Robinhood, a modern trading platform that offers both traditional securities as well as crypto, has made the tough decision to postpone its UK launch indefinitely. The company announced the unfortunate news in an email on Tuesday, which reportedly read:
Hi there,
We’re saddened to share that we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone our UK launch indefinitely. We’ll be closing our waitlist and taking down our UK website shortly.
The world has changed a lot over the past several months and we’re adapting with it. On a company level, we’ve come to recognise that our efforts are currently best spent on strengthening our core business in the US and making further investments in our foundational systems.
Since we announced our intent to launch in the UK, we’ve been fueled by your excitement for Robinhood and humbled by your response. We’re sorry that we cannot deliver the product we promised you this year.
Although our global expansion plans are on hold for now, we will continue our work to democratise finance for all and we look forward to the day when we can bring this mission to the UK.
Sincerely,
The Robinhood UK Team
The postponing of Robinhood’s UK launch comes just months of technical issues on the trading platform. Robinhood experienced several days in March where the platform was not available to customers raising the ire of its users and causing rumblings of an investigation into the operational resiliency of Robinhood’s website. Recently, the company announced it was making improvements on its Options offering after one of its customers allegedly committed suicide due to confusion with the product. Changes to the Options offering will be the following:
- Eligibility: Robinhood is considering additional criteria and education for customers seeking level 3 options authorization to help ensure customers understand more sophisticated options trading
- Educational resources: Robinhood is expanding our educational content related to options trading. It has added information on early options assignments to its help center and it will be hiring an Options Education Specialist to further enhance education related to our options offering
- User Interface: In the near term, Robinhood is rolling out improvements to in-app messages and emails we send customers about their multi-leg options spreads. Robinhood is also adding detail to the in-app history page to help users understand the mechanics of early options assignments