Georgia lender’s demise marks second bank fails this year

• Key insight: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Friday shuttered Community Bank and Trust – West Georgia, selling its assets the same day to Anchor Bank. 
• Supporting data: The bank had $288 million in assets, $268 million in deposits, of which $27 million were uninsured. 
• Forward look: Fast resolutions are becoming more popular under the Travis Hill-led FDIC, making good on his goal announced last year. 

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday announced Community Bank and Trust – West Georgia, a community bank based in LaGrange, Georgia, was being shuttered by the state’s Department of Banking and Finance, with the FDIC stepping in as receiver. It marks the second U.S. bank failure of 2026.

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The FDIC immediately arranged a purchase-and-assumption deal with  Palm Beach Gardens, Florida based Anchor Bank, which will take on “substantially all” the failed firm’s insured deposits and certain assets. 

“The three branches of Community Bank and Trust – West Georgia will reopen as branches of Anchor Bank during its normal business hours on Monday, May 4, 2026,” the FDIC announced in a press release. “Depositors of Community Bank and Trust – West Georgia will automatically become depositors of Anchor Bank [and] deposits assumed by Anchor Bank will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship.”

Insured deposits will remain protected and consumers will have uninterrupted access to their funds over the weekend, through checks, ATMs, and debit cards as normal.

At the time of failure the bank had $288 million in assets and $268 million in deposits. Roughly $27 million of deposits at the firm exceeded the FDIC’s $250,000 insurance cap upon failure, though the agency says “this amount is likely to change once the FDIC obtains additional information.” Those uninsured funds are not guaranteed, though the FDIC said it provide some advanced dividends to affected uninsured depositors. 

“The FDIC may make payments to uninsured depositors — i.e. provide an ‘advanced dividend’ — at a later date based on the recoveries from the sale of the retained failed bank’s assets and will provide additional information as it becomes available,” the press release noted. Customers were encouraged to “contact the FDIC toll-free at 1-866-314-1744 to set up an appointment to discuss their deposits.”

The failure is expected to cost the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund roughly $97 million, subject to adjustments as the bank is wound down. 

The first bank failure of the year — that of Chicago-based Metropolitan Capital Bank & Trust — followed a relatively quiet year for bank resolutions, but involvees a somewhat larger firm than any that failed in 2025, when the FDIC reported two bank failures nationwide. Another Chicago-based firm, Pulaski Savings Bank, failed in January 2025 with $49.5 million in assets; Santa Anna National Bank of Texas, with $63.8 million of assets, failed in June 2025 after reportedly taking losses related to fraud.

The FDIC’s move to sell the Georgia bank the same day of the failure’s announcement — as they did with Metropolitan — fits into Chair Travis Hill’s focus on swift transactions of failed banks, something he’s cited as a priority in the past. Hill has argued the longer the agency takes to sell bank assets, the harder it is to find willing buyers. 

Hill has spoken about the reputational harm caused as the public witnessed the agency’s prolonged search for a buyer for Silicon Valley Bank’s assets following its March 2023 failure. To speed up the process, he said at the time, a very high level government official should negotiate directly with bank CEOs.

The FDIC board in March voted unanimously to rescind a post-2008 crisis policy that barred nonbanks from acquiring failed banks, a move Hill said “will remove regulatory barriers to nonbank participation in the failed bank process, with the ultimate objective of lowering the cost of failures to the deposit insurance fund.”