OCC Terminates Patriot Bank Enforcement Order

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has ended a risk-management enforcement action against Patriot Bank, closing an order that covered anti-money laundering controls, payment activities oversight and capital planning at the Stamford, Connecticut-based lender, senior management and its full board.

Banking Dive reported that the OCC terminated the action on Tuesday after roughly 18 months.

The regulator had cited Patriot in January 2025 over financial losses, regulatory deficiencies and practices it described as unsafe or unsound.

The order was not limited to one business line.

It covered governance, capital, BSA/AML, payments supervision, credit administration and concentration-risk controls.

Compliance Committee Had To Report Progress

The earlier agreement required Patriot to create a compliance committee.

That committee had to submit written progress reports on the bank's adherence to the agreement and its remediation of OCC concerns.

That requirement made the order a governance and reporting matter, not only a supervisory notice.

The bank had to document progress against OCC concerns while managing separate weaknesses in compliance, payments, credit and concentration-risk controls.

The termination means Patriot no longer operates under that specific risk-management order.

It also gives the bank room to shift management attention back to deposits, lending and capital options rather than the formal remediation process attached to the OCC agreement.

Patriot President and CEO Steven Sugarman told shareholders that the bank can now focus on serving high-net-worth families.

He wrote that expenses related to the agreement have totaled more than $5 million and said he expects the new regulatory status to reduce regulatory and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fees.

Assets Rise To $1.4 Billion

Sugarman also linked the bank's strategy to growth in deposits and lending.

He wrote that Patriot's total assets have grown from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion in 2026, while new loan originations are exceeding $40 million per month.

Those figures are management-reported and do not by themselves show how the OCC judged the bank's controls.

They do show why the enforcement order mattered commercially: regulatory costs, lending growth and capital options were all tied to the same turnaround narrative in Sugarman's shareholder letter.

The management update also said Patriot will keep building its high-net-worth deposit franchise and loan portfolio.

That is a narrower business plan than a broad technology rebuild, but the cited enforcement categories show how payments oversight and compliance controls can affect a bank's cost base and capital choices.

Sugarman wrote that Patriot is actively considering ways to unlock additional capital, including sales of non-core assets.

Banking Dive noted that he founded Banc of California in 2010 and joined Patriot shortly before the OCC penalty as part of a restructuring push.

OCC Comment Was Not Provided

The enforcement history remains relevant for bank-technology and compliance teams because the order named payment activities oversight alongside BSA/AML, capital planning and credit administration.

Those categories often sit across compliance, payments operations and risk-management systems rather than in a single department.

Patriot did not disclose a separate remediation checklist tied to the termination, and the OCC did not immediately provide additional comment on which control changes closed the order.