Regent Bank + Green Check Verified

About Regent Bank

Regent Bank is located in Oklahoma and Missouri, and we are a bank that caters to small businesses. Our asset size is north of $900M, and we are rapidly growing.

Why Regent Started a Cannabis Banking Line of Business

We were seeing explosive growth, and there is always a need to fund that growth. So, the board was looking at where Regent Bank can expand in terms of the services they offer to the community. One of the ways they decided to expand was to take a look at banking the cannabis industry.

How Regent Got Involved with Green Check Verified and The Resulting Growth

I created Regent’s cannabis-related business program in June of 2019. By the end of June, I banked my first client, and then I did a test-case scenario where I had 10 businesses to understand what their banking patterns, etc. looked like. That’s when I knew that if I wanted to expand the program then I would need some type of technology in order to make that happen. And so, I went looking for the best-of-the-best of the cannabis banking technology that was out there.

One of the companies I looked at was Green Check, and I actually really enjoyed working with the Green Check team as we were going through the RFP process. Because like Regent Bank, I could tell that they had that entrepreneurial spirit. I could also tell that this would be the type of partnership where we could work together to create something even better than we imagined from the onset.

It was exciting because once we got Green Check’s technology implemented, we were able to expand extremely quickly. So today, we actually bank over 300 cannabis-related businesses, and we have nearly 200 that are licensed (cannabis businesses) in Oklahoma or Missouri.

What It’s Like Working with Green Check

When you have a legacy technology system — and I think bankers can especially appreciate this — you can go to that company and ask for a certain improvement, and the company will say, “okay, we will slate that for a year and a half from now.” But with Green Check, it’s vastly different.

Because it really is a product-led, customer-focused organization, if you see an area for improvement and have that conversation with them, they are definitely in a place where they can implement technology upgrades much more seamlessly and efficiently than I’ve ever experienced.

The exciting thing about that is that Green Check is agile and Regent is agile. So, when you have those two things together, that’s when the magic really starts to happen in terms of elevating our cannabis banking program.

Green Check listens to what their customers want, and they are extremely service-oriented both to their banking partners and to the cannabis banking businesses on their platform. It’s pretty exciting to work with a technology company that can move so quickly and with such a focus on customer experience.

Advice for FIs Considering Cannabis Banking

What I’d recommend for any institution that is exploring banking the cannabis industry, is to really understand how big you want to go. Do you want a small program where you are only banking ten businesses? Then that’s okay. But if you want to really make a difference in your community and offer services to the cannabis industry, then you are going to need technology in order to make that happen. If you want to scale the program and be efficient, then you are going to need to make the investment in technology. And I recommend doing that at the beginning so that you can implement it the right way and get your clients used to the platform. They are going to love it; they really will.