A bipartisan group of House co-sponsors is set to give cannabis-related banking reform another go as the industry still lacks safe harbor for its financial institutions. State-legal cannabis companies aren’t stashing large stacks of cash behind walls or rubber-banded bankrolls in hidden vaults. Helping motor more than $17.5 billion of legal cannabis sales in the U.S. in 2020, there were 515 banks and 169 credit unions providing services to cannabis-related businesses at the end of last year, according to Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) quarterly cannabis banking update. But those banks are not the “national associations” of the world. Big financial institutions, like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and PNC, are not going to get into the cannabis space directly unless there’s more formalized federal reform, said Jonathan Havens, a partner at Saul, Ewing, Arnstein, and Lehr’s Philadelphia-based law firm.
Andriana Ruscitto, Cannabis Business Times, 03/18/2021 10:05:00