What more was Chase expected to do here? What would treating Hashicorp as a major account have entailed? A phone call to find out what else was needed?
In our experience there was so much they could have done. I just compare it to our experience with SVB which got us no-personal guarantee credit cards, availability of venture debt, access to mortgages (something I would have done if a local credit union hadn’t stepped up). Chase never did any of those things with us. They need to step it way up if they want to win startup business long term and not just in the wake of a crisis.
Many of the West Coast "Chase" branches and operations are just rebranded WaMu ones from when they collapsed during the GFC. Probably the new JPM Chase won't lose your money but the predecessor came pretty close.
Yup, you can check the routing numbers to find this out. I haven’t dealt with east coast Chase but I’d be willing to bet it’s a completely different experience.
If you have enough assets, Chase will absolutely lend against that collateral.
“Enough” is likely the key word. But if you have business or personal accounts with over a couple million (and certainly $10+ million), I would be shocked if someone higher up than a clerk hadn’t personally reached out to you, tried to take you out to coffee, and let you know the perks applicable to your personal situation they can provide you that you can’t find on a website.
Sure, they likely weren’t as enticing as SVB’s perks nor as willing to lend to an account that had $0 yesterday and millions the next, but they absolutely will offer personal loans/mortgages against stock compensation on the guarantee you keep your account with them above a certain threshold, etc.
Similar to the reason mortgage APR will differ among seemingly similar homebuyers at the same point in time (and even then, only after you actually send over your financial documentation can you see your rate), my guess would be one can't exist because everything is based upon not just the financial situation of the bankee but also (as we've seen with SVB) the banker.
I would expect them to say hey, now that you've got so much more capital in your account I'd like to set up a short meeting to learn more about your company. Then they meet with you, learn a bit about your business trajectory (for their own planning) and pitch some significantly increased benefits to keep you around.
You don't have to accept, but they should at least actively try to bring you in if your account is a bug or important one.
There are plenty of ways to get you in the conversational door like offering a better rate or to help protect the account.
Eventually someone from hashicorp "...notices we have ~$35M sitting in cash in a Chase bank account. This is obviously not a smart thing to do, so he suggests some financial plans for how to better safeguard and utilize this mountain of cash". The bank could have been the party to preemptively explain this to the author, and if they did they might have been able to be a part of the solution (or at least try to negotiate for it) instead of losing the entire account.
It sounds like the bank manager was being too delicate, asking the author if they had any banking needs when he didn't really think he had any. They should have been more blunt and said look dude you have a ton of money in here, you're probably not used to managing this amount of money, we need to take just a bit of time to discuss it and we'll make it easy and worth your while.
