08 May 2019
Posted
in Financial Services
The company has stated “This is a first step towards being granted a national bank charter which would allow Robinhood to offer traditional banking products and services,” a strategy that will please users and potential investors. The move will mean if the charter is approved, the company will be able to offer a full-service bank product alongside its no-fee trading platform.
The application will without doubt be supported by the company’s upcoming IPO, said to be worth $5.6bn. The US-based company raised $363m in its latest Series D round of funding in May 2018 – a substantial amount of money for what many in the business deem to be such a simple tool. Robinhood now has over six million customer accounts, which is double that of one of its closest competitors.
In early 2018, Robinhood creators sought a Chief Financial Officer ahead of its upcoming IPO. In November 2018 20-year Amazon veteran Jason Warnick joined the company, in a bid to steady the ship and make a real bid for making the company public. Warnick said in a blog post that he was looking forward to “advancing our mission to democratize America’s financial system”, which lines up with the long-term goal for the company as stated by Co-CEO Vlad Tenev. “We have an ambitious long-term vision to become a full-service financial services company over the next couple of years.”