As firms and advisors that custody your clients' accounts at TD Ameritrade, we wanted to provide you an overview of CircleBlack’s preparations for the TD-Schwab conversion this upcoming Labor Day Weekend (Sept 2-4) and what to expect once the conversion is complete.
Our headline message is that once the conversion process is complete, when you log in to CircleBlack, your TD accounts will simply become Schwab Institutional accounts. That means when you click into an account in CircleBlack, you will have the full and continuous account history and performance data from when the account was at TD.
To that end, there will be no changes to your firm’s assets under management, no changes to your Account Code mappings, no changes to your households or account groups, no changes to your clients' Investor portal experiences, and no changes to how we send your account data to our integration partners. In effect, it will feel like you have had your accounts at Schwab for as long as you’ve had them at TD.
To provide this seamless transition to Schwab, the CircleBlack Data and Operations teams have been receiving and processing files from Schwab over the last two months that map your TD rep codes and accounts to Schwab’s masters and accounts. These mapping files form the foundation of the transition. We also map all the underlying position and security data to Schwab’s data format. We are finalizing our pre-conversion tests in a non-production environment to ensure the Schwab cutover runs as expected.
We know this conversion to Schwab has been a long time coming and challenging for firms. Our goal at CircleBlack is to make this transition as straightforward for you as possible. Below are some FAQs, and if you would like to schedule a call or ask us any questions directly, please reach out to CircleBlack’s Head of Customer Success, Matt Valkovic, at mvalkovic@circleblack.com.
FAQs
Q: When can I expect my accounts to show as Schwab accounts in CircleBlack?
A: On Saturday, September 2, after we process the final daily files from TD Ameritrade, we will execute our conversion process to convert account numbers, rep codes/master account numbers, and security identifiers. Those changes will be visible through our systems sometime during that day. The changes will be incremental rather than happening simultaneously, so you may see some data points changed but not others while our conversion process is in progress.
Q: We use your BillFin integration – what impact will the conversion have on our billing process?
A: BillFin will execute their conversion in parallel, so billing can be run as usual post-conversion. We strongly urge that no billing be run on Saturday, September 2nd, while each organization runs its conversion processes. We also recommend that no billing be run on the 3rd or 4th to allow all organizations to test their conversion processes and address any follow-up issues.
Q: Accounts from CircleBlack push into my integration partners – will those partners update the data to Schwab accounts?
A: We have analyzed each of our integrations and determined the appropriate plan of action. In general, each partner will perform a parallel conversion based on data provided directly by Schwab or CircleBlack.
Q: What happens if there’s an issue during the conversion? Is there a backup plan?
A: CircleBlack is extensively testing its conversion process prior to conversion weekend. We will handle most unexpected issues over the conversion weekend in real-time before the markets reopen on Tuesday, September 5th. In the worst case, if necessary, we will restore our systems to their pre-conversion state, leave TD accounts as of September 1st close of business while we resolve any issues, then re-run the conversion process and catch up with daily file processing.