Dive Brief:

• Houston-based LevelField Financial has received conditional approval from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to acquire Chicago-based Burling Bank, the company said Monday in a release.
• The transaction still needs sign-off from the Federal Reserve, LevelField said.
• LevelField first proposed acquiring Burling in February 2023, but withdrew that application once it found "unexpected roadblocks with the amount of capital required by regulatory agencies," CEO Gene Grant told American Banker.

Dive Insight:

LevelField filed a fresh application to buy Burling in December 2024. In that paperwork, the Houston firm said it would pay roughly $70 million for the bank, which counts a single branch and $209.5 million in assets.

The combined entity will be renamed LevelField Bank but maintain Burling’s community banking business. However, it will add a focus on deposit accounts, loans and custody services tailored to digital assets, including term loans and credit cards secured by bitcoin or Ether, according to the application.

Burling's CEO, Michael Busch, will become president of LevelField Bank, Grant said.

From the beginning, LevelField said it sought to become the first full-service chartered bank to offer traditional banking and digital asset services on one platform across the U.S.

"The idea is, once we have a customer, they don't have to go outside the bank perimeter for anything they want to do in digital assets,” Grant told American Banker.

Grant said he expects acquisition to be finalized by the end of this year. Only Burling’s cannabis banking business will retain the Burling brand, LevelField said.

To accommodate the anticipated round-the clock needs of its digital-asset user base, LevelField aims to hire roughly 100 employees in 2026 – mostly in customer service, Grant said.

Once LevelField receives regulatory approval, it aims to raise $112.5 million, according to its December 2024 filing. That is meant to cover the acquisition of the bank, $20 million in growth capital and $17.5 million that LevelField will retain, the company said.

In a release Monday, Grant thanked investors “for backing the patient, disciplined work it took to meet the necessary supervisory standards that protect consumers and businesses and make the U.S. the home of the world leading banking system."

As far as embracing crypto, Grant said the banking system can either "live in denial or we can try to safely integrate it … in such a way that it works collaboratively and doesn't endanger the system."

“Financial services must be changed from the inside, and unlike other industries, outside disruptors barely move the needle,” Grant told Bloomberg.