Every now and again and especially after buying a new fund, Schwab will deliver to you shareholder materials such as a fund’s annual report or prospectus.

If you have paper delivery turned on, then you will receive these materials as printed and stapled booklets mailed to your address on file. Everything, except sometimes the Schwab cover letter which has your account number, is full of public information and can easily be recycled or reused when you are done with them.

If you are subscribed to paperless delivery, then you will receive an email with a subject line like “VANGUARD FUNDS Important Information” and a large heading in the email that reads, “Stay informed with the latest on your investments.” Below the heading, the text reads something like:

We’re sending important documents with this email related to one or more of your holdings. These documents may address investment strategies, performance tracking, and other key information.

Current documents:

Annual Report

Then, they will link to the documents for your review. The links are insecure listings of the files on the fund company’s website. For example, my latest Vanguard funds email linked to this energy fund annual report on Vanguard.com .

Although most of the time I do not read these materials, sometimes I enjoy reading the fund manager’s letters that are included in shareholder materials or looking up a bit of information about the fund.

To that end, I recently went looking on Schwab.com to see if I could find historical shareholder materials online. However, it turns out those materials are not available anywhere on Schwab Alliance.

According to a Schwab rep, “the materials are sent to you by Schwab, but it is actually a third-party vendor that delivers the materials to you directly through email.”

In this way, the best way to find old shareholder materials is to search your own email inbox or to find them independently by searching online on the fund company’s website.

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