There was some rather surprising news this week via the American Banker (paid subscription required) regarding banking: the FDIC is following FinCEN’s lead in telling banks in Colorado (and elsewhere) to “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has quietly aligned itself with guidelines from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that are meant to assuage bankers’ fears about the burgeoning marijuana industry, American Banker has learned.
[…]
Back in February, when Fincen released its guidance, the FDIC declined to comment on the document. But on Monday, FDIC spokesman Greg Hernandez confirmed that the agency is currently using the Fincen guidance.
The FDIC’s decision to use the guidance is significant because federal banking agencies had previously refused to say whether they’d align themselves with the document, which is part of a broader Obama administration push to foster state-level experiments with marijuana legalization.
[…]
During one recent bank examination, an FDIC official told the bank’s directors that the agency is in alignment with Fincen’s marijuana guidance, according to Lance Ott, a consultant to the bank who heard the discussion. At the same time, the FDIC employee made clear that the agency is neither encouraging nor discouraging banks from serving pot merchants, Ott said.
The FDIC official told the bank that marijuana is a higher-risk business because of its dependence on cash and the increased chance of robbery, but that pot businesses do not hold a reputational risk for banks in states such as Colorado and Washington that have legalized the drug, Ott recalled.
One commenter to that article put one ironic aspect of this recent news very well.
Lemme see if I understand this. Two federal agencies, the FDIC and FinCEN, are knocking themselves out to have banks provide services to pot businesses which are legal in only a handful of states, while being illegal under federal law. Yet the FDIC, until just recently, actively participated in overt (Operation Chokepoint) and still participates in covert efforts to pressure banks to discontinue providing services to so-called alternative financial service providers, such as check cashers, money remitters and payday advance companies, that are legal in most states and are registered (legal) with FinCEN as Money Service Businesses. Where is the logic??
Logic? You want logic? Silly boy!
At the same time that the FDIC is inhaling deeply, its counterpart in the credit union arena is apparently blowing cold.
A New Mexico credit union closed its marijuana business accounts after a negative reaction by a NCUA field examiner, according to Paul Stull, president/CEO of the Credit Union Association of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
“From what I was told, the field examiner’s reaction was quite over the top,” said Stull, who declined to name the specific credit union involved in the alleged incident. “The examiner said there was no way this could be done legally.”
The credit union closed the accounts after an examiner threatened to issue a letter of understanding and agreement if it didn’t do so, Stull said. To his knowledge, there are no credit unions currently offering banking services to New Mexico’s licensed medical marijuana businesses.
I spoke with the chief compliance officer of a Colorado Fed-member state bank that a Federal Reserve examiner made comments to her bank to the effect “You know, other banks in Colorado are banking marijuana businesses,” but when she tasked if that meant that the Fed was taking the position that as long as the bank complied with the FinCEN guidance, the Fed would not object, the examiner backed off and said that he didn’t mean to imply that such activity was OK or not OK, but that each bank needed to make an individual risk decision. Whatever the hell that means.
In other words, the federal regulators are all over the board on this issue.
The head of the Washington Bankers Association spoke for all but a tiny minority of banks in both Colorado and Washington (and elsewhere).
James Pishue, president of the Washington Bankers Association, said that the vast majority of banks are still staying away from marijuana because the drug remains illegal under federal law. “There really needs to be a federal solution to this,” he said.
Yes, here’s the basic risk for a bank that knowingly provides banking services to a marijuana business: The…Bank…Is…Violating…Federal…Criminal…Laws. The bank has to depend on the forbearance of federal government regulators and prosecutors to continue to get away with that law-breaking activity. If that’s how you want to roll, go for it. You’ll look great in pinstripes once John Ashcroft’s doppelganger takes over as Attorney General in January 2017.
On the other hand, you are going to need to smoke dope to comprehend the current regulatory landscape of banking dope.
