- Why it matters: De novo activity appears to be picking up amid a spike in applications and planned openings.
- Supporting data: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported receiving six deposit insurance applications in March after getting a total of 10 in 2025.
- Expert quote: "We're not going to do specific verticals out of the gate. We're going to be here to support the growth that is taking place in Central Florida." — Portrait CEO Erik Weiner
Buoyed by what he described as a "wildly successful" capital raise, Erik Weiner is about two months away from achieving his longstanding goal of opening a community bank.
Weiner serves as CEO of the Winter Park, Fla.-based Portrait Bank, which expects to open in June. Portrait has received conditional approvals from the State of Florida and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
Regulators required Portrait to raise about $28 million of capital, and the group collected subscriptions totaling $42 million from 248 investors, Weiner told American Banker in an interview. The results bear out Weiner's
Another Florida de novo group,
Meanwhile, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
The Florida banks' capital success reflects the public's confidence that Florida's economic growth has staying power, according to Weiner. Investors "feel very comfortable people are going to move here and the economy is going to continue to expand," he said. "Since banks are a reflection of the community, people feel very comfortable putting their money into a new bank."
Weiner spent the majority of his career working at big banks. The list of employers included the $294 billion-asset Fifth Third Bancorp, the $35 billion-asset BankUnited in Miami Lakes, Florida, and the $28 billion-asset City National Bank of Florida in Miami, where Weiner served as Central Florida market president.
Weiner left City National in January 2025. He said he'd aspired for years to found a community bank, but concerns about the difficulties involved in obtaining a charter held him back — until he heard from one too many dissatisfied clients.
"I was hearing the same themes like a drumbeat," Weiner said. "Concentration of big banks, lack of service, no local decision-making. I just felt like we could make a real difference here."
Portrait designed its brand to reflect its intent to support regional art programs through its philanthropy and volunteer activity.
"For us, it was a natural fit to support something that we think is really a reflection of the community and is also underserved from a funding perspective," Weiner said.
Though just three banks have opened since the start of 2026, interest in new bank formation appears to have picked up in recent months. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported receiving six applications for deposit insurance in March, after getting none in February and two in January. The agency reported receiving eight deposit insurance applications for all of 2025.
"We're not going to see the 1990s again, but we are going to see an uptick," in new banks, Paul Schaus, Managing Partner at CCG Catalyst, a Phoenix-based consulting firm, told American Banker. "You've had more applications in the last couple years than you had in the [previous] 10."
"I'm working with a couple groups," Schaus added.
De novo bank activity was commonplace in the 1990s through the mid-2000s, when bank starts averaged more than 100 annually. In 2007, for instance, more than 180 new banks were launched. But in the wake of the financial crisis that began that year, the pace of new bank openings slowed dramatically. Between April 2011 and July 2013 no new banks opened. Since then, the most active year in terms of de novo activity came in 2022, when openings totaled 15.
A healthy de novo banking market has important policy considerations, Schaus and other experts argue.
Increasing the number of small banks helps stabilize the broader financial system, according to Schaus. "It's just too risky" to have increasing numbers of nonbanks providing the services of community banks," he said.
Meanwhile, Oudom Hean, Jaxon Nankivel and Sean Schiefelbein, researchers at North Dakota State University in Fargo, claimed in a
Oudom, Nankivel and Schiefelbein believe community bankers' more thorough grasp of their local markets put them in a better position to support promising but unproven concepts and companies.
Schaus concurred. "As banks get larger, the relationships that are created with their customers become more technology-based," he said.
Weiner, for his part, said the North Dakota State University research makes a persuasive case for the effectiveness of the relationship-banking model. Portrait's business plan is based on a "traditional community banking strategy," Weiner added.
"We're going to be a reflection of the community,' Weiner said. "We're not going to do specific verticals out of the gate. We're going to be here to support the growth that is taking place in Central Florida."
