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Charles Schwab is trying to reassure investors its customers are sticking with the financial broker, even as fear escalates about the banking sector.

The company said Friday it has received "strong inflows from clients" over the past week, bringing $16.5 billion in new business. That demonstrates "the trust clients place in Schwab," the brokerage said.

"Charles Schwab remains a safe port in a storm, driven by its conservative balance sheet, strong liquidity position, and diversified base of over 34 million account holders who invest with Charles Schwab every day," the company said in its statement. "We are confident in our approach and in our ability to help clients through all kinds of economic environments."

On Monday, however, Charles Schwab told a very different story. It had said customers had pulled 4% of their assets out of the bank and the amount of money clients owed the bank had fallen 28%.

Schwab's stock was down 3% Friday afternoon, though that was well off the low of the day. Shares have fallen 27% since SVB's bank run a week ago.

The Nasdaq exchange notified SVB on Friday that it will delist SVB Financial Group's stock, according to an SEC filing.

Shares of SVB were halted on March 10, after the bank’s collapse. The suspension will take place on March 28.

Both the company’s common stock and depositary shares will be delisted from the exchange. SVB said it does not plan to contest Nasdaq’s decision.

Stocks deepened their losses Monday afternoon as investors continued to worry about the tumult in the banking sector.

The Dow fell 387 points, or 1.2%. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq slipped 1.1% and roughly 1%, respectively.

The Federal Reserve lent banks a record $153 billion last week, showing the immense pressure weighing down the banking sector on the heels of several failures.

Shares of First Republic continued to get pummeled, falling over 25% despite a decision by a group of big banks to lend it a $30 billion lifeline.

West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark for oil, was down about 2%.

Gold futures rose 2.1% as investors sought ways to shelter from the banking turmoil.

Investors also digested new consumer sentiment data from the University of Michigan on Friday that showed that Americans' optimism about the economy declined in March for the first time in four months.

The CNN Fear & Greed Index was at 25. That's up from earlier in the week but still indicates extreme fear in the market.

On Tuesday afternoon, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was in Washington for a previously scheduled banking industry meeting and reached out to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell.

"Very quickly the conversation turned to First Republic," said a source close to the 48-hour deal to infuse First Republic with $30 billion. "The biggest example of a bank that could go down and shouldn't go down -- a first-class bank."

Along with Martin Gruenberg, chairman of the FDIC, the group brainstormed ways to backstop First Republic, fearing a chain reaction through other small banks under pressure from customer withdrawals. Sometime Tuesday afternoon, the idea had gelled to infuse the bank with deposits from other big US banks. They were looking to infuse “confidence and capital” into First Republic.

Treasury Secretary Yellen first proposed cash deposits from other banks and Dimon, Gruenberg and Powell agreed. The first four contributors quickly lined up with $5 billion each. In a statement announcing the deal, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo cited a "commitment to helping banks serve their customers and communities."

Wednesday was a day of phone calls and in person meeting by Dimon, Yellen and others to get more banks on board. In the end 11 banks vowed $30 billion in cash deposits for First Republic.

"There was no special deal, no special rate," the source said, but rather an effort "to pull together and show confidence" in the banking system.

The source said regulators “wanted it to be private-sector solutions. They didn’t want this to be a government bailout.”

The steep selloff in the banking sector on Friday – just a day after a $30 billion rescue of First Republic – is a clear sign that investors still aren’t satisfied with the federal response.

“The market is saying, ‘This is still not enough. We need more,’” Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James, told CNN on Friday.

First Republic shares are plunging 25% in afternoon trading, while PacWest is down 12% and Zions is down 6%.

Big banks are also in the red after injecting $30 billion into First Republic, with JPMorgan Chase down 3% and Bank of America falling 4%.

Mills questioned whether the federal government will eventually need to provide a guarantee for all bank deposits, above the $250,000 limit from the FDIC. He also pointed out that US officials are insisting they don’t want to bail out stockholders even as they rescue depositors.

“This tale of two cities between customers and investors is causing more stress with equities. Can you have one without the other?” Mills asked. 

President Joe Biden is urging Congress to take action to expand the FDIC’s authorities to hold senior bank executives accountable in the wake of the recent Silicon Valley Bank collapse and subsequent fallout in the banking sector.

“No one is above the law – and strengthening accountability is an important deterrent to prevent mismanagement in the future. The law limits the administration’s authority to hold executives responsible,” Biden said in a statement issued Friday. “When banks fail due to mismanagement and excessive risk taking, it should be easier for regulators to claw back compensation from executives, to impose civil penalties, and to ban executives from working in the banking industry again. Congress must act to impose tougher penalties for senior bank executives whose mismanagement contributed to their institutions failing.”

Biden is specifically calling on Congress to take several actions, according to a White House fact sheet also released Friday:

The call on Congress to act comes after Biden on Monday laid out how his administration is taking action to contain Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse. The administration said the federal government was acting to backstop depositors’ funds, make sure taxpayers are not on the hook for these moves, hold those responsible accountable and decline to extend relief to investors of Silicon Valley Bank.

The Fed lent banks a record $153 billion from its discount window last week, the last-resort facility banks use when they have trouble accessing cash.

That shows how much strain is on the banking system at the moment.

"The sharp increase in banks’ emergency borrowing from the Fed's discount window speaks to the funding and liquidity strains on banks, driven by weakening depositor confidence following one bank winddown and two bank failures," said Jill Cetina, Moody's analyst, in a note to investors.

But Moody's, like federal regulators, noted there's nothing inherently wrong with the global banking system. None of the banks that borrowed from the Fed's discount window borrowed on secondary credit terms -- emergency, overnight loans that help deeply troubled banks keep the lights on. Those loans come with severe restrictions and more oversight from the Fed.

The fact that the loans the Fed delivered were primary credit "indicates that US bank supervisors consider the banks that needed emergency support 'healthy' and not at elevated risk of imminent failure," Moody's noted.

Fitch Ratings warned on Friday it could still downgrade First Republic’s credit rating even after the regional bank landed a $30 billion lifeline from big banks.

The ratings company said First Republic remains on rating watch negative despite the $30 billion industry-led rescue. Fitch and S&P Global Ratings both downgraded First Republic’s credit rating earlier this week.

Fitch said it still views First Republic’s franchise and liquidity profile as “significantly weakened” since early last week when stress emerged in the banking industry.

Fitch said it will continue to assess the situation and plans to take rating action on First Republic within the next few business days. The ratings firm said it continues to monitor the bank’s funding and liquidity profile to “assess the stability of the customer deposit base” and the impact of the rescue.

Shares of the San Francisco-based bank are tumbling 20% in premarket trading Friday morning.

Americans' optimism about the economy dropped in March for the first time in four months, according to a closely watched survey released Friday by the University of Michigan.

The preliminary consumer sentiment index fell to 63.4 this month from 67 in February, the university reported Friday.

Economists were expecting it to hold at 67, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv.

Around 85% of the survey was conducted prior to the turmoil in the banking sector, said Joanna Hsu, director of the university's Surveys of Consumers, in a statement.

Hsu noted the limited impact of the current banking crisis on consumer sentiment, telling Bloomberg TV Friday morning that "there aren't enough consumers paying attention to that" yet.

Year-ahead inflation expectations also fell, declining to 3.8%. That's the lowest reading since April 2021, down from 4.1% in February but well above the pre-pandemic average range of 2.3-3.0%.

However, "with ongoing turbulence in the financial sector and uncertainty over the Fed’s possible policy response, inflation expectations are likely to be volatile in the months ahead," Hsu said.