Robinhood Continues UK Expansion With Stock Lending

Robinhood now offers stock lending for British customers, part of the platform’s ongoing U.K. expansion.

Introduced Wednesday (Sept. 4), the offering lets customers lend out any fully paid stock in their portfolio, with Robinhood taking care of finding interested borrowers.

“Stock Lending is another innovative way for our customers in the UK to put their investments to work and earn passive income,” said Jordan Sinclair,  president of Robinhood UK. “We’re excited to continue to give retail customers greater access to the financial system, with the product now available in our intuitive mobile app.”

Once shares are loaned out, the company said, customers can use the app dashboard to track earnings, see their positions and enable or disable lending. Stocks are backed by cash collateral at a third-party bank for additional protection, Robinhood added.

“Since launching Robinhood in the UK last November, we’ve heard from customers what’s resonating in-app and what features they’d like to see in the future,” the company said. “So far, we know they love no commission fees and no FX fees on trades, our easy-to-use mobile app and key features such as fractional shares and 24/5 trading.”

Robinhood began offering trading to customers in the U.K. last year, part of a broader effort by the company to expand into international markets.

In June of this year, the company acquired the cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp for $200 million. The purchase of Luxembourg-based Bitstamp marks Robinhood’s first institutional business, providing it access to Bitstamp’s institutional offerings such as white-label solution Bitstamp-as-a-service, institutional lending and staking.

“At the same time, Robinhood faces challenges, such as the recent Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a sign of impending enforcement action against the company, one which raises concerns about the future of Robinhood’s crypto trading arm,” PYMNTS wrote last month.

The company contends that the crypto assets listed on its platform are not securities, and that it would fight the SEC’s enforcement efforts.

“After years of good faith attempts to work with the SEC for regulatory clarity including our well-known attempt to ‘come in and register,’ we are disappointed that the agency has decided to issue a Wells Notice related to our U.S. crypto business,” said Dan Gallagher, the company’s legal and compliance officer.

Robinhood in August issued a response to the notice, CEO Vlad Tenev told Bloomberg Television.

“We’ve spent a lot of time making sure that the response is as high-quality as possible,” Tenev said, declining to provide additional updates.