Charles Schwab’s head of advisor services said during the firm’s annual conference that its acquisition of private markets platform Forge Global Holdings is an important move to expand alternative investment options for its registered investment advisors that custody with the firm.

“We believe it’s on trend, on market,” Jon Beatty, head of Schwab Advisor Services, told reporters at Schwab Impact in Denver, on Thursday.

Beatty equated proving access to private markets through the $660 million acquisition of Schwab’s history of providing access to stocks and bonds for everyday investors.

“We see this as the opportunity to do the same thing to the private markets,” he said.

Beatty presented a few arguments for the importance of private market investments for RIAs and their clients. One is that more companies are staying private longer. Another is that ultra-high-net-worth clients are requesting access to the investments. A third is what he characterized as a shift in financial investing away from the 60/40 fixed income and equities portfolio to more customization.

“Our industry is moving toward more personalized portfolios, using the scale of fintech to be able to deliver personalization at scale, and now we’re able to do that with different types of securities in the portfolio,” he said.  

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Beatty did not provide a timeline for RIAs to have access to Forge Global, saying the firm was working on closing the deal.

He also answered questions about Schwab’s move to increase its RIA client referral threshold from $500,000 to $2 million. The program, the called Schwab Advisor Network, had been at that lower threshold for about 20 years, Beatty said.

“The moves that we’ve made more recently have really been to modernize the program,” he said. “We’re behind the curve on the inflationary effect. Most advisory firms have a million-dollar or even a $2 million or $3 million minimum, and a lot of ways they were doing us a favor in serving these smaller households—so we right-size that in the marketplace.” 

Beatty also responded to questions about Schwab’s announcement earlier this year that it was expanding its retail branches. He characterized the move not so much as an expansion, but a return to coverage for retail clients.

“We have about 70% coverage of our million-dollar-plus clients in our retail channel,” Beatty said. “Over the years, that has actually slipped to a place of uncomfortableness for us. … We build our business in retail through our client’s eyes, and when they need things from us, we’re going to build those things and deliver them.” 

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Schwab’s head of family office, Sam Kang, also provided reporters with an update on the division’s growth in working with single- or multi-family offices. 

Kang said the division has grown 30% this year as measured by advisor support, with assets in the program growing 50% year-over-year. Schwab will continue to invest in the program, he said, as the pool of advisors seeking family office services for clients expands.

“We are offering a lot of our services for what we call more the generalist advisors that have a segmentation model that supports not only the mass affluent but high net worth as well as, so this is a really growing space,” he said.