The market may be having a tough day but the same cannot be said for the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd (ASX: ANZ) share price.
In afternoon trade, the banking giant's shares are up over 1% to $22.66.
This compares favourably to a 1.1% decline by the ASX 200 index.
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Why is the ANZ share price outperforming?
Firstly, the ANZ share price isn't alone in its outperformance on Wednesday.
Fellow big four banks National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB) and Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC), as well as regionals Bank of Queensland Limited (ASX: BOQ) and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Ltd (ASX: BEN) are also pushing higher today.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) share price is the exception with a 1% decline at the time of writing.
What's going on?
With no announcements out of these banks, today's gains could be due to news that a neobank is shutting down operations.
This morning Volt Bank revealed that it is closing its deposit taking business and intends to return its banking licence.
There had been fears that neobanks could take market share away from the big banks, so this could be interpreted as a positive for them.
Volt explained that it was unable to secure funding to keep operating. It commented:
With regret, we are announcing that Volt will be closing its deposit-taking business and intends to return its banking licence. Following the pandemic and the current challenging global economic climate we were unable to secure the funding needed to continue. Our priority now is to ensure account holder funds are returned to account holders as soon as possible.
