Zions Bank info

 

Not seeing images? View this email as a web page. Dear Zions Bank Client: As you undoubtedly know, the past few days have been stressful and highly eventful in the banking world. The failure of two large banks, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Santa Clara, California, and Signature Bank, in New York City, have rattled the markets as well as many people’s nerves. Yesterday afternoon, the Department of the Treasury, together with federal banking regulators, announced steps they’ve taken to protect the depositors in these institutions and to contain the risk that the concerns that took hold among depositors at these banks would spread to the wider banking system. Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank had singular characteristics that proved to be unstable, particularly in the current environment of rising interest rates. What set these banks apart was their extremely high growth rates in recent years, and their concentrations of large, uninsured deposits from clients in the technology and cryptocurrency industries, respectively. While the government’s actions should put to rest concerns about the ability of the banking industry to fully and timely meet their obligations to every depositor, we want you to know a little about Zions Bancorporation’s – and our affiliated local banking brands’ (including Zions Bank's) – liquidity. Our deposits are held in 1.4 million accounts, and these accounts overwhelmingly tend to be smaller in size and operational in nature. Notably, the average balance of an account at Silicon Valley Bank was about 22 times the size of the average balance in a Zions account, which made Silicon Valley Bank much more susceptible to the kinds of outflows they experienced last week. The situation was similar at Signature Bank. As an analyst at Bloomberg wrote over the weekend, “In the wake of SVB and Signature's swift demise, it's important to view deposit granularity, or having lower balances per deposit, as a sign of more funding stability, with Zions and Regions leading peers on this measure.” Zions Bancorporation has access to tens of billions of dollars of readily available liquidity, without having to sell securities. The credit quality of our loan and securities portfolios has been outstanding in recent years, and our capital remains strong. We appreciate the longstanding relationships we’ve built with such a large number of families, small and medium-sized businesses, and many others like you over our 150-year history. Sincerely, Scott Anderson President and CEO Zions Bank