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Entourage Effect and Shield Compliance Join the ICLC

Blog Post
April 17, 2024

Having just celebrated its one year anniversary, and hard on the heels of recent announcements that First Citizens Bank and Safe Harbor Financial had joined the ICLC (see here and here), the ICLC is pleased to announce three additional new participants. One of these is a commercial bank. In accordance with our commitment to our bank participants, they are not identified outside the Community unless they specifically authorize it, as was the case with our First Citizens blog. 

The other 2 new participants, Entourage Effect Capital (EEC) and Shield Compliance, are each well-known and respected within the cannabis industry. Their participation will enhance the ICLC’s potential value to its participants, enriching the breadth and depth of relevant and accretive cannabis industry experience, skillsets, contacts and perspectives available to them. 

As contrasted with the proactive outreach involved in recruiting the ICLC’s early participants, contact with the ICLC was initiated by these and most of our other recently reported new participants, a development we find an encouraging reflection of the market’s recognition of the ICLC’s relevance. 

Established in 2014, and having made more than 70 investments, EEC is one of the longest standing and most experienced cannabis investment firms. Its team has developed a broad and deep network over the past ten years, and EEC has indicated that it looks forward to sharing contacts and related opportunities with ICLC participants. Multiple senior EEC team members come from decades-long careers in leveraged finance and their expertise has proven critical to EEC and its partners in navigating past debt financings. 

Since 2014, Shield Compliance has been seeking to transform how financial institutions serve the legal cannabis market, setting the standard for compliance excellence in cannabis banking. Its purpose-built BSA/AML compliance management software solution sits behind the financial institution to simplify compliance, automate processes across multiple data sources, create efficiencies, unlock new revenue, and scale operations and includes time monitoring and comprehensive reporting capabilities. By enhancing the ability of its nearly 70 financial institution clients to achieve these objectives, Shield contributes to increasing the availability to the cannabis industry of normalized banking relationships, including lending.

For information about ICLC participation, please contact Steve Lenn (salenn@bmdllc.com) or Brandon Pauley (btpauley@bmdllc.com).

Stephen A. LennBrandon PauleyICLCCannabis Law
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