Cannabis banking, wildfires, and wineries
North Bay Credit Union grows its business while calculating risk and reward in its Bay Area market.
North Bay Credit Union($71.3M, Santa Rosa, CA) is a small cooperative with a big appetite for risk when it comes to seizing the opportunity to serve emerging needs in its field of membership.
The Santa Rosa-based cooperative is the only financial institution that openly serves the legal cannabis market in the San Francisco area as the agricultural base it has long tended blends with suburban growth.
North Bay also continues to lend to grape growers and has a large stake in mortgages — carving out a niche in manufactured housing in an expensive housing market — in a region notoriously prone to wildfires, landslides, and even the occasional major earthquake.
“The North Bay has been traditionally an agricultural region,” says CEO Chris Call. “We’re in the heart of wine country, but it’s rapidly developing into weed country with the proliferation of legal cannabis farms, manufacturers, and retailers.”
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