A House panel on Oct. 20 challenged online brokerage Webull’s public assurances about who can access sensitive U.S. customer information, citing the company’s privacy disclosures and technology operations outside the United States.
The House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party accused Webull of making “numerous false statements” after the committee released an Oct. 7 report examining the brokerage’s China ties.
Webull has disputed the committee’s findings. In an Oct. 9 statement furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the company said U.S. customer information is stored on Amazon Web Services infrastructure in the continental United States and that “employees in China have no access to it.”
Dispute Over Data Access
The committee pointed to Webull Financial’s privacy notice, which states that personal information “may be accessed by our affiliates in jurisdictions other than the United States” in providing services.
The notice does not specify that employees in China have such access.
The committee separately pointed to Webull’s technology structure. According to the committee, the app used by U.S. customers is owned by a Singapore affiliate and supported by Hunan Weibu Information Technology Co., Webull’s China-based subsidiary.
Hunan Weibu employed 863 people at the end of 2025, accounting for 62 percent of Webull’s global workforce, according to Webull’s 2025 annual report.
Webull Financial’s audited statements also document a substantial financial relationship with the Singapore technology affiliate, Webull Technologies Pte. Ltd.
Under the agreement, Webull Financial transfers to the Singapore affiliate platform revenue above an amount equal to 120 percent of Webull Financial’s expenses in exchange for technology services. Webull Financial owed the affiliate about $83.1 million at the end of 2024.
Neither the committee’s original Oct. 7 report nor its Oct. 20 release establishes that Chinese authorities accessed Webull customers’ data. Webull said Oct. 9 that the report identified no instance in which U.S. customer information was improperly accessed, transferred, or misused.
Regulatory Transparency
The committee also challenged Webull’s Oct. 7 statement that it would address questions with “the same transparency we bring to the SEC, FINRA, and regulators worldwide,” citing previous state and federal enforcement actions.
In a 2023 Massachusetts consent order, Webull acknowledged that it had provided the state securities regulator with inaccurate customer complaint figures at different times. Massachusetts imposed a $500,000 fine as part of an order addressing broader compliance and supervisory deficiencies.
California regulators separately sanctioned Webull after the firm failed for about a year to provide records requested in connection with a consumer complaint.
The committee also cited separate SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) enforcement actions involving suspicious activity reporting, options account approvals, customer complaints, supervision, and recordkeeping.
FINRA fined Webull $3 million in 2023 after finding that the firm failed to adequately screen some customers approved for options trading and failed to properly identify and report certain customer complaints. Webull accepted the sanctions without admitting or denying FINRA’s findings.
Dispute Over Committee Contact
The committee also disputed Webull’s Oct. 7 statement that the report was published “without ever seeking clarification from Webull.” It said Webull answered written questions in January and February 2025 and produced 306 pages of documents. Webull’s first response welcomed “the opportunity … to clarify certain misunderstandings regarding its corporate structure and business.”
Webull’s Oct. 9 statement acknowledged about two months of engagement but said the committee then “went silent for roughly 20 months,” asked no follow-up questions, and did not give the company an opportunity to respond to the report’s findings before publication.
Webull had not responded to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the committee’s Oct. 20 accusations by the time of publication.
In its Oct. 9 statement, Webull said it remained willing to engage with the committee and regulators and that its “door remains open.”
