Benzinga - by Chris Katje, Benzinga Staff Writer.
Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ: HOOD) is one of the leading online brokerages for day traders, investors and long-term investors thanks to its offerings, ease-of-use and other features.
Robinhood Chief Brokerage Officer Steve Quirk shared what attracted him to Robinhood and what features the company has been adding to meet customer demand in an interview with Benzinga CEO Jason Raznick published Tuesday on "The Raz Report."
Family Takes Quirk To Robinhood: Young people have gravitated to online brokerages like Robinhood thanks to their ability to open accounts with minimal investments and the ability to buy stocks, options and crypto all on one platform.
It was the young people in Quirk’s family that took him to a job at Robinhood, he said.
“I always have been interested in finance,” Quirk said on “The Raz Report.”
After stints on the trading floor and a small market maker, Quirk joined Thinkorswim, which was later acquired by TD Ameritrade and is now a unit of Charles Schwab Corp.
With years in the investment industry, Quirk said he was always trying to encourage his three daughters to invest once they started in the workforce. Instead of opening an account with a traditional broker, the daughters showed their dad they had opened accounts with Robinhood.
The decision came based on their friends and associates using Robinhood and talking about it, Quirk said.
“I like to tell people I basically followed my daughters here.”
Quirk said many of the Robinhood customers call the platform their first brokerage.
“This is the next generation of investors.”
Quirk also highlighted Robinhood’s improved focus on customer service, an area that previously received criticism.
The company now has 24/7 customer service through chat, email and phone, he said: “We’re in a good place now.”
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Robinhood Grows With Features: During the interview, Quirk shared updates on many new and recent initiatives from Robinhood.
“We basically have to grow with our customers,” Quirk said.
This includes the current 4.9% interest rate on savings accounts at Robinhood. Quirk said he told his daughters to go look at their bank accounts and see what they were getting paid compared to Robinhood.
Robinhood also launched retirement accounts. Quirk said that many of the customers setting up retirement accounts on the platform have never had a retirement account before.
Another feature is the securities lending program where customers who own shares can earn income on their shares by making them available to someone who wants to short a stock.
Cryptocurrency On Robinhood: Another popular feature on Robinhood is the ability to trade several cryptocurrencies.
Quirk said interest in crypto is down quite a bit overall, but remains a popular option for long-term investors.
“The No. 1 most popular recurring investment is still Bitcoin,” Quirk said.
Investors can set up recurring investment in stocks or cryptocurrency like Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), and they will automatically be purchased on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly basis.
For Robinhood customers, Quirk said around one-third are passionate about crypto and one-third are what he calls "crypto curious." The other third of Robinhood customers aren’t interested in cryptocurrency.
“Our job is to provide them avenues to do whatever they want to do.”
Without naming names, Quirk took a shot at other players in the cryptocurrency sector, stating Robinhood was careful with the way it approached the sector and didn’t “list 300 coins” or allow staking or lending.
“We were very careful with how we did it.”
Quirk said Robinhood didn’t want to put its customers in the scenarios that some other platforms have.
“We’re like a safe play for crypto.”
24-Hour Trading: Robinhood is among the brokerages that have launched extended trading hours for multiple stocks and ETFs.
“I’ve been a huge proponent of it,” Quirk said.
Quirk said it’s easy to think about the demand for 24/7 trading when looking at the young age of the average Robinhood customer.
The chief brokerage officer said young people don’t understand the idea that they have to wait for someone to ring the bell to participate in an electronic marketplace.
“It was proven you didn’t need human beings on the trading floor during COVID.”
Quirk said, adding that younger investors are used to doing what they want, when they want, like using e-commerce for shopping.
In five years, Quirk said we could look back and say it was silly the market wasn’t open around the clock.
Watch the full interview below.
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