Chicago-based clearing house OCC saw its securities lending activity rise again in October, despite upping fees for borrowers at the start of the month.

Nearly 160,000 trades took place on the firm’s central clearing stock loan platform last month, up 33% on the same period in 2015.

The increase in activity came despite an additional 0.4bps charge levied on borrowers at the start of October.

That's on top of the existing $1.00 clearing fee per new loan transaction per counterparty.

The stock loan program’s transaction volumes and notional values have increased significantly over the past few years.

OCC executives said the fee change would allow the company to invest in resources to meet increased operational and risk management demands.

Year-to-date stock loan activity is up 38% from 2015 with 1.58 million new loan transactions in 2016,