A young bank with an expanding physical footprint
Poppy Bank opened its first branch in January 2005. From its Santa Rosa base, it now describes a footprint reaching the Bay Area, Sacramento region and major Southern California markets. Its current overview identifies Big Poppy Holdings as the parent and Khalid Acheckzai as chief executive of both organizations. The same page describes a goal of reaching 50 branches by the end of 2026. That is a management expectation, not a verified year-end outcome. The striking feature is the continued investment in physical locations alongside the bank’s online deposit channel. [1]
The institution behind those services is the active California-chartered Poppy Bank, FDIC certificate 57903. The FDIC’s October 2, 2026 directory records Santa Rosa as headquarters and January 28, 2005 as the establishment date. It classifies Poppy as a state nonmember bank with the FDIC as primary federal regulator. Those identifiers separate the insured bank from its holding company and anchor the regulatory figures. They also keep comparisons consistent as the bank opens branches in new cities: a wider network does not mean that every location has its own balance sheet or insurance charter. [2]
Business lending reaches beyond an ordinary term loan
Poppy’s business offering includes commercial real-estate acquisition and construction loans, ordinary business credit and lending supported by federal small-business and rural-development programs. The bank describes itself as an SBA Preferred Lender and lists 7(a), 504 and Express products. Government-supported lending can facilitate particular uses and borrowers, but the existence of a guarantee program should not be confused with a guarantee that every customer can borrow or that the bank faces no loss. The product range shows a business-oriented institution financing buildings, equipment and expansion, alongside the deposit services those customers need. [3]
One specialized channel is commercial property-assessed clean energy financing, or C-PACE. Poppy describes funding for eligible water-conservation, seismic and clean-energy projects, repaid through a voluntary assessment on the property. That mechanism differs from a conventional unsecured business loan: the repayment obligation is linked to the property and can transfer to a later owner under the program’s rules. Poppy also advertises possible financing for recently completed eligible work. The opportunity depends on local program authorization and project qualification; the product page does not quantify how large this activity is in the bank’s total portfolio. [4]
Branches and online deposits serve different needs
The online deposit channel adds another way to gather funding. Poppy’s September 2026 terms offer online certificates of deposit and a savings account, with online applications restricted to individual or joint holders rather than businesses and trusts. The certificate has a fixed initial-term rate, while the savings rate can change. Certificates automatically renew unless the customer acts within the stated grace period, and early withdrawals can incur penalties. These features give the bank different deposit maturities and customer behaviors. They do not establish that all deposits are long-lasting simply because a product is marketed online. [5]
Business customers, meanwhile, are offered electronic payments, remote check deposit, lockbox collection and tools such as positive pay to flag potentially unauthorized checks. These are everyday operating services, distinct from choosing the highest advertised savings rate. A business that uses a bank to collect revenue and pay suppliers may have a different relationship from a saver holding a single certificate. Poppy offers both channels, although its product pages do not disclose their respective funding shares or establish how each customer group would respond to a change in rates. [3]
Rapid growth alongside higher realized credit losses
Bank-only FDIC reports put June 30, 2026 assets at $8.319 billion, deposits at $6.294 billion and net loans and leases at $5.756 billion. A year earlier, the same measures were $7.030 billion, $5.412 billion and $5.185 billion. Assets grew 18.3%; deposits grew 16.3%. Net loans and leases equaled 91.5% of deposits, versus 95.8%. First-half net income was $50.9 million, compared with $35.2 million. These are the insured bank’s figures, not consolidated parent-company results. [6]
The bank’s -and-lease ratio was 1.89%, versus 1.81% a year earlier. First-half after recoveries were $11.19 million, versus $0.24 million. These measure different stages of credit deterioration. [7]
Property exposure explains the central trade-off
The FDIC’s July 14, 2025 CRA evaluation provides a useful view of the business underneath the growth. It described commercial real estate as Poppy’s primary lending focus and showed real-estate-secured credit at 97.3% of loans at March 31, 2025. That broad category included residential, multifamily, construction and nonresidential property loans; it should not be mislabeled entirely as office lending. The exam rated Poppy Satisfactory overall, with High Satisfactory lending, investment and service tests. It assesses community credit needs, not financial safety. Property values and borrowers’ cash flows remain central to repayment even when a loan has collateral. [8]
Expansion changes scale without removing concentration
The deposit terms make the funding challenge tangible. A fixed-rate certificate commits an initial-term cost; a variable-rate savings account can be repriced. Savers can still move money as accounts mature or alternatives become attractive. For an expanding bank, those choices affect funding and interest expense. This is an implication of the products, not a reported outflow. Poppy’s growth story therefore depends on converting new reach into durable customer relationships while managing a loan book closely connected to property. [5]
Sources
- Poppy Bank: institutional overview; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC: institution directory, October 2, 2026; certificate 57903Official sourceBack to text: ↑
- Poppy Bank: business accounts and services; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑1↑2
- Poppy Bank: C-PACE financing; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- Poppy Bank: online deposit FAQs, September 2026 termsSourceBack to text: ↑1↑2
- FDIC: bank-only financial reports, June 2026 and June 2025; certificate 57903Official sourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC: bank-only credit measures, June 2026 and June 2025; certificate 57903Official sourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC: Poppy CRA evaluation, July 14, 2025, in May 2026 public fileSource · PDFBack to text: ↑