Sunwest Bank agreed to buy about $476 million of the $736 million in assets that Nano Banc of Irvine, California, reported on June 30, leaving the remaining assets with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to sell. California regulators closed the bank on Friday, September 25, 2026, and the FDIC became its receiver. Nano Banc’s customers kept their money: Sunwest assumed substantially all of the failed bank’s deposits.
The gap between the two asset figures, roughly $260 million, is where the cost of the failure sits. The FDIC preliminarily estimates that the closure will cost its Deposit Insurance Fund about $114 million.
Two asset figures that measure different things
The FDIC’s announcement of the closure gives Nano Banc’s total assets as $736 million and its total deposits as $686 million, both as of June 30, 2026. Those are call-report-date figures, not a count taken on the closing weekend. The same announcement says Sunwest acquired approximately $476 million in assets and that the FDIC retained the rest.
The $476 million is therefore a part of the $736 million, not an alternative estimate of it. American Banker, in its report on the failure, puts the assets left with the FDIC at about $260 million, which matches the subtraction. Banking Dive, in its account of the deal, reports that Sunwest’s purchase included about $227 million in loans.
The acquirer is Sunwest Bank of Sandy, Utah, and the failed institution was small in footprint as well as in size: the FDIC says Nano Banc operated a single branch, in Irvine. The transfer therefore moved one location’s customers and one set of loan files, and left a defined pool of unsold assets in the receivership.
The $114 million estimate and the assets the FDIC kept
An acquirer buying fewer assets than the failed bank held is a common feature of FDIC resolutions, and it explains the insurance fund’s bill. Deposits are liabilities, and Sunwest took on substantially all of them while buying only part of the asset side. The assets the FDIC retained will be sold over time, and the proceeds reduce the final cost.
Banking Dive notes that the $114 million figure is an estimate that can change as the retained assets are sold. The FDIC’s estimate is a charge against the insurance fund that banks pay into. It is not a loss to Nano Banc’s depositors.
What depositors had to do: nothing
The FDIC states that customers of Nano Banc automatically became depositors of Sunwest Bank, with continued FDIC protection, and that they had immediate access to their deposits over the weekend through checks, ATMs and debit cards. The bank’s sole branch reopened as a Sunwest Bank location on Monday, September 28, 2026.
Nothing in the FDIC announcement asks a customer to open a new account, move funds or file a claim. For questions, the FDIC set up a toll-free helpline at 1-866-314-1744 with extended weekend hours. Customers who had arranged automatic payments or direct deposits to their Nano Banc accounts are the ones most likely to need a call to the helpline or to Sunwest, since the announcement addresses access to funds rather than every scheduled transaction.
Why California’s banking regulator closed Nano Banc
Banking Dive reports that the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation was the closing authority, citing the bank’s “deteriorating financial condition, as well as a multi-year pattern of executive mismanagement and regulatory violations.” American Banker traces earlier supervisory actions against the bank: a 2021 Federal Reserve enforcement action over commercial real estate concentration, a 2021 California cease-and-desist order, and a 2022 Federal Reserve order citing deficiencies in oversight of insider lending, weak governance and improper corporate expenses paid through credit cards.
Insider lending is the subject of a separate federal rulemaking this month. The Federal Reserve extended to November 4 the comment period on its proposal to update Regulation O, which governs credit a bank extends to its executives, board members and major shareholders. Nothing in the sources connects that proposal to Nano Banc itself; the link is the supervisory subject that recurs in the bank’s history.
A sixth failure for 2026, and Sunwest’s sixth rescue
Banking Dive and American Banker both count Nano Banc as the sixth U.S. bank failure of 2026, against two each in 2024 and 2025. Sunwest’s chief executive, Carson Lappetito, told American Banker the bank was honored to be selected once again by the FDIC as the acquiring institution. Sunwest has now taken over six failed banks in this way, according to the same report.
The figures that govern the depositor outcome are the FDIC’s own: $686 million in deposits as of June 30, substantially all assumed by Sunwest, and an estimated $114 million cost to the insurance fund. Those numbers can still move as the FDIC sells the roughly $260 million in assets it kept, so the final cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund may differ from the preliminary $114 million once the retained loans and other holdings are sold off.
Records for accounts that change banks overnight
Nano Banc’s depositors became Sunwest customers without filing anything, which leaves the paperwork gap on their side: no notice sets out where their funds now sit, which deposits arrived from which source, or how a later dispute with the new bank would be documented. A weekend transfer of this kind is smooth for access and thin on records.
The Bank Account & Debt Protection Kit is a 10-page kit that includes the frozen-account response and a protected-funds and dispute log, alongside the 2-month bank protection rule.
Open the protected-funds and dispute log for an account that changed banks →
AI tools helped draft this report; the figures and dates in it were checked against the FDIC release and the trade coverage linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
