How much can you borrow against shares?

How much you can borrow against your shares is set by the loan-to-value (LTV) — the percentage of your pledged portfolio's market value advanced to you as cash — and the LTV is not fixed, because it depends on the collateral. There is no single figure and no rate card. A diversified, liquid book of large-capitalisation shares supports a materially higher advance than a single concentrated position, because the lender can value and, if needed, realise it with far greater confidence. What follows is exactly what drives that difference.

The short answer: it is the LTV, and it is not fixed

Borrowing against shares means pledging them as collateral for a loan and drawing cash against a fraction of their value. That fraction is the loan-to-value. The advance is the loan-to-value applied to the portfolio's market value; the balance left unborrowed is the buffer that absorbs a fall in the collateral before anything is required of the borrower. The LTV, then, is the whole answer to "how much can I borrow" — and the honest answer to what the LTV is happens to be: it depends on what you are pledging. Two holders can present portfolios of identical value and receive materially different advances, because the advance is not a property of the lender, or of the borrower, but of the collateral. The interesting question is therefore what sets it.

What drives the LTV

A small number of variables do almost all the work, and they all come back to a single idea: how confidently the collateral can be valued today and realised in an orderly way tomorrow, in the market where it is listed and under the law that governs the pledge.

• Liquidity and average traded volume of the specific line — not the market's liquidity in general, but that share's. A line that trades deeply every day can be marked and, if it ever had to be, sold without moving against the seller. The practical measure is how many days of ordinary turnover the position represents: a holding that would take a long time to work through the market is discounted accordingly.
• Price volatility — the further a share price can travel between one valuation and the next, the wider the buffer the structure needs, and the smaller the fraction that can prudently be advanced against it.
• Free float — how much of the issued capital is genuinely available to trade. A narrow float means a thin, easily distorted price and a collateral position that is far harder to exit than its headline market value suggests.
• Concentration — measured twice over. First against the issuer: how large the stake is relative to the company's issued capital and its float. Second against the holder: whether the pledged line is one of many positions or effectively the whole of the borrower's wealth. A diversified portfolio spreads risk that a single name concentrates.
• The market, and its settlement and enforcement regime — where the shares are listed, how they settle, whether a pledge is recognised and can be perfected cleanly, and how quickly and predictably security can be enforced if it ever needs to be. Two identical companies listed in different jurisdictions do not make identical collateral.
• Currency — whether the collateral, the loan, and the borrower's own resources are in the same currency. Borrowing in one currency against shares denominated in another introduces a second source of movement in the ratio, independent of the share price, and that has to be absorbed somewhere.
• Lock-ups and disclosure obligations — whether the shares are subject to an IPO lock-up, an orderly-market undertaking, an insider or closed-period restriction, or a shareholding-disclosure regime that would make the pledge, or any eventual enforcement, publicly visible. Constraints on when and how a line could be dealt with matter as much as its market depth.
• Recourse profile — a full-recourse structure supports a higher LTV than a non-recourse one, because the lender's protection extends beyond the collateral itself.

None of these can be assessed from a distance. They are read off the actual holdings — the specific lines, their sizes, their venues, and the constraints attaching to them — which is why the LTV is confirmed only after a review, and why any figure offered before that review is a guess dressed up as a term.

How collateral types compare

The table below ranks collateral by the one thing every driver above comes back to: how confidently it can be valued today and realised in an orderly way tomorrow. It shows relative order only. No percentage is attached to any row, and none should be inferred, because attaching one would imply a figure that cannot honestly be given before the holdings themselves have been seen. Read it as direction and shape — what improves the advance and what reduces it — rather than as a scale.

Relative order only; no figure is stated or implied. Not an offer, and not a commitment to lend. The applicable LTV depends on the specific holdings and is confirmed only after review.

Two portfolios of the same value, two different answers

Consider two holders whose portfolios carry an identical market value. The first pledges a diversified book of large, widely held listed shares spread across sectors and currencies, no one of which represents more than a small share of a day’s ordinary turnover, all of them freely transferable and none subject to a lock-up. The second pledges a single small-cap line: a substantial slice of one company, with a narrow free float, thin daily volume, a price that moves sharply on modest turnover, and a stake large enough to carry disclosure obligations in its home market. Identical value; entirely different collateral. The first can be marked with confidence and, if it ever had to be, worked through the market in an orderly way. The second cannot. The advance each supports differs materially — and no responsible figure can be put on either before the holdings have actually been reviewed. That review, not a rate card, is what produces the number.

Why there is no published number

A rate card would be convenient. It would also be misleading. Two portfolios of identical value can support very different advances: one diversified across liquid large-caps, the other concentrated in a single thinly traded name. Publishing one figure for both would either overstate what the second can safely bear or understate what the first deserves — and a headline band is no better, because it invites every reader to place themselves somewhere in it before anyone has looked at the collateral. The firm does not publish a loan-to-value figure or a standing range for that reason. A Lombard loan is calibrated to the holdings rather than sold off a shelf, and the discipline behind that calibration is the same discipline that keeps the facility sound over its life. Overstating the advance at the outset is precisely what makes a facility fragile later.

How the figure is established

By review. A short, confidential conversation with a principal, followed by an assessment of the actual holdings against the drivers set out above, produces a loan-to-value calibrated to that collateral and set out in writing. The firm's indicative LTV calculator is available beforehand as a transparent, no-obligation way to see how the drivers interact, but it is a teaching tool rather than a term sheet: only the holdings themselves determine the answer. No material non-public information is needed at the enquiry stage — the assessment can begin from publicly available details about the position. For the mechanics behind the number, see what a Lombard loan is; for what it costs, see Lombard loan interest rates and costs.