Marijuana

California Dreamin': A Public Cannabis Bank Isn't A Real Solution

Ultimately, a public bank of any kind is a red herring for the cannabis industry.

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It seems like every state in its own way has tried to grapple with a state-legislated solution to the notorious banking issue across the cannabis industry. And now California is going to study its own banking solution that, in all reality, probably isn’t going to go anywhere.

While California is predicted to take in $7 billion by 2020 because of legalization, its licensed operators have nowhere reliable to put all of that cash, and you can be sure that the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration doesn’t want those operators trucking hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to Sacramento. Additionally, the cash epidemic was made more complicated by the fact that Attorney General Sessions’s rescission of the 2014 Department of Justice (DOJ) Financial Crimes memo that addressed marijuana financial crimes by allowing financial institutions to bank marijuana businesses in states with “robust regulation” in concert with the 2014 FinCEN guidelines (which, thankfully, still exist). The Department of Treasury is currently looking at those guidelines and is trying to decide whether to revise them in the wake of Sessions’s decision.

Back to California.

This month, Treasurer John Chiang announced that his office (along with the California State Attorney General’s Office) would undertake a two-part feasibility study around forming a state-backed bank to serve cannabis businesses within the state. In his office’s November 2017 report, Chiang admitted that creating and supporting a state cannabis bank would be a “formidable” task and that the “definitive solution” is for the federal government to either legalize cannabis or for Congress to create some kind of legal safe harbor for financial institutions that bank the industry. Nonetheless, Chiang’s report proposed two options for a state cannabis bank:

  • “A public institution that would either (1) finance public infrastructure and expand banking for underserved groups, including the cannabis industry; or (2) take deposits, make loans, and provide other services primarily to cannabis producers, distributors, retailers, and related businesses.” – or –
  • “A privately owned bankers’ bank, supported by the state, which would not take retail or small business deposits, but instead provide financial services, compliance services, and technical assistance to financial institutions serving the cannabis industry.”

Chiang’s report goes into great detail about the pros and cons of choosing either a public financial institution or the banker’s bank model that run the gamut of concerns over federal asset forfeiture risks, industry volatility, special problems with closed loop banking and the Federal Reserve, public costs, profitability, capitalization, federal and state regulatory issues, the inability to secure federal depository insurance, and various and complicated ownership structures over either model. Overall though, both models sound nearly impossible to create, capitalize, and sustain due to exiting federal regulations that are insurmountable in every way because cannabis is still a Schedule I controlled substance.

While we appreciate the state’s desire to find a banking solution for cannabis operators, a state-owned, operated, and financially backed bank would have a gargantuan task just to get started — just ask Massachusetts and Colorado. Federal deposit insurers want nothing to do with a bank that is focused on marijuana businesses, regardless of whether it is state-owned. The Federal Reserve also seems unlikely to grant a master account to any newly chartered financial institution whose reason for being is to serve marijuana businesses. Without that master account, the bank wouldn’t have access to the federal money transfer system, a key aspect of banking.

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California would be wise to examine state-legal marijuana banking in the Northwest. Washington and Oregon boast a small but stable number of banks and credit unions that provide services to state-licensed marijuana businesses. Private banking in those jurisdictions grew slowly as those states developed their regulations, and the vast majority of rules are promulgated by state government. California has only just started, and banks that would serve marijuana businesses there would only now be in a position to start working with California cannabis operators. Additionally, with the level of control that California regulators allow local authorities, marijuana businesses in different jurisdictions still face significantly different hurdles from one another. It is more challenging for institutions in California to keep up with the myriad of state and local rules that have been promulgated, most of which are still untested and with new ambiguities being found daily. Now that the 2014 DOJ Financial Crimes enforcement memo is gone, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Treasury will do going forward and whether increased MAUCRSA regulation will matter to banks and credit unions in California. If banks are going to participate, regulations need to be significant enough that banks believe that they are as “robust” as the Treasury guidance requires, but simple enough that a bank can feel confident about its ability to judge whether or not one of its account holders is complying with the law.

Ultimately, a public bank of any kind is a red herring for the cannabis industry. Instead, existing financial institutions need to be sufficiently supported by the states so that they feel comfortable taking on the risk of servicing cannabis accounts.

Hilary Bricken bio photoHilary Bricken is an attorney at Harris Bricken in Los Angeles, and she chairs the firm’s Canna Law Group. Her practice consists of representing marijuana businesses of all sizes in multiple states on matters relating to licensing, corporate formation and contracts, commercial litigation, and intellectual property. Named one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry in 2014, Hilary is also lead editor of the Canna Law Blog. You can reach her by email at [email protected].

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