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Interactive Brokers considers starting online bank, CEO says

Interactive Brokers Group Inc. Chairman and CEO Thomas Peterffy said his company is looking into the possibility of starting an online bank.

Peterffy said Interactive Brokers is at the early stages of the process and was not considering buying a bank at this time. "Right now we're applying for a license, and we'll see how it goes," he said in an interview after his June 6 presentation at the Sandler O'Neill Global Exchange and Brokerage Conference in New York.

Peterffy declined to say where the company was applying for the license, but he said Interactive Brokers is looking outside the U.S. He said the U.S. allows brokers to offer many banking-type services such as loans, but that some other countries restrict those types of services.

"There are certain things we can do here that we can not do [internationally] without being a bank," Peterffy said during the presentation.

Interactive Brokers has been making a push to offer many banking-type products such as direct deposits, bill pay, credit cards and loans. Peterffy said Interactive Brokers added those offerings so its financial advisers can better serve their clients. He said the goal of the additional services is to expand the amount of funds that customers keep in their Interactive Brokers accounts.