Airwallex says helping people was its focus during SVB collapse

It was around midday on Friday when the team knew something bad was brewing in the tech sector. Meetings were called. Plans were swiftly put in place. It was all hands on deck. Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was tumbling. And back in Australia, the Airwallex crew was prepping for the fallout.

Battle stations

“We’re going to have to move quickly on this because the situation could deteriorate. There are a lot of Australian businesses out there who are really in need of assistance fast,” Amelia Hamer, Airwallex’s director of strategy for ANZ, recounted in a phone call with SmartCompany.

And wasn’t that the truth. And the time, startups in Australia and across the globe were in a panic. The US Treasury Department was yet to announce that it would protect all deposits. For now, all that was guaranteed was US$250,000.

People who weren’t part of the original bank run were rushing to get money out. They had payroll coming up. Invoices to pay and receive. And no guarantee that they would see their money again.

Airwallex began reaching out to its customers to offer assistance.

“A bunch of our existing customers were banking with us in Australia, but they hadn’t set up a US entity or dollar account,” Hamer said.

“This enabled quite a few of them to have that additional account where [before] they were only banking with SVB.”

The Fintech also got in contact with Australian startups and small businesses that it had already been in talks with.

“It came to a point where we said ‘hey is there any way we can help?’ And a lot of people actually came to us saying ‘yes, can you help us.’”

The Airwallex crew worked through the night and the weekend. Everyone from the commercial and operations teams helping open accounts, to the CEO were helping onboard customers. With compliance in mind, of course.

“That was the most important thing in terms of speeding up the process… we have very strong compliance frameworks.”

An un-opportunistic opportunity for Airwallex

There’s no ignoring the fact that this was also an opportunity for Airwallex. Over the course of a few days, it garnered new customers in the hundreds. Regardless of the wider crisis context, that’s a business win.

But Airwallex says this wasn’t front of mind and that its customers didn’t really see it that way either.

“To be honest there wasn’t much time to think about anything else,” Hamer said.

“I had CEOs coming back to me and saying ‘thank you so much for helping us.” 

Hamer also found that while checking on other people who might need a USD account, many didn’t but thanked them for checking.

“Off the back of that, what we saw was people saying ‘well let’s still have a conversation because I’m interested in the diversification piece’.”

“So I think there’s no doubt that we’ll be in a position where people are thinking about new banking partners, and that’s when we can have conversations.”

Airwallex says SVB was a traditional banking issue

Airwallex is also adamant about the closure of SVB not being reflective of a wider issue in the fintech sector, saying people have been quick to jump to that conclusion.

“The issues associated with Silicon Valley Bank were really, in many ways, traditional banking issues,” Hamer said.

“I’m hopeful for that for the sector in general — not just us but for everyone — that people don’t let our reputation take a hit off the back of this.”

“There are people who are probably jumping to that conclusion. I think that’s the wrong conclusion.”

Still, despite the US government coming to the rescue of depositors, it’s unlikely that this is quite the end of the SVB drama. Investors, who aren’t protected, will be hit hard. Smaller regional banks in the US may also suffer as a result.

And one of the many questions that still remain is whether this will make it more difficult for Australian startups to operate in Australia in the short to medium term. With more Aussie fintechs spinning up financial solutions, hopefully not.