OCBC taps Citi to roll out securities lending for clients, following Maybank’s earlier move

[SINGAPORE] OCBC has rolled out a securities lending programme that will allow customers to lend out their idle securities to institutional borrowers for fee income.

The programme will use the Citi Securities Lending Access (CSLA) platform, which gives the local bank access to Citi’s network of institutional borrowers such as prime brokers and investment banks globally, OCBC said on Wednesday (Jan 28).

Maybank Securities was the first Asian bank to tap the CSLA platform. In December 2024, it announced the collaboration to facilitate the lending of its retail clients’ global equity holdings.

OCBC’s programme will cover retail and corporate customers of OCBC Securities, and clients of Bank of Singapore.

It is now open to OCBC Securities customers, who can lend out US and Hong Kong shares.

The programme will be extended to Bank of Singapore clients later in 2026, starting with Singapore, Hong Kong, US and Japan shares allowed to be lent out.

Shares must be custodised with OCBC Securities or Bank of Singapore to be eligible for lending. Once a loan is confirmed, the shares from OCBC Securities or Bank of Singapore are then loaned to an OCBC account, before being onloaned to the borrower.

The news comes a week after OCBC said it would set up a separate securities financing unit to meet demand from institutional customers.

Kenneth Lai, head of global markets at OCBC, said securities lending brings benefits such as higher trading volumes, price discovery and market efficiency.

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Meanwhile, Citi’s Asia South head of services, Mridula Iyer, said the move will introduce a significant new pool of untapped securities to the lending market, and expand Citi’s servicing of private and retail assets in securities lending.

Shares of OCBC fell 0.6 per cent or S$0.13 to close at S$21.29 on Wednesday, after the news.