Good afternoon. My name is Deborah Doyle McWhinney, and I am President of Schwab Institutional, the arm of the Charles Schwab Corporation that provides services to investors through commission-based independent investment advisors. Beyond my position at Schwab, I am the proud mother of Megan and Aidan, two wonderful teenagers who could not join me today because of their studies.
Schwab was founded more than 30 years ago on the principle of helping individuals to become educated, informed and sensible investors -- and our company remains focused on the individual investor today. I am honored to have been nominated by President Bush as a director of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, where I look forward to continuing that focus on the individual investor.
We are all painfully aware of the economic slowdown and stock market fall-off of the last two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is off more than 34 percent from its January 2000 high; and the Nasdaq is down a more startling 77 percent. Millions of individual investors have lost countless trillions of dollars of wealth. For many Americans, those investments constitute the bulk of their retirement savings, the money they were hoping to use to buy a first home or send their kids to college -- in sum, their most cherished financial hopes and dreams. It's a frustrating time to be an investor.
That's why I believe there are few more important organizations than the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. SIPC has a narrow but extremely important role: whenever a brokerage firm fails or goes bankrupt, SIPC steps in to return the money investors had with that firm as quickly and as painlessly as possible. No waiting for years of drawn-out court cases and bankruptcy hearings. SIPC gets the cash or securities that the individual investor had with the failed firm and returns it to that investor, so that he or she can move that money to a more reliable company.
I wish that there was not a need for an organization like SIPC. But there is a very real need, and today that need is stronger than it has been in decades. Investors have a lot to worry about, with the accounting and ethics of some of the country's most respected companies now being questioned, the economy in a prolonged downturn, and the stock market retreating to levels not seen in several years. Investors shouldn't have to worry about what happens if their brokerage firm goes under. With SIPC, they don't have to. More than 99 percent of eligible investors get their money back with SIPC's help. In the past 30 years, more than 600,000 investors have recovered nearly $14 billion in assets with SIPC's help.
If I am confirmed as a director of SIPC, I promise the members of this Committee and the millions of individual investors around the country that I will bring the vigilance and dedication that the role deserves. Individual investors are comfortable knowing that SIPC is behind them if anything should happen, and I will work hard to maintain and strengthen that confidence. In this era of uncertainty about the stock market, SIPC Directors should bring nothing less than their full attention to their task. If I am confirmed, I promise to do so in the tradition of the many directors before me who have helped maintain a solid foundation beneath the strongest capital markets in the world.
Thank you very much, and I will be happy to answer any questions.
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