Robinhood bringing band to city Financial services company plans to employ 791 workers in Denver
Robinhood, a commission-free brokerage firm based in northern California, is opening up a new office in Denver, where it expects to eventually employ 791 people.
The financial technology, or fintech, company got its start in 2013. In 2015 it began offering commission-free stock trades via its mobile application and later added trading in cryptocurrencies to its menu.
About 6 million people trade on the platform, according to the company, and the lack of trading commissions has made it popular with millennials new to trading.
“At Robinhood, we’re fostering a dynamic culture that brings together the best of the finance and technology industries to make our financial system more inclusive,” Gretchen Howard, chief operating officer at Robinhood, wrote in a blog post.
She said Denver’s highly skilled and diverse talent pool in both those industries made it a natural fit.
Robinhood will occupy a temporary space in Highland until it lands on a more permanent location in either Denver, Douglas or Arapahoe counties. It has already started recruiting for workers in Denver, and available jobs are posted on its career page.
The Denver location has the potential to become the company’s second-largest after its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Michelle Hadwiger, director of global business development at the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, said in a statement.
“Tech talent and leadership in the financial sector are abundant in Colorado and we are pleased to welcome a company valued at over $7.6 billion to our rapidly growing market,” she said.
That valuation is based on a funding round in late July that raised $323 million for Robinhood.
Last month, the Colorado Economic Development Commission approved $9 million in job growth incentive tax credits for Project Feline, the code name that Robinhood applied under to protect its identity.
Arizona was in the running, and so was Florida, where the company has an office in Lake Mary. Robinhood also maintains an international office in London.
In its application, the company said the proposed jobs will pay an average annual wage of $81,722 a year, which is 119% of the average annual wage in Denver County. Positions include customer service, management, engineering, human resources, finance, legal and operations.
Robinhood has eight years to make good on its projections. If it adds more jobs than expected, it won’t receive additional tax breaks.
If it falls short, its allocation will be reduced accordingly.
Metro Denver has seen a series of financial companies wax and wane over the years. The mutual
fund industry, in particular, has suffered heavy losses with the acquisition or departure of firms such as Berger, Invesco and Oppenheimer, which earlier this year eliminated 850 jobs.
Even market leader Janus Henderson has shrunk from its glory days in the late 1990s.
But the availability of financial services workers, especially on the operations and customer service side, has created opportunities for firms such as TIAA, Charles Schwab & Co. and Fidelity Investments to expand here.
And it made Denver attractive to up-and-coming firms like Robinhood, the latest in a series of California firms that have sought out lower-cost markets for expansion.
In a sign, literally, of the more prominent role that financial service firms are playing in the local economy, the nation’s secondlargest retirement plan provider, Greenwood Village-based Empower Retirement, purchased the naming rights for Mile High Stadium last month.