The news broke today that Charles Schwab brokerage will buy TD Ameritrade brokerage in a $26B all-stock deal. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2020, pending regulatory approval.
For brokerage bonus hunters, this will mean less bonuses to take advantage of. For now, TD’s brokerage bonus is still available.
Once the merger completes, your assets with TD should make you eligible for the $100 – $200 statement credit which Schwab American Express Platinum cardmembers get when they have $250k – $1M in assets.
Regardless, it’ll be interesting to see if/what changes this causes in the industry with the consolidation of the two largest publicly-traded discount brokerages. It’s especially interesting that this comes on the heels on numerous brokerages dropping their fees on trades.
I talked to my Schwab guy and told him that if I don’t get the bonus for my TD account, which is merging soon, I will move it to Etrade. He told me, he will talk to his higher ups and match the offer. Now I have to find the best offer.
Thanks Doc for the consolidated Best Brokerage bonus page.
I am in a similar situation. I knew TD offered bonus but I did not know Schwab ever offered anything. Please keep us informed.
I got an email from TD that transaction is expected to close in second half of 2020, so I will wait. But the Schwab guy was ready to give me 4 ski lift tickets for transfers, lol. He also told me that that they had promotions last year.
But right now there is referral bonus for only new clients schwab.com/refer
they often match offers if you ask, but it can take a lot of asking…Easy for some, YMMV
Should we sign up for Schwab now if we are only with TD right now and be still eligible for Schwab’s bonus?
Sure, why not?
Yes, that’s what I’m doing. And if the merger takes long enough, we may become eligible for another TD Ameritrade bonus in the meantime as well.
Sometimes around mergers bonuses even increase at the to-be-acquired firm because someone in the company is incentivized to keep the number of accounts growing.
amazing how schwabb cut commissions to lower TD value and catch a good deal….gangsters
I had that same thought.
This is not totally new info. It was announced last week that the two firms were negotiating a merger. TD Ameritrade has a cash back Visa card issued by TD Bank that earns 1.5% cash back on all purchases. There is a 0.15% bonus if the money is deposited into a TD Ameritrade brokerage account making it a 1.65% cash back card. This card might go away since TD Bank owns 40% of TD Ameritrade. It might be awhile since they say it will take 18-36 months to integrate the two firms. This might be good for getting new account bonuses from each firm before they get it all combined.
Should we sign up for TD Ameritrade right now? 1. Get the bonus while the company still exists and 2. only soft pull and convert to Swab later?
Yeah, just throw your spare 250k in there…
The minimum bonus ($100) is for $25K right?
you don’t have a spare $250k Dan? What a shame.
Poor Dan, literally
A Robinhood buyout is next.
The big boys don’t care about Robinhood. They will watch Robinhood die on the vine as there is no incentive for profitable clients to go there.
Precisely. It’s a non-factor against multi-trillion brokerages. The big boys focus on big clients, which is the only profitable ones in this business these days.
I think my scottrade bcame TD last year…and will become Schwab next year …wow
Same
Is it possible the Schwab Plat could get closed?
Or be a product change or increased in MRs for signup?
Anything is possible, but I doubt Schwab’s buyout of TD Ameritrade has anything to do with Schwab’s co-branding of an American Express card.
If Schwab has less competition, they don’t need to offer as many incentives to stay at Schwab.
Oh no, our TD brokerage will merge with Schwab without any bonus.
move it right now to get a bonus
Also keep in mind mergers like this give the customer the right to choose not to accept getting their accounts transferred. This benefits the customer by not having to pay any account closing fees. For example many firms charge $50-100 to close down or to conduct a full transfer to another brokerage. This merger is similar to having a CC terms changing and you having the right to not accept it and in turn closing your account, with the benefit of not being charged any closing fees.
Something to watch for although it did not happen during Capital One to Etrade merge a year ago. Another consideration is that liquidating may be even a worse deal than paying a closing fee.
Abraham, I requested and received a waiver of the full transfer-out fee from Capital One for this reason. I don’t believe I read it anywhere, but I asked about it (the first time they said there was not a waiver yet, and then a few months later I asked and they said I could).
I had never thought about it before, but after my Scottrade accounts moved over to TDA, I complained about the service and asked if I could transfer out and they said something along the lines of the window to do that without the fee had passed.
So I am very curious if anyone knows when this window might open.
They will send you some correspondence regarding the merger, within that correspondence there may be a FAQ or link of some sort saying for further information go here etc. In other words legally they have to publish these dates. They may not make it obvious but you’ll def find it once they actually figure out the dates. It’s too early right now to expect such dates and pushing the frontline folks will be useless.