Optus Bank Grew From $65 Million to $764 Million. Now Comes M&F

By Isaac WelchApril 16, 2026Updated October 22, 20265 min readWhat RAVEN would save Optus

Updated October 22, 2026, with second-quarter 2026 call report data and the M&F Bancorp merger. An earlier version of this article understated Optus Bank's size.

At the end of 2018, Optus Bank had $65 million in assets. On June 30, 2026, it had $764 million. Few banks in the country have grown that fast without buying another bank.

Now Optus is buying one. In July 2026, Optus Financial Corporation agreed to acquire M&F Bancorp, the Durham, North Carolina parent of M&F Bank, in a deal valued at more than $105 million. The combined bank would have about $1.27 billion in assets, and its owners describe it as the largest African American-owned financial institution in the country.

From Victory Savings to $764 Million

Optus traces its roots to Victory Savings Bank, founded in Columbia in 1921 by African American community leaders. It is South Carolina's only Black-owned bank and a Treasury-certified community development financial institution (CDFI).

Year-end total assets, from FDIC call reports:

  • 2018: $65 million
  • 2019: $78 million
  • 2020: $187 million
  • 2021: $315 million
  • 2022: $405 million
  • 2023: $525 million
  • 2024: $663 million
  • 2025: $778 million
$65M to $764M Optus Bank's total assets, year-end 2018 to June 30, 2026, per FDIC call reports.

The jump started in 2020, when large companies moved deposits and capital into Black-owned banks. Optus was the first bank to receive funds from PayPal's $530 million commitment to Black and minority-owned businesses: a $50 million deposit. About $10 million of it went straight into Paycheck Protection Program loans. Bank of America was already a depositor. In 2021, seven outside investors, including Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, put more than $20 million of capital into the bank.

Capital kept pace with the deposits. Equity grew from $6.5 million at the end of 2018 to $98 million in mid-2026, and the Tier 1 risk-based capital ratio stood at 19.5%.

What Optus Actually Lends

Optus is a commercial lender. Of $456 million in gross loans at June 30, 2026:

  • Nonfarm, nonresidential real estate: $198 million
  • Commercial and industrial: $147 million
  • Construction and land: $53 million
  • Consumer: $24 million
  • Multifamily: $19 million
  • One-to-four family residential: $14 million
Residential mortgages are about 3% of the book, and Optus does not appear on the federal HMDA filer lists for 2024 or 2025. The growth went into small business and commercial real estate lending, the core of its CDFI mission.

The bank runs lean: 46 full-time-equivalent employees for $764 million in assets, about $16.6 million per employee.

The 2026 Numbers

First half of 2026, from the June 30 call report:

  • Net income: $3.7 million, up from $3.6 million a year earlier
  • Return on assets: 0.95%; return on equity: 7.6%
  • Efficiency ratio: 55.8%
  • Net interest margin: 2.71%, down from 3.64% for 2023
  • Net charge-offs: 0.94% of loans, annualized
The margin is the pressure point. Deposits that arrived on mission grounds still have to be paid market rates, and the margin has narrowed each year since 2023. That is one reason scale matters to the merger.

The M&F Deal

M&F Bank, one of the oldest Black-owned banks in the country, had about $518 million in assets at March 31, 2026, according to American Banker. Under the agreement announced July 22, 2026:

  • M&F Bancorp merges into Optus Financial, and M&F Bank into Optus Bank
  • The combined bank operates 10 branches, eight of them current M&F branches in North Carolina
  • James H. Sills III, M&F's president and CEO, becomes CEO of the combined company and bank; Optus chairman Paul Mitchell remains chairman
  • Headquarters stay in Columbia, and the bank keeps its CDFI designation
  • The M&F name phases out in favor of Optus over about two years
  • Closing is expected in the fourth quarter of 2026, subject to M&F shareholder and regulatory approval
Sills put the logic plainly: "We'll be able to do larger loans. We'll be able to accept larger deposits."

What the Merger Has to Get Right

Bank mergers are where technology decisions get made for the next decade. Two banks with different systems have to become one, and the borrower-facing pieces are usually decided last.

Today, almost all of Optus's lending starts with a conversation. Its consumer and business loan pages list products and a phone number, 803.733.8100, with no online application. New accounts start with a form and a follow-up call within 24 to 48 hours.

That model built a $764 million bank with 46 people. Spread across two states and 10 branches, it gets harder. A CDFI's borrowers are also the hardest files to document: a small business owner with uneven revenue, a household with a part-time W-2 job and self-employment income, a first-time borrower with a thin credit file. Each takes several documents from several sources, and collecting them by hand is where loan officers' time goes.

The merger gives the combined bank the size to make larger loans. A loan application that collects and verifies income and business data at the start would let the same team handle more of them.