Who are the characters in Charles Schwab commercials?

They are actors shot on regular old film. A man named Bob Sabiston who developed the animation technique called rotoscope then takes the footage and uses his technique to animate the footage. Bob Sabiston is the same animator who animated the movies A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. The Sabiston technique involves mapping outlines every few frames, and using computer interpolation to create the animation effect. Some of the latest commercials (Feb. 2009) were done by Marco Salsiccia at Mekanism using Toonit plugin for After Effects, sold by Red Giant Software and created by Stan Schwartz of Toonamation. Toonit works frame by frame, and the results are much faster and cheaper.