What are the benefits of securities lending? For shareholders, stock lending offers a relatively low-risk way to earn extra returns on the stocks you already own. You maintain ownership of your stocks the whole time. If loaned stocks go up in value, those returns are still yours.
Share lending involves institutions lending out investors' shares of stock to other investors in order to generate more revenue. The lenders are often pension funds, mutual funds, sovereign wealth funds, and exchange-traded fund (ETF) providers, since these types of firms tend to be long-term holders of equities.