As a financial advisor, you can help your clients maximize their philanthropic impact and potentially minimize their taxes with a Schwab Charitable donor-advised fund account. Let’s look at how easy it is to open an account for a client.
Everything you need is available in Schwab Advisor Center. Simply login and go to Account Management. Under Digital Workflows, click Open and Fund an Account, and click Open Charitable Account at the far right under Other Digital Workflows.
Next, under Digital Account Open, select your master account. As an advisor with Schwab, you automatically have view-only privileges for Schwab Charitable accounts linked to your master account.
To open a core account with a selection of pre-screened competitive investment pools and no minimum contribution amount, you can proceed with the online application by clicking Next. Or, you can use PDF options with or without using DocuSign.
If your client will maintain a $250,000 minimum balance, you can open a professionally managed account, serve as the investment advisor, choose from a wider range of investments, and charge a management fee. To establish the professionally managed account for your client, you can use either the PDF forms or DocuSign options. If using the PDF options, you can get the Account Open form, the Investment Advisory Agreement required when opening a professionally managed account, and the Agency Agreement, required if your firm wants the optional authority to grant within a professionally managed account.
Want the most efficient way to enter your client’s information and obtain their approval? Use Digital Account Open for a core account. This also gives you the ability to save your work on the digital envelope, and return to the envelope to provide any details you may not have had when you first created the envelope.
After selecting Open Schwab Charitable Donor-Advised Fund, you will select the client or clients for this account and prepare documents, including advisor permissions, account name, individual successors and charitable beneficiaries, investment pool allocations, and contributions.
Then, you’ll review and send the digital envelope. Each signer has 15 days to act. An automatic reminder goes out 24 hours before the envelope expires. You can also resend the email to access the envelope at any time from the Envelopes in Progress page. If there are multiple signers, the reminder will go out to the next signer in the queue.
When the request is authorized by the client or all clients, you will receive an alert that there is a Digital Account Open package ready for review. You can review and submit this request to open the account. You will then see the new account number on your screen in approximately one minute. The account is now open.
You’ve taken the first step toward helping clients maximize the impact of their charitable giving. Once Schwab Charitable receives and processes your client’s contribution to the account, your client can recommend grants to charities or invest their account assets for potential tax-free growth.
If you have any questions, just ask. We’re here to help.