From Florida to California, bank startups are surging

By John Reosti

August has been a busy month for de novo banking, with two banks opening their doors and another two groups filing for deposit insurance to bring the pipeline of pending applications to 16.

Cypress Bank & Trust in Palm Beach, Florida, expects to open Monday with branches in Vero Beach, Melbourne and Jacksonville. Cypress, which operated as a boutique wealth management firm for a quarter century, received final regulatory approval to convert to a bank this month and a year after starting the process.

Genesis Bank opened last week in Newport Beach, California. It’s the third bank project for veteran California banker Stephen Gordon, who serves as chairman and CEO. Before Genesis, Gordon founded Commercial Capital Bancorp in Irvine in 1998. In 2010, Gordon led a group that acquired the struggling $273 million-asset Bay Cities National Bank in Redondo Beach, recapitalizing it and renaming it Opus Bank. Commercial Capital and Opus both sold for $1 billion.

Read full article: https://www.americanbanker.com/news/from-florida-to-california-bank-startups-are-surging