Signature Bank

Signature Bank
Company typePublic
Industry
  • Banking
  • Financial services
FoundedMay 1, 2001 (2001-05-01)
DefunctMarch 12, 2023 (2023-03-12)
FateFailed due to systemic risk and taken into receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
Successors
HeadquartersNew York City, New York, U.S.
Key people
Increase US$1.337 billion (2022)[3]
Total assetsDecrease US$110 billion (2022)[3]
Total equityIncrease US$8.01 billion (2022)[3]
Number of employees
2,243 (2022)[3]
Subsidiaries
  • Signature Securities Group Corporation
  • Signature Financial LLC
  • Signature Public Funding Corp.
WebsiteArchived official website at the Wayback Machine (archive index)

Signature Bank was an American full-service commercial bank headquartered in New York City and with 40 private client offices in the states of New York, Connecticut, California, Nevada, and North Carolina.[4] In addition to banking products, specialty national businesses provided services specific to industries such as commercial real estate, private equity, mortgage servicing, and venture banking; subsidiaries of the bank provided equipment financing and investment services. At the end of 2022, the bank had total assets of US$110.4 billion and deposits of $82.6 billion;[5] as of 2021, it had loans of $65.25 billion.[6]

Signature Bank was founded in 2001 by former executives and employees of Republic National Bank of New York after its purchase by HSBC. It focused on wealthy clients and built personal relationships with them. For most of its history, it had offices only in the New York City area. In the late 2010s, it began to expand geographically and in terms of services, though it was most noted for its 2018 decision to open itself to the cryptocurrency industry. By 2021, cryptocurrency businesses had represented 30 percent of its deposits.

Banking officials in the state of New York closed the bank on March 12, 2023, two days after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). After SVB failed and in light of the closure of the cryptocurrency-friendly Silvergate Bank earlier in the week, nervous customers withdrew more than $10 billion in deposits. It was the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Two days after Signature was closed, it became known that the bank was being investigated by the United States Department of Justice concerning its failure to properly scrutinize clients' activities for signs of money laundering. At the time of its closure by state banking officials, the bank was rated as the fourth U.S. bank by uninsured banking deposits, with 89.3 percent of deposits being uninsured; internal reviews by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and New York state regulators noted that Signature's risk control and corporate governance had not grown commensurate with an increase in deposits in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

On March 19, a week after the bank closure, the FDIC sold the resulting bridge bank, most of its deposits, and its 40 branches to New York Community Bancorp to be absorbed by its Flagstar Bank subsidiary. Some $4 billion in digital asset banking deposits and $60 billion in loans were excluded from the transaction. Customers Bancorp acquired Signature's venture banking portfolio and hired 30 of that unit's former employees.

  1. ^ Dillet, Romain (March 20, 2023). "Flagstar Bank to buy some Signature Bank assets, but not crypto operations". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on March 22, 2023. Retrieved March 22, 2023.
  2. ^ Saini, Manya; Azhar, Saeed; Saini, Manya (June 16, 2023). "Customers Bancorp acquires $631 million loan portfolio from FDIC at discount". Reuters. Archived from the original on July 11, 2023. Retrieved July 11, 2023.
  3. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference AR2022 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ "Private Client Offices". Signature Bank. Archived from the original on November 14, 2018. Retrieved March 12, 2023.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference fdic was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Form 10-Q Quarterly Report". FDIC. Archived from the original on March 12, 2023. Retrieved March 24, 2022.