Schwab blocks AI agents that log in for clients, and opens a side door for Claude

On October 15, 2026, Charles Schwab held its Fall Business Update call alongside its third-quarter earnings. Between the record numbers, CEO Rick Wurster laid out how the firm will deal with AI agents. We read the earnings release filed with the SEC and the full call transcript, and kept to what they say.

Three routes, one blocked

Wurster described three ways AI reaches Schwab clients. The first is a block. In his words: "we are blocking unauthorized agents who try to log in on behalf of clients. It is not a safe way for our clients to access Schwab, and we are blocking it to protect clients and our firm." He added that he gets a daily report on how often agents are blocked, and that it is "not many."

The second route is Charley, Schwab's own conversational assistant. The earnings release says Schwab introduced Charley as an AI-powered assistant giving US retail clients conversational access to Schwab's tools and insights. On the call, Wurster said it will be available to all clients in the coming months, uses a constellation of underlying third-party language models, and today is mainly a source of information and synthesis that can handle some administrative tasks, such as changing an address or naming a trusted contact.

The third route is a controlled connection for a client's own model. Schwab will let clients connect their language models to its MCP servers. MCP, the Model Context Protocol, is an open standard for linking AI applications to outside data and tools. Wurster said Schwab has started a pilot for traders to connect to that layer through the model of their choice, beginning with Claude, with more clients and models to follow in the coming months.

The guardrails

The limits are specific. Schwab says it controls the authentication experience and can limit access to the riskiest actions. Asked directly, Wurster said: "We do not allow them to move money because we think there is too much risk there to the client and to the firm." Neither the release nor the call lists everything a connected model may do beyond that, so the full permission set is unknown.

For advisers, the release says Schwab partnered with Anthropic to bring Claude for Financial Advisors to the independent registered investment advisers it serves, and Wurster called Schwab the first RIA custodian included in that product. The call puts Schwab's adviser platform at more than 16,000 firms.

What Schwab says about usage

Two usage claims are worth flagging because they come from the CEO on the call, not from a published dataset. First, Wurster said the number of clients trading through AI models and APIs "has doubled in about the last six months." He did not give a base number, so a doubling could be a small group becoming a slightly larger small group. Second, he said clients who connect models hold more cash than other active traders, and argued that more AI use goes with more cash, not less. No data was shown for either claim.

He also said Schwab does not plan to build trading strategies for clients. His reason: if there were a magic recipe to outperform markets through quantitative analysis, far more money would already be in quantitative strategies. Schwab wants to supply education, research and support instead.

The quarter, for context

The release reports core net new assets of $190.4 billion, up 38% from the third quarter of 2025, and net revenues of a record $7.2 billion, up 17%.¹ Total client assets were $13.33 trillion and clients opened 1.2 million brokerage accounts. The call transcript we read carries a transcription slip on adjusted earnings per share, so we use the release figure of $1.69 adjusted and $1.62 on a GAAP basis.

Why this is a business decision as well as a security one

Wurster said the firm wants control over authentication and the experience. Press coverage of the call, including American Banker and Barron's, frames the policy as security-driven, and some commentators see an effort to protect the broker's cash business. We have not verified that second reading and the CEO did not say it. What the call does show is that sweep cash and client engagement were central topics, and that Wurster argued AI use is lifting engagement.

What it shows and what it does not

The practical takeaway for anyone building agents on top of brokerage accounts is that screen-scraping logins are on the way out at this firm, while sanctioned connections with supervised permissions are on the way in. That matches a wider pattern of finance firms choosing who holds the keys rather than banning AI outright. It does not tell us how many clients use the pilot, how fast it will expand, or what an approved model can read.