- Key takeaway: Little more than a year ago, Patriot National Bancorp was on the brink of failure. Now it's aggressively expanding its private-banking strategy.
- Supporting data: Patriot spent more than $5 million resolving a written agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, according to CEO Steven Sugarman.
- Forward look: After opening an office in Beverly Hills, California, this week, the bank plans to open another office in Palm Beach, Florida, by the end of the year.
Patriot National Bancorp announced Wednesday the resolution of a formal agreement with its regulators, clearing the way for the Stamford, Connecticut-based bank to slash compliance-related costs and lean more forcefully into a budding private-banking strategy.
Resolving the 18-month-old regulatory agreement cost the $1.3 billion-asset bank more than $5 million, CEO Steven Sugarman disclosed in a letter to investors.
"We expect these elevated costs for auditors, consultants, advisors, investment bankers, vendors, contractors, and incremental staffing to decline sharply going forward," Sugarman wrote.
At the same time, Patriot, the holding company for Patriot National Bank, is accelerating a
Patriot opened an office in Beverly Hills, California, on Monday and said it plans to open another in Palm Beach, Florida, before year-end. The company expects to convert the Palm Beach office into a branch in the first quarter of 2027. It is considering a similar move in Beverly Hills, where it has attracted more than $100 million of deposits from high-net-worth clients.
Sugarman told American Banker that there's a "huge opportunity" to "capture the private banking market without wealth management," referring to the ability to provide white-glove service for high-net-worth customers, without also offering the tax and investment services that wealth management teams often provide. In a press release, he spoke about assembling a team "to build America's premier bank serving high-net-worth families."
Patriot's Palm Beach office will be led by Jamie Bruneau, a veteran South Florida banker. The move into Beverly Hills is being spearheaded by Rick Smith and Jeff Seabold.
Smith, who is also a Patriot director, served as president of The Private Bank of California from 2005 to 2013. Seabold, Patriot's vice-chairman, founded CS Mortgage, a Beverly Hills-based mortgage company. Seabold also served as chief credit officer at Banc of California, where Sugarman was CEO from 2012 to 2017.
"I am excited to support Patriot Bank's growth in Beverly Hills, a market where many of our team's relationships run deep," Smith said in a press release.
Sugarman joined Patriot as president in December 2024. He became CEO in April 2025 after arranging a
In his investor letter, Sugarman stated that Patriot is originating loans at a $40 million-per-month clip. With the compliance issues settled, Sugarman plans to expand the balance sheet further, scaling to approximately $2 billion. New loans are yielding about 7%, while pipelines for loans and deposits are full, Sugarman said. Adding $700 million of assets would boost earnings power by about $1 million per month, he added.
Patriot's 40-page formal agreement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency required it to develop a comprehensive strategic plan, add capital, devise a new risk-management framework and overhaul its anti-money-laundering compliance program.
The agreement was "accurate on all fronts," Sugarman told American Banker, adding that Patriot employees had been "working their tails off" the past 17 months to meet the requirements. The resolution highlights "the really constructive relationship we have with the OCC," Sugarman said.
Relatively quick exits from regulatory actions have become more common in recent years. The $287.5 million-asset First Federal Savings Bank in Frankfort, Kentucky, was
