Walter W. Bettinger II

Walter W. Bettinger II

Co-Chairman and CEO at Charles Schwab
Biography:

Walter W. Bettinger II serves as Co-Chairman and CEO for Charles Schwab which is headquartered in Westlake, Texas.

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Key Statements

"To me, one of the big barriers to ESG taking on a broader role in the flows is bringing the cost down. I'm a little concerned that what I see in the early days of ESG is it's just another way to convince people to pay more. And we all know every dollar paid in fees is a dollar less in the pocket of the people whose money this is or they're investing for. So could technology solve that? I think what's going to happen is you're going to see some large competitors with significant asset management arms offering ESG products at price points that rival that for market cap weighted indexing and then we'll really see what starts to unfold. But as long as the price points are significant, I think it's going to impede the growth. The challenge in the indexing on the ESG side is that everybody's definition of ESG is different. So if we come out with an ESG index ETF that charges five basis points, that's great and that is tremendously disruptive to the active folks doing ESG. But what if in our criteria that we're using, it doesn't match the criteria someone else wants. So to me, that's part of the dilemma in getting ESG growth up to a meaningful scale."