Signature Bank Added $3.8B in Non-Interest Bearing Deposits in Q1

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 in Q4 when the bank raked in $2.5 billion of 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 primary reserve bank for stablecoin issuers, which have some of the largest deposit amounts in the crypto ecosystem.