Covers September 17th through September 23rd.
This week's thesis. The FDIC's own list of pending deposit-insurance applications held ten proposed banks we had not been tracking, and three of them come from consumer-finance and payments companies: PayPal, Klarna and OneMain. On the uninsured side, the Comptroller conditionally approved three digital-asset trust banks on September 18th. The conventional pipeline gained an Oklahoma acquisition that surfaced only in a Federal Reserve notice.
Security Bancshares Corporation of Wewoka, Oklahoma has applied to the Federal Reserve to acquire The State Bank of Wynnewood, Oklahoma. The notice was published September 23rd, and comments close October 23rd. The Wynnewood bank has been owned since 1996 by Garvin County Bancshares, Inc., so this is a genuine change of ownership. Terms have not been disclosed, and we have not located the parties' own announcement. Interpretation. This is a small, in-state combination between neighboring counties of the kind that rarely reaches a press wire. The public record began with the regulatory filing, not the handshake. → Application filed; comment period open.
MidFirst Bank of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma received the Comptroller's approval on September 14th to acquire Dallas Capital Bank, N.A. of Dallas, Texas. The Comptroller's filing record names Dallas Capital Bank as the target. → Approved; closing pending.
Hometown Financial Group's plan to buy Primary Bank of Bedford, New Hampshire now has its Federal Reserve notice. A newly formed Hometown Financial Group, Inc. would become the stock holding company of TruNorth Bank of Easthampton, Massachusetts as part of the group's conversion from mutual to stock form, and TruNorth would then acquire Primary Bank. Comments close October 19th. → Application filed.
A Nebraska acquisition we held as pending, Homestead Bank's purchase of First State Bank of Randolph, Nebraska, completed on August 1st. Our record had pointed at a different bank of the same name; that is corrected. → Completed.
Mutual Federal Bancorp, MHC of Chicago, Illinois has filed to convert to stock form, with a new MFB Bancorp, Inc. becoming the savings and loan holding company of Mutual Federal Bank. No outside party gains control, so we have recorded it as a change in the holding company's regulatory status rather than as an acquisition. Three earlier conversions of the same kind have already completed: Country Bank for Savings of Ware, Massachusetts under 1850 Financial on April 1st; Community Savings Bank of Bethel, Ohio under CSB Financial on July 29th; and StonehamBank of Stoneham, Massachusetts under 1887 Bancorp, MHC on September 2nd. → Application filed; three completed.
The FDIC's list of pending deposit-insurance applications, dated September 22nd, holds 28 names. Ten were new to us. Four were received in September or just before it: Bank Elevated and Texas Patriot Bank, both of Frisco, Texas; California Standard Bank of Fresno, California; and Avant Bank, N.A. of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The other six have been pending for months: Klarna Bank USA, PayPal Bank and OneMain Bank, all of Utah; Aspira Bank of Irvine, California; Glades Bank and Trust of Plantation, Florida; and Novus Bank of Edmond, Oklahoma. Interpretation. Three of the six are consumer-finance and payments companies seeking an insured charter, the same pull toward owning a bank that TabaPay's application to buy Transact Bank, N.A. of Denver, Colorado showed earlier this month. → Application filed.
On September 18th, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued three conditional decisions on uninsured national trust banks, each confirmed in the Comptroller's own application records:
None of the three will take insured deposits. None may open until it raises capital and passes a preopening examination. Each must apply separately for Federal Reserve Bank stock, which is not the same thing as access to Federal Reserve payment services. Interpretation. The three decisions came from applicants the Comptroller's public roster stopped listing a week earlier. For three of the eleven names that dropped off the roster, the disappearance now has an explanation: they were approved. The other eight remain unexplained. → Pending to conditional approval.
The Comptroller also received a new trust charter application on September 11th, from Midwest Trust Company, N.A. of Overland Park, Kansas. → Application filed.
Nola Bank of New Orleans, Louisiana, a state-chartered commercial bank, opened on September 14th with FDIC insurance approved in August 2025. The FDIC's own records date Mercury Bank, N.A. of Salt Lake City, Utah's conditional approval to September 8th and VALT Bank, N.A. of Eagle, Idaho's to August 21st.
A proposed thrift holding company acquisition of Eureka Homestead of Metairie, Louisiana was reported this week, but we have not yet read a primary filing for it. It remains on our watch list.
The National Credit Union Administration posted no new conservatorship, liquidation or assisted merger. The latest remains WeDevelopment Federal Credit Union's assisted merger into CommunityAmerica on September 1st. The member vote on the TDECU and Smart Financial combination is scheduled for September 28th.
Three change-in-control notices were filed by family groups: Van Cleef in Carleton, Nebraska; Saltzman in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa; and Sexton in Saint Paul, Minnesota. All three add trusts to an existing control group or retain shares already held. None changes who controls the bank. An employee stock ownership plan at Bank Forward of Fargo, North Dakota proposes to raise its stake in the parent to as much as 45.15 percent.