New cannabis businesses can have a hard time finding a financial institution to take their deposits. In fact, some banks require their cannabis clients to sign non-disclosure agreements, since they are concerned they’ll get a flood of cannabis clients, or attract too much federal regulator attention.
But Grown In has identified two banks willing to talk publicly about banking cannabis, and one other resource as well.
If you’re still looking for a bank, Jerry Peck, from the Community Banking Association of Illinois, invites you to send him an email at jerryp@cbai.com. For free, he will post your contact information on a closed community bank discussion board, to refer you to banks who are quietly looking for new cannabis clients.
“Send me your information, where you’re looking geographically. I’ll post that in our member’s only section, so all of our members can look at it and say here’s someone potentially looking if you’re a customer,” says Peck.
Chicago’s Burling Bank is also taking new cannabis clients, says CEO Michael Busch.
And Todd Gunderson, CEO of Credit Union 1 with locations throughout the Chicago area, says his credit union is ready to take on every new cannabis licensee.
“We think we have the size and capacity to do so,” he says. “We’ve built technology and compliance so that we think we can handle all of them. The ones we wouldn’t are because of an underwriting capacity, not a banking issue.”Gunderson says interested cannabis businesses should contact Brendan Healy, at Brendan.Healy@creditunion1.org
