and tackling of a business extraordinarily well, but they're also thought partners and how they should think about evolving their business. Where should we strategically place our bets? Where should we be banking on uh technology and innovation and how do we partner together to develop the people that need to serve more and more of the households that we're acquiring. And so our custodians our custodial responsibility is truly a custody plus the blocking and tackling is important but the consulting um the foresight and the understanding of the data that's driving this business is going to be what many of them are looking for today and tomorrow.
06:12 - James Burton
Curious the uh the M&A environment which is uh again another hot topic and something that is seemingly keeps gathering pace or doesn't seem to be slowing down. How does that impact Schwab and especially enterprise level? Yeah, you talked about the non-organic growth. So, you know, what do people what do people need from you? So, kind of in this environment of M&A.
06:33 - Julian Lopez
I will say that integration of the acquisitions is critically important. Uh so many of our firms have been successful in finding the inorganic growth strategies. Now, it's working on integrating those businesses to make them hum as a single entity. Um and that's really what they look for us to do. So when they go out and acquire a firm, whether they're already at Schwab or whether they're with another custodian or in a different location, they're looking for us to really bring a set of tools and a roadmap that helps bring that business closer integrated, closer aligned to the business that just acquired them. Uh, and that's where we can really bring a lot of insight and support to helping them do that. So they're going out and building the business and we're going to help them bring it all together to be even more efficient.
07:11 - James Burton
All right, Julian, thanks so much for your insight. I appreciate it.
07:18 - Julian Lopez
Appreciate you having me. And thanks for joining us on InvestmentNews. We'll see you next time.
