NASHUA – After Charles Schwab Corp. decided Nashua would be home to the first franchised office in recent company history, it was pretty obvious who would be the best person to mark the occasion: Schwab himself.

That’s why the man known as “Chuck” in national advertisements could be found chatting with clients and prospective clients Tuesday afternoon in a 1,200-square-foot strip mall office near the Target store on Route 101A in Nashua.

Schwab, 74, who four decades ago created the discount brokerage and investment company that now has 10 million accounts and 15,000 employees, was making his first trip to Nashua to help Mary Murphy of Bedford.

Murphy was chosen from some 1,700 applicants who stepped forward last year when Charles Schwab Corp. announced that it would be creating franchised offices as a way to spread out in areas that aren’t covered by its 300 corporate offices. Her office is the first to open in the country; a second will open in Wisconsin later this spring.

“There’s a subtle difference when you’re an independent entrepreneur,” said Murphy, who noted that her goal was to oversee “hundreds of millions” of dollars in client assets. “I like to think I’m investing in my clients’ happiness.”

Murphy opened the office on Cellu Drive in December. Schwab Corp. has high hopes that she will thrive and provide a model for the 16 independent branches they plan to open in the next year, with scores more to follow.

“We tried two franchises back in the late 1970s, early 1980s. They were quite successful and now, 25 years later, we thought we would go back and try to do it again,” said Schwab, who is partly retired but still serves as the company chairman. “I think some of the values that Mary has, in terms of personal service, is something that is always near and dear to our heart.”

Murphy is a former investment adviser with UBS and MassMutual and worked as a high school math teacher in Manchester. Her previous success and local connections helped convince Schwab Corp. to create the office, officials said.

Since Schwab’s closest corporate offices are in Manchester and Burlington, Mass., Nashua was a place to fill a gap in their coverage.

“There’s a certain power of someone, like Mary Murphy, who is entrepreneurial and who loves to spread the word about service in the financial area that is complicated. … We decided that in order for us to grow for the next phase in Schwab, this would be the way to do it,” Schwab said.

The new franchised offices also let the firm target investment rivals like Edward Jones, which use franchised offices in smaller cities.

Franchise offices will offer all the same products and services, at the same charges, that corporate offices do. Murphy said she has more freedom than corporate offices to provide other services, such as social events built around charity work that help clients network with each other.

Startup costs, including a franchise fee which ranges from $25,000 to $50,000, provide access to the firm’s research and informational arms, plus some clients from its corporate offices to seed the business.

Schwab takes a share of revenue and also charges some other fees, but as an owner-operator, Murphy has options for income that may not be available to corporate employees, as well as equity in the office, which can be sold.

The firm announced last summer that it would establish independent branches, saying they would cater to the “mass affluent” population, roughly those with $50,000 to $1 million in investable assets.

Founded as a low-cost brokerage firm, Schwab Corp. has expanded in the past decade with other services to handle what Schwab called “the need that investors have for more hand-holding in these complicated times.”

In response to questions from the audience, Schwab said he hoped for Republican victories in November and gave the Federal Reserve Board poor marks for failing to shift out of “crisis mode” in terms of monetary policy. He said his major concern these days was public education, citing problems in schools in his native California that he argued were caused in large part by short-sighted teachers unions.

From a financial point of view, Schwab argued that the nation’s biggest need was better retirement planning, although this might have been a subtle pitch for the company’s new 401(k) plan offerings that will use index-based mutual funds and perhaps exchange-traded funds, to reduce fees paid by participants.

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com.