The 2015 Tech 50: Jim McGuire

Even the most jaded of commuters passing through New York’s Grand Central Terminal this spring couldn’t have missed the large robot, suspended in a glass box, pouring cups of coffee. It was a three-dimensional advertisement for Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, brokerage firm Charles Schwab’s robo-adviser. “The story was that if you have time for a cup of coffee, you have time to develop an investment plan,” saysJim McGuire, Charles Schwab Corp.’s 60-year-old chief information officer. Within two and a half months of its March 8 launch, the automated, customized program had opened more than 32,000 accounts holding more than $2 billion in customer assets. And it isn’t just robotic; human representatives are available when hands-on assistance is called for. A white-label version was launched in the second quarter, enabling members of the Schwab Advisor Services network to offer Intelligent Portfolios under their own brand names. Schwab is also seeing rapid growth in its compliance offerings to corporate clients coping with the ever-changing regulatory landscape. Companies using Schwab Compliance Solutions increased 62 percent over the past two years, to 2,185, while assets monitored rose 58 percent, to $60 billion. McGuire, who worked at Schwab from 1997 to 2004 and spent more than four years with eBay and its PayPal unit before returning to the San Francisco–based brokerage in 2009, says mobility is a strategic priority — Schwab has launched anApple Watchapplication — and “You can’t say enough about data. There’s so much we can do with the data our clients entrust us with to serve them better.”

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”