commissions from advice . It created the whole innovation of the independent financial advisor , which are very big and fast-growing . We hold , I think , $ 1.5 trillion for advisors . It is a massive business . I don ’ t know what Joe ’ s numbers are , but they ’ re larger than ours I am sure .
Together , we were able to create for them a business that was never possible before because Wall Street wanted to control everything . So our brand of mavericks helped , I think , in many ways to create a new democracy in investing . It is in my mind proof that competition is a major source of wonderful and highly-useful information and innovation . Joe and others like him have led a modern revolution of access and participation . That is something we all must continue to help Americans to reach the [ goal of ] financial security . It is a desperate thing out there right now . I won ’ t go into those numbers , but they need our help right now . I think that is why we are in business , because of that issue .
I now want to introduce Fred Tomcyzk , who was the CEO [ of TD Ameritrade ] more recently , now retired , who is going to say a few kind words about Joe .
FRED TOMCZYK
Former President / CEO TD Ameritrade
It ’ s pretty special to be at an event tonight honoring two people I would say who frankly don ’ t get enough credit for what they ’ ve done to change the face of financial services in this country . In 1975 , when the
SEC decided to deregulate brokerage commissions , none of the established firms in the industry thought it would amount to anything . Who would risk cannibalizing their business by cutting prices in the oligopoly that existed at the time ? It took people like Chuck [ Schwab ] and Joe Ricketts , and people like Rodger Riney , who I see here tonight , from Scottrade , to see the enormous opportunity and to invest in it . These people built an entirely new industry on the premise that the average American deserved the opportunity to save for and invest in their financial future .
Joe Ricketts is a man who wanted to start a nice local business when he started out . He ’ d been working for Dean Witter ; he had clients , friends and family members who wanted more flexibility in their investing . They wanted to be able to just buy or sell a stock , without having to talk to a stock broker and pay high commissions . They wanted the freedom to just make a trade or transaction or investment . They wanted something more plain vanilla . Not unlike the generic canned vegetables that he saw his wife Marlene buying on the budget he had to feed the growing family . So he took a risk — the biggest risk of his life he would say — and would invest $ 12,500 into an idea he had . Anybody that knows Joe knows he has lots of ideas .
That idea , today , has grown into a top financial services brand worth more than $ 25 billion . But it wasn ’ t always easy . The early years were hard . Joe , Chuck and other discounters were small fish compared to the enormous wire house firms . And they needed to find a way to break through .
Now Joe is an ideas man . He ’ s always been fascinated by technology and the potential it has to make our ideas easier and more meaningful . Many would tell you that he had more ideas in those early years than he had resources to carry them out .
I just want to talk about one . In the mid- ’ 80s he had an idea for offering trades via touch tone phone . Building it , he thought , would bring scale to the company and greater speed to the client , putting his retail investors more on par with the professionals on Wall Street . Now Joe went to his management team and his board and talked to them about that idea , and they all told him it was a bad idea . He did focus groups with clients , and they told him it was a bad idea . But Joe had a feeling in his gut that this was an idea that was bigger than anything they could imagine at the time , so he bucked convention and invested millions of dollars into that idea .
The funny thing was that all of Joe ’ s research turned out to be correct . His clients didn ’ t want touch tone trading , but another audience did . And these were investors who came to Joe and embraced his new offering and took it one step further , buying automated dialers to enter trades more rapidly than their fingers could push buttons . And that gave birth to the retail active trader .
Now Joe has been successful in business and in life because he ’ s always been an innovator and a builder . He ’ s always had ideas and lots of curiosity . And like all entrepreneurs he ’ s restless — an eternal optimist — and he constantly encourages those around him to push for something better . He was an early adopter of online trading , even going so far as to buy the company that did it first . He poured all of his profits into growing his business and into technology and into marketing and breaking with convention by daring to inject humor into financial advertising . He believed that if you could give everyday Americans the same information and access to Wall Street that professionals had , and you taught them how to use it , there would be nothing to stand between them and their financial futures .
And he delivered . TD Ameritrade has helped tens of millions of Americans invest in a better tomorrow . Today it serves more than seven million client accounts , holding nearly $ 800 billion in assets . All of this was possible because Joe believed , contrary to Wall Street opinion , that retail investors were actually smart and capable , if you armed them with the right information . His goal was to empower them .
Now this enthusiasm and zest for life that Joe continues to have has led to countless pursuits beyond TD Ameritrade . He ’ s been involved in numerous philanthropic causes . And one he ’ s particularly proud of is the Opportunity Education Foundation , which has touched the lives of 500,000 students attending nearly 1,000 schools in 11 developing countries . And , of course , he and his family brought the World Series championship to the Chicago Cubs for the first time in 108 years . These are all passion projects to Joe — things he ’ s
www . MoAF . org | Winter 2017 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 13