New York-based Signature Bank added $3.77 billion in non-interest bearing deposits in the Q1, likely representing record inflows from digital currency customers.
The non-interest bearing deposit growth was about 51% greater than Q4 when the bank raked in $2.5 billion new non-interest bearing deposits. The bank’s total non-interest bearing deposits are $22.5 billion, which is 30.5% of total deposits at the bank.
Cryptocurrency firms are often a rich source of low-cost deposits for the few banks that openly serve the sector. As such, analysts have paid close attention to non-interest bearing deposit growth at Signature because the New York bank doesn’t break out its deposits from digital currency customers.
All deposits at the bank increased from Q4 by $10.66 billion to $73.97 billion, and the average cost of those deposits decreased by 64 basis points to 0.34%. This kind of deposit growth dwarfs rival bank Silvergate’s $1.8 billion in deposit growth from crypto firms. In its most recent earnings call, Silvergate CEO Alan Lane noted that in a low-interest rate environment the bank did not want to be the reserve bank for stablecoin issuers which have some of the largest deposit amounts in the crypto ecosystem.This story is developing and will be updated.
