Customers Bancorp, Inc. CUBI

The business

Customers Bank takes deposits from businesses and lends to other businesses, which is unremarkable until you notice it does this from seven branches. Deposits come from commercial teams hired nationally and from cubiX, a payments platform the bank wrote itself that has cleared over $5 trillion. Against $21.7B of deposits, $6.9B pay no interest at all. That is the entire moat: a branchless bank that convinced companies to leave money with it for free.

Those deposits have a source the bank is careful about naming. At December 2024, the last time it gave a figure, $3.6B sat with clients in the digital asset industry, about a fifth of all deposits. They did not shrink in the much-discussed wind-down: the blockchain rail was retired, cubiX replaced it in-house, and the money grew across three straight year-ends. The annual report still warns these depositors "operate as ecosystems" where losing one relationship damages the others, and no longer says how big the ecosystem is. An August 2024 Federal Reserve agreement over anti-money-laundering practice there was still written in the present tense in February.