Schwab's Business Continuity and Contingency Planning

Securities industry regulations require that brokerage firms inform their clients of their plans to address the possibility of a business disruption that potentially results from power outages, natural disasters, or other events. Schwab has a comprehensive business continuity program in place, which we review, update and test on a regular basis. The plan provides for continuation of client service within minutes in most cases.

Here are a few examples of what might occur if we were to experience a business disruption of varying magnitude:

• If one of our telephone service centers were to become unavailable for any reason, we would re-route calls to our other service centers across the country.
• In the event that one of our data centers became unavailable for any reason, we have backup data centers in other geographically dispersed regions of the country. Account balance, transaction, and position information and account access would be made available through these backup locations.
• If we had a power outage in a particular region or business district, we would re-route telephone and electronic communications to alternate locations for the duration of the outage.

We believe our systems capabilities and ongoing ability to serve clients through all of our channels (branch, telephone and Internet) regardless of potential business disruptions are among the best in the industry. While no contingency plan can eliminate all risk of service interruption or temporarily impeded account access, we continually assess and update our plans to mitigate all reasonable risk.

This disclosure is subject to modification.