Thanks to RIAs (in large part), Schwab CEO Rick Wurster's pay leaped 49%, and may have soared higher -- much higher -- but company stopped considering Fidelity in its calculations, according to SEC disclosure

Rick Wurster won a 49% pay boost for 2025, and he can thank a phenomenal year of asset gathering by RIAs – outstripping Schwab's in-house offerings – for much of the company's growth.

That's the good news for the 52-year-old rookie Charles Schwab CEO, whose pay the company justified based on nearly $12 trillion in assets.

Wurster's total compensation rose to $18,755,222, up from $12.5 million in 2024, according to a 14A or “proxy” statement disclosure. He was president in 2024 and was CEO all of 2025. See: Walter Bettinger joins Charles Schwab Corp. mass executive exodus, leaving a very complex CEO puzzle to solve for Rick Wurster

The more discouraging news for Wurster is that he may need to wait for a Fidelity Investments IPO to get paid the same as CEOs of similar stature. 

The company this year invoked a loophole in its executive compensation valuation process to keep his pay from soaring higher.

“During the annual review of the peer group to be used in 2026, the Compensation Committee … approved the removal of Fidelity Investments, noting the lack of readily available executive compensation disclosures,” the committee writes in the proxy. 

Paula A. Sneed chairs the Schwab compensation committee, an adjunct of the board of directors.

Publicly traded companies are not required to consider private-company compensation in salary determinations.

Pay package

Founder Charles ‘Chuck’ Schwab, 88, who co-chairs the board, didn't give himself a raise in 2025. Still, he personally owns more than five percent of outstanding Schwab shares (SCHW), which closed at $93.06 today (Mar. 30), up 41% over the past 52-weeks.

Schwab declined to respond to a question about why it hadn't in prior years removed compensation data from Fidelity – presumably CEO Abby Johnson's pay – to set the salary of former CEO Walter Bettinger, who held the top job from 2008 until 2024. 

In 2023, his last full year on the job, Bettinger earned $23.9 million in total compensation, a decrease of about 2% from his 2022 pay. 

His package included a $1.5 million base salary, padded by stock awards, option awards, and non-equity incentive compensation.

Performance, growth metrics

Schwab made clear what needs to happen to reconsider Fidelity in its executive pay calculations. 

“The Committee will continue to review Fidelity and other similar companies and will consider including them in the peer group if they become publicly traded companies subject to executive compensation disclosure requirements.”

Other than CEO pay comparables, Schwab said it relied upon performance and growth metrics of the company to set Wurster's pay. 

Schwab had core net new assets of $519 billion in 2025. About $285 billion of those net new assets came from Schwab Advisor Services, its RIA custody unit. The retail unit, Schwab Investor Services, had net new assets of fewer than $215 billion by comparison.

Benchmark

Of course, Fidelity is not only a private company, but also one in which its CEO is presumed to be its top individual shareholder. Her holdings were last disclosed in 2012 and amounted to more than 21% of the outstanding shares.

Grandfather Edward C. Johnson II founded the company in 1930 as a private concern, and the Johnson family overall still holds about 49% of the company. 

Fidelity's disclosed operating income – a close cousin to earnings – was $12.7 billion, hence Abby Johnson could haul down billions in dividends, if she chose to. 

The company is famously known for reinvesting cash flow into future top-line growth. Recently it has done that by radically out-hiring Schwab. See: Fidelity Investments smashes past 80,000 staff, new report shows, doubling headcount and 'threading needle' on hiring -- as Schwab, Morgan Stanley added barely at all over same six years

Even with Fidelity data “removed,” Schwab was left to ponder the CEO pay at other retail financial giants, who made Wurster's pay look paltry by comparison.

Bigwig bucks

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was the highest-paid major U.S. financial services CEO for 2025, with a $47 million pay package --up 20% over 2024 -- based on a $2 million salary and $45 million in variable compensation. 

Among other CEOs, Ameriprise's Jim Cracchiolo, $31 million; JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, $43 million, and UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti, $19 million.

Yet, UBS, Ameriprise, and JPMorgan are all significantly different types of firms than Schwab, leaving wiggle room on compensation comparisions.

Among smaller firms, LPL Financial CEO Rich Steinmeier was paid $14 million, a substantially smaller company with a $24 billion market cap. Schwab, in contrast, has a $165 billion market cap. 

That leaves far more comparable Fidelity, and maybe privately held Vanguard, which also doesn't reveal compensation data. Its new CEO, Salim Ramji, is presumed to make $20 million to $26 million, according to Vanguard watcher Jeff DeMaso.