According to a press release issued by the New York-based Metropolitan Commercial Bank, also known as “MCB,” the banking institution no longer wants to deal with cryptocurrencies.
The bank has said that it would stop providing services linked to cryptocurrencies due to ‘recent developments’ in the market.
Today’s announcement of our exit from the cryptocurrency-related asset vertical represents the culmination of a process that began in 2017, when we decided to pivot away from crypto and not grow the business.
Metropolitan Commercial Bank
Metropolitan Bank says crypto didn’t expose it to financial risks
However, as the bank was quick to point out, customers, assets, and deposits associated with cryptocurrencies have never constituted a major percentage of the financial company’s operations, nor have they ever put the Company in a position where it was exposed to material financial risks.
MCB asserts that it will not deviate from its primary goals of expanding its core business and providing greater value to all of its stakeholders by providing high-touch, relationship-driven banking that is underpinned by strict financial discipline and effective risk management.
According to the press release, the business anticipates that leaving this vertical would have a negligible effect on the company’s finances.
MCB presently has four active institutional customers that are associated with crypto-assets. Altogether, these clients account for around 1.5% of total revenues and 6% of total deposits at the moment.
The scope of the Metropolitan Bank’s involvement with these customers is restricted to the provision of services relating to debit cards, payments, and accounts.
The company does not have any outstanding loans to any of these customers, does not maintain any cryptocurrency assets on its balance sheet, and does not promote or sell these assets to its customers.
The bank has started the process of ending its business agreements with these customers in a methodical manner, and the bank anticipates that this process will be finished sometime during the year 2023.
This decision will not have any impact on customers’ current ability to transfer monies to or receive funds from crypto-asset firms they choose to do business with, nor will it have any impact on the bank’s service to customers who do not have crypto-related activity as their primary line of business, the press release says.
This information emerges concurrently with the ongoing processes stemming from the FTX case, which have kept the public’s attention focused on the cryptocurrency sector.
Source: https://www.cryptopolitan.com/metropolitan-bank-wants-nothing-with-crypto/