CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — Financial experts are weighing in on how to keep your cash safe, following concerns about the Silicon Valley Bank failure.
On Friday, the California-based bank collapsed because it was unprepared for the Federal Reserve hiking up interest rates.
Instead of putting customers’ deposits into short-term bonds, the bank put them into long-term instruments, financial experts told 8News. When people began to panic and withdraw their money, they took out about 60% of its assets which crushed the bank. The bank didn’t have a back stop in place.
Ari Rastegar, Founder and CEO of Rastegar Property Company, said the bank largely served startup technology companies.
“The collapse of this bank is not surprising. A lot of these companies were based upon valuations. Valuations and enterprise value are not always and almost never directly connected to current cash flow,” he said.
Silicon Valley Bank is the 16th largest bank in the United States with more than $200 billion in assets, but the bank’s failure comes amid fears that a collapse could spread to other banks.
“We can expect other banks to go down as well. There’s also a lot of talk about Signature Bank in New York and if Signature Bank goes down like this, we’re going to have a much bigger problem,” said Rastegar.
This marks the largest American bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis, though, Rastegar said the reasons are different.
“It’s a similar kind of cadence. Now as the market has started to correct, the cycles, inflation going up, the rates going up, some of the loans that some of these companies have been granted based on valuations…they can’t pay,” he said. “In my opinion, it was stressed really thin, and when the economy started to turn stock markets started to dip. Interest rates went up on a lot of these credit lines.”
The federal government announced Monday they’ll work with the bank and ensure that all depositors have access to their accounts.
Depositors are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation(FDIC) for up to $250,000.
Rastegar said to protect your money, diversify it.
“I’d be taking money from those smaller credit banks and moving them into the larger institutions that have a much, much higher degree of safety,” he said. “Over these next coming years, because of the pain in the economy, if [consumers] really want to sleep well at night go to the big, big institutions. Go to the Bank of Americas. Go to the Wells Fargos. Go to the JP Morgans.”
Rastegar said it’s likely that another large bank institution will step in and take over Silicon Valley Bank.
“I would be astonished if this was a Lehman Brothers’ situation where they just let them collapse and fall down,” he added.
