India’s SVC Bank Clarifies Its Business is Safe as Some Confuse it With Collapsed SVB

India’s 116-year-old SVC bank was compelled to issue an official clarification regarding the status of its business after confused customers mistook it for US’ recently shuttered SVB — Silicon Valley Bank. The similarity in the acronyms of their names may have led to the confusion. Putting the minds of its users at ease, the SVC bank said it is ‘totally unrelated’ to the now defunct SVB. The California-based SVB catered largely to the IT companies located in the Silicon Valley tech hub, including crypto companies.

Established in 1906, the SVC Co-operative Bank was formerly known as the Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank. In the fiscal year 2021-2022, the Mumbai-headquartered bank said its total business stood at a net worth of Rs. 31,500 crore, having churned over Rs. 146 crore in profits.

The bank has warned people against spreading rumours suggesting its business is, in any way, linked to the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank.

“SVC Bank is completely unrelated to Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) that was based in California. We request our members, customers and other stakeholders not to pay attention to baseless rumours and mischief-mongering by unscrupulous elements insinuating similarities in brand names. SVC Bank reserves the right to take due legal action on rumour mongers for tarnishing its brand image,” the bank said in a prepared statement.

Within one week, the US witnessed three large crypto banks crumble under market pressure. Regulators who approved the closure of these banks said their unstable business status could have posed severe threat to the US economy.

The back-to-back downfalls of these crypto-friendly banks in the US, however, did manage to grasp the attention of the world, sounding a loud alert around the risks of crypto’s volatile nature.

On March 14, India’s state minister for technology — Rajeev Chandrasekhar— interacted with a group of start-ups to assess the impact of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse on them.

To mitigate the financially damaging after-effect on the market, US authorities were quick to announce that all custodians linked to the collapsed banks will have access to their funds.