When California regulators closed Nano Banc of Irvine on Friday, September 25, Sunwest Bank of Sandy, Utah, agreed to take over substantially all of its deposits, and customers did not have to do anything to keep their money. Nano Banc reported $686 million in deposits as of June 30, 2026, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says in its closing announcement. Sunwest’s own release puts the deposits it assumed at approximately $605 million.

What the FDIC says happened that Friday

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed the bank and appointed the FDIC as receiver. The FDIC then signed a purchase and assumption agreement with Sunwest, under which the Utah bank assumed the deposits and bought certain assets. The FDIC’s announcement gives these figures:

• Total assets of $736 million and total deposits of $686 million, both as of June 30, 2026
• About $476 million of Nano Banc’s assets bought by Sunwest, with the FDIC keeping the rest to sell later
• An estimated cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund of about $114 million, a preliminary figure that can change as the retained assets are sold
• One branch, which reopened as a Sunwest branch on Monday, September 28

Customers could reach their money all weekend by writing checks or using ATM and debit cards. The FDIC says checks drawn on Nano Banc continue to be processed, and loan customers keep making payments as usual.

What does a depositor do next? Nothing is required, the FDIC says, since “depositors of Nano Banc will automatically become depositors of Sunwest Bank.” The deposits Sunwest took over stay FDIC-insured, so there is no need to change banks. The part that deserves a second look is whether everything a household had at Nano Banc sat inside the insurance limit, which the FDIC puts at $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.

The number to follow is the FDIC’s $114 million cost estimate, which the agency says will change as it sells the assets Sunwest did not buy.

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$686 million and $605 million are different numbers

The $686 million is the FDIC’s figure for everything Nano Banc held in deposits on June 30. The FDIC’s release says Sunwest assumed “substantially all” deposits at the time of closing. Sunwest’s press release says the assumed deposits total approximately $605 million, along with $227 million in loans. The two releases do not explain the roughly $81 million between them.

Carson Lappetito, Sunwest’s president and CEO, said in that release that the bank has been defined by stability for more than five decades. Sunwest says it was founded in 1969, has over $5.0 billion in assets, and has offices in California, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Utah and Florida.

Why Nano Banc failed

California’s regulator pointed to the bank’s “deteriorating financial condition, as well as a multi-year pattern of executive mismanagement and regulatory violations,” according to Banking Dive. In March, the department ordered Nano to raise its tangible shareholders’ equity ratio to at least 9.5 percent or voluntarily liquidate, sell or merge, and the bank did not take any of those steps. Nano Banc reported a net loss of $75.3 million, and its shareholder equity fell below a statutory 3 percent minimum, which the regulator deemed unsafe and unsound. The department said it saw significant risk management weaknesses and violations of law as early as 2020, and in 2024 the Federal Reserve barred a former interim CEO, Anthony Gressak III, and a former board member, James Chung, from banking. Banking Dive counts it as the sixth U.S. bank failure of 2026, more than the five failures of 2023.

Checking that a balance is covered at the bank that holds it

The FDIC’s deposit insurance page states the standard amount, and the agency gives a toll-free line at 1-877-275-3342 for coverage questions. Insurance is counted per depositor, per bank and per ownership category, so how accounts are titled affects how much of a balance is covered.

For Nano Banc customers specifically, the FDIC’s number for questions about the closing is 1-866-314-1744. Keep the last statement from before September 25 and the first from Sunwest, and compare the balances. If a direct deposit or an automatic payment is tied to the old account, confirm that it went through on the first cycle after the change.

A household with more than $250,000 at one bank can check how its money is split between ownership categories before deciding whether to move any of it. The closing announcement does not give figures for insured and uninsured deposits at Nano Banc, so there is nothing in it for a customer to compare against.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.