Neesha Hathi: Leader of Schwab tech project under pressure

Neesha Hathi is leading the charge when it comes to a multimillion-dollar technology effort under way since June at Charles Schwab Advisor Services.

While she always appears unruffled in public, Ms. Hathi is under pressure to bring that effort, now formally called Schwab Intelligent Integration, to fruition and boost the firm’s chances to remain the top dog among custodians serving the growing registered investment adviser sector.

Schwab’s stance on the project was hammered home by Bernie Clark, head of the unit, in a speech at the firm’s Impact conference in October.

He said that SII is “one of Advisor Services’ most important initiatives and in fact … is one of Charles Schwab’s most important initiatives.”

The endeavor, referred to as Project C when it was announced in June, is meant to address one of the chief complaints among independent advisers — applications that don’t talk to one another.

TALL ORDER

Delivering on her promises will be no small task for Ms. Hathi and her team.

SII is supposed to deliver both a turnkey technology platform for those advisers that want one, and a second, more open, platform that is fully integrated — in other words, one that meshes Schwab’s core trading, account and portfolio management technology with third-party applications, all of which are capable of seamlessly passing data back and forth.

Though none would go on the record, several advisers and industry experts voiced concern over the first major decision made regarding the turnkey platform: selection of Salesforce.com as the customer relationship management application that will form the centerpiece of the system.

Chief among the complaints was that it’s too expensive to be a popular choice among advisers. However, others think Salesforce.com is best-of-breed among CRM packages.

Ms. Hathi, for her part, has negotiated a 20% discount for Schwab advisers on their first year’s subscription.

If Ms. Hathi pulls off the development in a timely fashion, she will be considered a hero. If she fails — or if there are significant delays in the plans — she will be the obvious scapegoat.

While many advisers have said they are encouraged by the can-do spirit Ms. Hathi has demonstrated since taking her latest post last year, a minority have expressed concern at her lack of in-the-trenches technology experience.

She got her professional start as head of finance at a now-defunct dot-com, then headed up marketing for a GPS technology startup 10 years ago.

She joined Schwab in 2004, working in the discount brokerage’s strategy department, which she eventually headed.

With an ever-increasing number of flexible third-party technology providers eager to compete with the platforms of Schwab and TD Ameritrade Institutional — which has a similar, even more open effort under way — 2011 is likely to bring increased scrutiny for Ms. Hathi and Schwab Advisor Services.

In addition to her duties with SII, Ms. Hathi now also oversees the offerings of Schwab Performance Technologies, a small but profitable subsidiary that supplies several thousand advisers with its portfolio management software — PortfolioCenter.

— Davis D. Janowski