Investing

Is Charles Schwab Actually A Bank?

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Charles Schwab Bank is a subsidiary of Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. The bank offers a variety of deposit products such as checking and savings accounts.

Charles Schwab Bank is a member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and an Equal Housing Lender.

Several Charles Schwab Bank products can be linked to your Schwab One brokerage account.

Charles Schwab Checking Account?

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The Schwab Bank Investor Checking account is a no-fee deposit account that you can open with no minimum deposit requirement.

Plus, you’d get the following benefits.

  • Unlimited ATM fee rebates worldwide
  • No foreign card transactions fees
  • Banking capabilities though Schwab Mobile

You can open a Schwab Investor Checking account by opening a Schwab One brokerage account. Moreover, you have the option between an individual account or a joint account.

Schwab Savings Account

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The Schwab Bank Investor Savings currently pays an interest rate of 0.48%. That rate is slightly lower than the national average of 0.58%.

However, Schwab doesn’t charge maintenance fees on its savings account and it doesn’t have any minimum balance requirements.

You’d also get the following perks with a Schwab Investor Savings account.

  • Linked debit card
  • Unlimited ATM fee reimbursements worldwide
  • Mobile check deposit capabilities
  • FDIC coverage up to the applicable limit

Charles Schwab Bank: The verdict

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Schwab is generally known for its brokerage services, commission-free stock and ETF trading and robust research tools for investments. So if you’re already a Schwab client and are satisfied with its services, opening other accounts through Charles Schwab Bank can be convenient – especially if you want to manage all your money in one place.

Deposit accounts at Charles Schwab Bank are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 per depositor, per FDIC-insured bank, per ownership category. Your brokerage account may have a “cash sweep” feature that moves uninvested cash in the account to accounts at partner banks. This may provide additional FDIC coverage since insurance applies per member bank. This means that if you have a checking account with Charles Schwab bank and uninvested money in your Schwab brokerage cash is sweped into another FDIC-insured bank, you could qualify for $500,000 in FDIC insurance coverage.

But because you need to open a brokerage account with Schwab before you’d get access to some banking products, you may want to explore its brokerage services to see if you’d also want to bank with Schwab.

Additional accounts you can open through Schwab include the following.

And while Schwab doesn’t directly offer mortgages, it provides home loans through Rocket Mortgage.

If you want to learn more about Schwab, check out our regularly-updated list of Charles Schwab guides, news and coverage.

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