Marijuana industry

A state-backed bank would not be financially feasible because capital requirements would be too high and it likely wouldn’t return profits to the state for at least 30 years, consultants concluded.

As more states permit medical or recreational use, and legal uncertainty persists at the federal level, CUs' decision whether to do business with marijuana firms is trickier than ever.

As Congress races to fund the government, a criminal justice reform bill could also include the STATES Act, which would provide safe harbor for credit unions serving the legal marijuana industry.

The Anchorage-based institution said its decision to enter the pot banking space was driven partly by public-safety concerns in a cash-based industry.

During his time as U.S. attorney general, Jeff Sessions was an outspoken opponent of the legalization of cannabis sales. Now that Sessions has resigned, legal marijuana is poised to become a growth industry.

The STATES Act allows the industry to resolve conflicts between state and federal laws by granting legitimate cannabis companies access to the financial system in marijuana-legalized states, writes Heather Peterson Altepeter, CEO of the National Merchants Association.

The $506 million-asset GFA Federal Credit Union says it will begin accepting clients in the recreational marijuana business, making it the first Massachusetts financial institution to do so.

Many financial institutions are unaware that they're banking marijuana-related businesses, pot bankers and regtech experts say.

Aurora Cannabis in Edmonton, Alberta, said it recently agreed to a $150M term loan and a $50M line of credit from Bank of Montreal, the largest traditional bank investment into the marijuana industry to date.

Despite bipartisan support, the latest congressional effort to enable the legal marijuana industry's access to the banking system still faces plenty of roadblocks.