Sunwest assumes Nano Banc's deposits in a failure the FDIC expects to cost $114 million

Add the FDIC's two asset figures and you get $736 million. That is the whole balance sheet Nano reported at June 30 ^{[9][11][1][1]}. The agency is holding about 35% of it ^[4]. The deposit side is bigger than the assets Sunwest bought. Nano reported $686 million of deposits at mid-year. If balances stayed near that level until the closing, Sunwest took on roughly $210 million more in deposits than it bought in assets ^[1][3]. The FDIC estimates the failure will cost its insurance fund $114 million, or about 15.5 cents for every dollar of those June assets ^[10][2]. What Sunwest took on is a book of business operating accounts. Nano called itself a "community based business bank," and its customers used it for online banking, remote deposit capture, ACH origination and wires ^[2]. Larger lenders have measured how much business banking runs through the operating account. KeyCorp said 82% of its commercial deposit balances sat in operating accounts, and that about 91% of its commercial loans went to customers who also used it for deposits, payments or capital-markets services ^[6]. Regions said the share of its customers using treasury management rose from 57% to more than 66% over roughly five years ^[7]. The transfer took a weekend. The FDIC announced the failure on Friday. Depositors became Sunwest customers automatically and kept access to their funds without interruption, and the single Irvine branch reopens Monday under Sunwest's name ^[14][3][16]. PYMNTS called the failure "a real-world test of what happens to technology-enabled commercial banking relationships when the institution providing them fails" ^[19]. So far the public record shows the deposits and the branch moving. It does not show whether Nano's ACH origination, check-capture and wire setups moved onto Sunwest's systems without a gap. Sunwest sells itself to businesses on integrations with their accounting, ERP, receivables, payables and payment-processing systems ^[8]. Nano's collapse also tells us little about whether a one-branch business bank that leans on technology carries more risk. California regulators blamed significant financial losses, a deteriorating financial condition, failure to comply with an enforcement order and a multiyear history of management problems and regulatory violations ^[4]. American Banker's account of the bank's history includes a December 2021 cease-and-desist from the state's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation ^[17]. PYMNTS wrote that the failure "does not establish that the model created additional risk" ^[5]. For Sunwest the deal is modest. The Sandy, Utah, lender describes itself as a privately held commercial bank with more than $4 billion in assets, so the $476 million it bought is at most about 12% of that ^[12][5]. It has done this before. "We are honored to once again be selected by the FDIC as the acquiring institution of an FDIC-assisted acquisition, marking the sixth time Sunwest Bank has completed such a transaction," said Carson Lappetito, Sunwest's president and CEO ^[13]. Buyers with that record may get more chances. Nano is the sixth failure of 2026. That is three times the full-year count for 2024 and again for 2025, and compares with five in 2023 and none in 2021 or 2022 ^[14][15][6]. "From a top-down view the industry looks very strong. When you start looking from the bottom up, it changes," American Banker's column on the failure said ^[18]. The deal can go three ways. In the first, Sunwest keeps Nano's operating accounts and ends up with a business deposit base without the assets the FDIC kept. In the second, treasurers use the forced move to shop their banking elsewhere and the balances drift away. In the third, the retained assets sell poorly and the $114 million estimate rises; the agency says that figure is subject to later adjustment ^[10][11]. I think the first is likeliest, because a business whose payments have just been moved once has little reason to move them again soon.