GE sells online deposit platform to Goldman Sachs

General Electric Co. trims down its financial services business, selling GE Capital Bank's online deposit platform to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, includes $8 billion in online deposit accounts and $8 billion in brokered certificate deposits. No physical assets are involved, as the platform is digital.

The sale is part of the conglomerate's efforts to shed its finance arm GE Capital, which is facing regulatory pressure. In scaling back its operations, GE Capital hopes to avoid Federal Reserve requirements, including maintaining higher capital levels and adding independent directors to its board.

For Goldman Sachs, the deal makes it less dependent upon capital markets. Like GE Capital, the United States' largest pension fund has also been under regulatory pressure. The Fed wants it to look more like a universal bank by catering to consumers, not just institutions and wealthy individuals.

During the 2008 financial crisis, investment banks Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns could not borrow from bond investors and in other markets, resulting in their collapse. The central bank wants Goldman Sachs to avoid that by using consumer deposits to help fund its assets. Such deposits are federally insured, hence they are more stable sources of funding.

"This transaction achieves greater funding diversification and strengthens the liquidity profile of GS Bank by providing an additional deposit-gathering channel," said Goldman Sachs treasurer Liz Beshel Robinson in a statement.

For GE, the transaction is but one step towards eventual dismantling of GE Capital, whose huge funding costs nearly caused its collapse in 2008. The finance unit once represented nearly half of GE's profit. 

The conglomerate also plans to shed GE Capital's second bank chartered in the US, Synchrony Bank.

A few days ago, GE announced it was selling its health-care lending unit for $9 billion.

With reduced financial services operations, GE says it can focus its energies on industrial businesses, including jet engines, power turbines, and CT scanners.