Family succession shaped the institution
Union Bank & Trust Company in Lincoln, Nebraska traces its origins to a neighborhood bank opened in 1917. Its institutional history records the addition of trust powers in 1959 and the Dunlap family’s purchase in 1965. Leadership subsequently passed from Jay Dunlap to his daughter Angie Muhleisen and then, at the start of 2024, to her son Jason. That continuity is central to the bank’s identity. It also helps explain why a regional banking franchise and a substantial trust operation developed under the same name over several generations. [1]
The legal bank behind the name
The FDIC’s October 2, 2026 directory names the insured institution Union Bank and Trust Company, certificate 13421, in Lincoln. It is an active Nebraska-chartered commercial bank that is not a Federal Reserve member; the FDIC is its primary federal regulator. The directory records February 28, 1917 as its establishment date. This is the Nebraska bank, distinct from other institutions using Union names elsewhere. Its bank-only returns provide the comparable June financial measures in this profile. [2]
The FDIC’s January 27, 2025 CRA evaluation identifies Farmers & Merchants Investment, Inc. as the bank’s Lincoln-based holding company. It records 34 branches in Nebraska and Kansas at the examination and identifies commercial, agricultural and home-mortgage lending as its main business lines. That is a historical branch count. [3]
A regional relationship can extend across a lifetime
The bank describes a service range stretching from routine accounts and home loans to retirement plans, personal trusts and corporate-trust work. Its official overview emphasizes Nebraska, Omaha and Kansas City relationships. For a family or business, those products can connect several financial stages: receiving income, financing property, managing a company’s retirement plan and eventually administering an estate. The connection is commercially useful, but the activities carry different obligations. A bank loan uses the institution’s own balance sheet; administering an investment account means handling assets for someone else. [4]
The trust business is larger than the bank balance sheet
Union’s June 30, 2026 statement reports $48.680 billion in trust assets at market value, compared with $9.239 billion in bank assets. The trust total includes $21.417 billion in college-savings accounts, $6.254 billion in profit-sharing and pension accounts and other fiduciary or managed relationships. These are separate categories of assets under administration, not an additional $48.680 billion available for bank lending. Their market value can change as investments rise or fall, even without money entering or leaving the accounts. The distinction is essential to understanding the scale of the franchise. [5]
College savings and farms broaden the customer base
The bank’s college-savings page explains that it manages 529 plans and points customers to Nebraska’s NEST and Alabama’s CollegeCounts programs. These are investment arrangements intended for education savings. The page warns that investment portfolios can lose money and are not FDIC-insured deposits. Program administration therefore extends the institution’s reach beyond ordinary local checking accounts, while adding investment, recordkeeping and customer-service responsibilities. The customer relationship can last many years as contributions accumulate and later become education payments. Investment-account balances therefore describe a service franchise that differs from the pool of deposits supporting the bank’s own lending. It should not be confused with a promise that the bank guarantees a family’s future college costs. [6]
A June 25, 2026 bank feature on agricultural lending describes working with multigenerational farms, including their operating finances and personal banking. It is the bank’s own account of its relationship model, rather than independent evidence of customer outcomes. The business logic is recognizable: crop and livestock operations need financing that fits their production cycles. This can create durable relationships, but a familiar borrower is still exposed to weather, commodity prices and costs. Agricultural expertise helps interpret those risks; it does not remove them. [7]
The June comparison shows higher earnings
Bank-only FDIC reports recorded $9.239 billion of assets, $7.517 billion of deposits and $6.887 billion of net loans at June 30, 2026. A year earlier those figures were $8.801 billion, $7.353 billion and $6.558 billion. First-half net income rose to $76.003 million from $59.319 million, and equity increased to $999.231 million from $874.427 million. The noncurrent-loan ratio declined to 0.32% from 0.39%, while first-half net increased to $3.492 million from $1.964 million. These measures describe different stages of credit stress. [8]
Real-estate-secured lending totaled $4.396 billion, with commercial and industrial loans of $1.335 billion and agricultural-production loans of $175.769 million. Net loans were roughly 92% of deposits. The figures show a broad lender whose growth still depends heavily on property and business borrowers; they cannot establish the quality of any particular loan or the earnings contribution from trust administration. [8]
Community-credit results provide a separate assessment
The January 2025 FDIC evaluation rated the bank Satisfactory overall, with High Satisfactory lending, Low Satisfactory investment and Outstanding service. They evaluate community-credit performance over defined periods, not the institution’s financial condition. An overall satisfactory mark can coexist with different results on lending, investment and service. The separate tests preserve those differences instead of implying uniformly strong performance across the entire assessment. [3]
Sources
- Union Bank & Trust — About and bank history; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC — institution directory, October 2, 2026 index; certificate 13421Official sourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC — Union Bank and Trust Company CRA performance evaluation, January 27, 2025Official source · PDFBack to text: ↑1↑2
- Union Bank & Trust — 20 (or so) great reasons to choose UBT; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- Union Bank & Trust — Statement of Condition, June 30, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- Union Bank & Trust — College Savings Plans; checked October 6, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- Union Bank & Trust — Nathan: Farming is family, June 25, 2026SourceBack to text: ↑
- FDIC — bank-only financial reports, June 30, 2026 and June 30, 2025; certificate 13421Official sourceBack to text: ↑1↑2