Japanese online trading company Monex Inc, a subsidiary of Monex Group, Inc. (TYO:8698), today announced that customers who have margin trading accounts will now be able to make use of its stock-lending services. The change is effective Friday, November 6, 2020.

The enhancement is made in response to numerous customers’ requests, the broker explains.

Monex was the first in the industry to begin offering stock-lending services in January 2003 and has since continued to beef up its stock-lending services with such offerings as a service where customers can automatically receive shareholder benefits and dividends, bonus interest stocks and others. However, until now, customers with margin trading accounts were not able to use stock-lending services.

Customers with margin trading accounts will now be able to use their owned shares as substitute securities for margin trades and receive stock-lending interest rates. Substitute securities used for stock lending will be assessed in the same manner as if they were not being loaned out, thereby not affecting maintenance rates. In addition, loaned shares can be sold easily without special procedures.

With stock-lending services, customers lend their shares to Monex, and Monex in turn pays an appropriate stock-lending interest rate. By lending their shares to Monex, customers are able to earn interest income. While customers are usually granted an interest rate of 0.1% (annual rate), some shares are considered bonus interest stocks, which are eligible for higher interest rates – up to a maximum 10% (annual rate), and Monex is constantly working to add to this list of bonus interest stocks.

Monex is also developing a feature that will enable customers who own shares with continuous holding requirements to automatically receive shareholder benefits as well. Currently, these customers must specifically remove these shares from the stock-lending service to receive benefits.

The announcement about the enhancements to the stock lending service is made less than a week after Monex said it was lowering commissions on Japanese stock trades.