Tyler Beuerlein: Cannabis Banking Is More Competitive Than Ever

Why many banking programs might start bailing, and why Trump 2.0 might be the best thing ever for the industry.

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This week, Tyler Beuerlein, chief strategic business development officer at Safe Harbor Financial, joins the Cannabis Equipment News podcast to discuss why he expects many banking programs to start bailing on the industry, and why the new administration might be the best thing that's happened to the industry from a legislative standpoint.

Tyler Beuerlein's career started in sports, spending several years playing baseball in the New York Mets organization—he spent the offseason working in commercial real estate. In 2008, Beuerlein started a sports drink company with Carmelo Anthony and the founders of Four Loko, and the company had a good run. When the coconut water craze hit, Beuerlein thought the products tasted terrible but had a real opportunity to be marketed toward athletes. He saw it as a better alternative to sugary drinks like Gatorade and Powerade, which had been sold to athletes for decades. Beuerlein says he lived the CPG life for about five years and found it to be a brutal industry. However, it had many similarities to the cannabis industry, like dealing with distributors, retailers, and an evolving supply chain.

As the sports drink fizzled, Beuerlein found an opportunity with Hyper, a tech platform used by financial institutions to bank highly regulated, cash-intensive industries, and he has spent more than the years working in cannabis banking.

About three years ago, Safe Harbor Financial went public. At the time, Beuerlein competed with the cannabis banking service provider but respected the company CEO Sundie Seefried had built. After Safe Harbor went public, a position opened up at the company that was a perfect fit for Beuerlein, and he has been with the firm ever since.

Beuerlein says cannabis banking is becoming commoditized, a "vicious battle" after interest rate hikes led to a fight for survival that has caused some players to throw traditional risk profiles out the window. As a result, Beuerlein expects a large number of institutions with cannabis banking programs to soon withdraw from the industry because they simply can't compete.

However, he remains optimistic, saying the new Trump administration might be the best thing that's happened to the cannabis industry from a legislative standpoint—and it might have little to do with cannabis. He expects SAFE Banking to pass soon, but he says it has more to do with the gun and ammo industry than cannabis. 

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