Jennifer Roberts
O Bee Credit Union chief operating officer
BANKING PIONEER | Ten years ago, Jennifer Roberts introduced a pilot program for cannabis businesses in Washington state. With its innovative and determined chief operating officer taking the lead, O Bee Credit Union has held firm on its mission to serve the underserved by providing access to banking for state-licensed businesses and their employees.
Women to Watch
Welcome to Marijuana Venture’s 10th annual feature highlighting women in the cannabis industry. This year we are proud to bring readers the stories of 13 influential professionals helping to shape the industry through their leadership, insights and visions for the future of cannabis. The following women hail from a variety of backgrounds and each bring their own unique skillsets, experience and perspectives for the betterment of the industry.
It is an honor to share their stories.
To this day, access to traditional banking services remains a problem for thousands of cannabis businesses across North America, as well as potentially tens of thousands of industry employees.
Many financial institutions are simply too conservative or are unwilling to conduct the thorough due diligence required to keep them from running afoul of federal regulations.
But when an existing member approached O Bee Credit Union in 2014 about opening an account for a newly formed cannabis business in Washington, Jennifer Roberts wanted to figure out some way to make it work.
“Any time a member makes a request of us as a credit union, we always feel like it’s our duty to do our best to see if we can say yes,” says Roberts, the credit union’s chief operating officer.
Before Washington legalized cannabis for recreational use, O Bee provided services to a small handful of medical marijuana businesses, but the publication of the 2013 Cole Memo and Washington’s shift to an adult-use market meant a change in policy and moving into uncharted territory — as well as significant risks if members broke the rules.
Thanks in part to Washington’s strict guidelines for issuing licenses to prospective cannabis businesses, Roberts was able to develop a compliance program that satisfied O Bee board members’ concerns and placated federal regulators. In July 2014, O Bee became the first financial institution in Washington to serve all three cannabis license types — producers, processors and retailers — and one of the first credit unions in the country to openly work with the regulated marijuana industry.
O Bee launched its pilot program with a goal of signing at least 20 businesses. The credit union surpassed that objective within 90 days and had nearly 200 cannabis clients within the first 12 months.
“At that one-year mark, I was able to erase ‘pilot program’ from our internal documents and it’s been a fully formalized program ever since,” Roberts says.
Today, O Bee’s cannabis program remains a benchmark for how financial institutions can work with marijuana-related clients. The credit union provides full-service deposit services, online banking and payroll options to Washington cannabis businesses and their employees, who are often barred from mainstream banks the same way businesses and their owners are.
“We’ve spent 10 years proving this is possible,” Roberts says. “And not only is it possible, it is making for a better experience for business owners who are able to expand their own businesses and locations and services, and as a banking industry, we’re making it happen and we’re not having any problems.”
The development of O Bee’s cannabis program has mirrored the credit union’s overall growth since Roberts joined the organization as the assistant to the CEO in 2006, when O Bee had just two branches and 36 employees. Today, O Bee has seven branches, 155 employees and more than 34,000 members — and Roberts has worked nearly every position in the company, rising to the level of chief operating officer.
O Bee Credit Union was founded more than six decades ago to serve employees of Olympia Brewing Company, who, similar to today’s cannabis workers, were discriminated against by banks.
“It was almost the same exact vibe as today,” Roberts says. “So we’re just continuing this tradition of serving the underserved. One of the things I love about O Bee is that it’s always stayed true to credit union values of people serving people and not being about profit.”