Shepherd two months later $58 million in private placement After completion, Patriot Nation Bancorp CEO Steven Sugarman is reshaping the board and management team of Bank of Connecticut.

The Patriot, which owns $957 million assets, announced many new directors and executive appointments on Monday. Most prominently, California Private Bank founder Richard Smith joined the board, and Nicole Wells served as head of strategic retail operations Santander Bankwill serve as senior vice president and head of operations.

Sugarman became familiar with faces from some sources from earlier positions at Banc and Change Company in California. They will assist with implementing a new strategy for Stanford, a Stanford, Connecticut-based Patriot, focusing on the high net worth area.

"Their collective expertise and vision will promote the Patriot's mission to empower our clients while bringing extraordinary value to our shareholders," Sugarman said in a press release.

Sugarman, 50, Join the Patriot President In January. He was appointed CEO on April 30. His mission is to reverse a poorly performed bank that has reported huge losses in recent years, at $4.5 million in 2023, $39.9 million in 2024, and then $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2025. The Office of the Management of the Money-level Patriot was in a troubling state in January”.

When the fiscal red ink ate up in Patriot's capital position, the private location announced in March allowed the company to update its mobile space, increasing its common stock Tier 1 capital ratio to 13.62% on March 31, up from 7.58% three months ago.

High-net-worth clients associated with Patriot’s geographical footprint. It operates branches in Fairfield, Connecticut, the region and Westchester County, New York, and is the richest neighborhood in the United States, with median household income above $115,000. According to Federal Deposit Insurance, Fairfield and Westchester border each other and have a total of $321 billion in deposits. Patriots hold 0.19% of the market share.

In other appointments announced on Monday, Patriots will serve as chief credit officer. Rebecca Mais will serve as president of high net worth and professional deposits, and Raquel Gillett joins the company as vice president of digital automation and risk analysis.

Mais comes to Patriots from Change Home Mortgage. Simmons is the chief credit officer of the $3.5 billion asset bank in Sandy, Utah. Prior to joining Sunwest in 2020, Simmons was the chief credit officer for Silvergate Bank and California Banc.