How Much of Your Money Is FDIC-Insured in a Bank?

In a federally insured bank, the FDIC protects up to $250,000 of your money per depositor, per bank, for each ownership category. That baseline has held since 2008 and is unchanged for 2026. The figure is not a per-account cap and not a per-bank cap on you personally — it’s a cap on the total you hold at one bank inside a single ownership category, and by using more than one category, a single person can insure well beyond $250,000 at the same institution.¹

The $250,000 Rule, In Plain Terms

All of your deposits in the same ownership category at the same bank are added together, and the total is insured up to $250,000. If you keep $150,000 in checking and $120,000 in savings at one bank, both in your name alone, the FDIC treats those as $270,000 in the “single account” category. Twenty thousand of that sits outside coverage.

The categories are what make the system flexible. Single accounts, joint accounts, certain retirement accounts, trust accounts, and business accounts are each insured separately, so the same person can hold funds in more than one category and receive a fresh $250,000 of coverage in each.²

Credit unions work the same way through the NCUA, with the same $250,000 baseline per share owner, per federally insured credit union, per ownership category.³

What FDIC Insurance Covers

Deposit insurance covers the products where the bank simply holds your cash and owes it back to you:

Checking accounts
Savings accounts
Money market deposit accounts
Certificates of deposit (CDs)

All four receive the same $250,000 coverage per ownership category.⁴ Coverage includes both your principal and any interest that has accrued through the date the bank fails.⁵

A Health Savings Account doesn’t get its own insurance category. If your HSA names one or more beneficiaries, the FDIC insures it under the trust accounts category. If no beneficiaries are named, the HSA is grouped with your other single accounts and shares that $250,000 cap.⁶

What FDIC Insurance Does Not Cover

Buying something through your bank doesn’t make it a deposit. The FDIC specifically excludes:

Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds
Life insurance policies and annuities
Municipal securities
Crypto assets
Contents of safe deposit boxes
U.S. Treasury securities (which carry their own backing from the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, but not FDIC insurance)

If a bank employee sells you a mutual fund, that purchase is subject to market risk and has no FDIC safety net, even though the transaction happened at the bank.⁷

One Charter, Multiple Names

Some banks operate multiple branches, online brands, or trade names under a single FDIC charter. Every dollar you hold across those locations counts as deposits at one bank for insurance purposes. The FDIC has warned that customers can “inadvertently exceed FDIC insurance limits by depositing excess amounts in different branches of the same institution.”⁸ Before assuming you’ve doubled your coverage by opening accounts at what looks like a different bank, check the charter number.

Getting More Than $250,000 Insured at One Bank

Because each ownership category is insured separately, stacking categories at a single institution can multiply your coverage substantially.

Single and Joint Accounts

A single account with one owner and no beneficiaries gets $250,000. A joint account owned by two people provides $250,000 per co-owner, or $500,000 total for that account. A married couple could hold $250,000 each in individual accounts plus $500,000 in a joint account, reaching $1,000,000 in coverage at one bank without touching any other category.²

Retirement Accounts

Traditional IRAs, Roth IRAs, and certain other retirement accounts sit in their own ownership category, insured up to $250,000 per owner regardless of how many beneficiaries are named. That coverage is entirely separate from your checking, savings, or joint accounts.

Trust Accounts

Trust accounts offer the most room to expand coverage, but the rules changed on April 1, 2024. The FDIC now applies a simplified formula: $250,000 per unique beneficiary, capped at five beneficiaries. That means a maximum of $1,250,000 in coverage per trust owner at a single bank, no matter how many beneficiaries the trust names.⁹ The rule applies to both formal revocable trusts and informal payable-on-death (POD) accounts, and it combined revocable and irrevocable trusts into one category. For two co-owners, the cap doubles to $2,500,000. Accounts opened under the old rules are subject to the new limits now, regardless of when they were opened or when a CD matures.¹⁰

Business and Nonprofit Accounts

Deposits held by a corporation, partnership, LLC, or unincorporated association (a homeowners’ association or scout troop, for example) get their own $250,000 in coverage, separate from the personal accounts of any owners or officers. The entity has to be engaged in a genuine business purpose, not created solely to multiply deposit insurance.¹¹ All deposits owned by the same entity at the same bank are combined into one $250,000 pool, so a nonprofit’s operating account and building fund at the same bank share a single limit.¹² Sole proprietors don’t get separate business coverage; their business deposits are treated as personal single-account deposits.

Spreading Deposits Across Banks

The most direct way to cover more than $250,000 is to open accounts at multiple FDIC-insured banks or NCUA-insured credit unions. Each institution provides a fresh set of $250,000 limits per ownership category.

Reciprocal deposit networks offer a way to do this without juggling relationships. Services such as IntraFi and R&T Deposit Solutions work with member banks to automatically split a large deposit into $250,000 pieces and place them at multiple institutions in the background. You deal with one bank, earn one interest rate, and see one statement, while every dollar sits within FDIC coverage. A $500,000 deposit gets split into two $250,000 pieces, with your home bank keeping one and a network partner holding the other.¹³ Not every bank participates, so ask before assuming it’s available.

If Your Bank Fails

When regulators close a bank, the FDIC steps in as receiver. Its stated goal is to make deposit insurance payments within two business days.⁵ Usually a healthy bank acquires the failed institution’s deposits and customers keep access through the new bank. If no acquirer steps in, the FDIC pays depositors directly for their insured balances. Interest stops accruing on all accounts once the bank closes.

Money above the insured limit isn’t automatically lost, but it isn’t guaranteed either. Uninsured depositors stand in line ahead of general creditors and stockholders as the FDIC liquidates the failed bank’s assets, receiving dividends from whatever is recovered. The process can stretch over years, and full recovery isn’t assured.¹⁴ In some closures, the FDIC determines that liquidation proceeds won’t cover any claims beyond insured deposits, and uninsured depositors receive nothing.¹⁵

Bank Merger Grace Period

If your bank merges with or is acquired by another bank where you already have accounts, you get a six-month grace period. During that window, deposits from the acquired bank are insured separately from accounts you already had at the acquiring bank. CDs that mature after the grace period stay separately insured until their maturity date, giving you time to restructure if combined balances now exceed the insurance limit.¹⁶

How to Verify Your Coverage

Not every institution that looks like a bank carries FDIC insurance directly. Online platforms, fintech apps, and neobanks sometimes partner with insured banks to offer deposit products, and the arrangement isn’t always obvious. Before depositing large sums, confirm the insurance status.

The FDIC’s BankFind tool at banks.data.fdic.gov lets you search any bank by name, verify FDIC coverage, and find the charter number, which is useful for confirming whether two “different” banks are actually the same institution. For credit unions, the NCUA offers a Credit Union Locator on its website.³

To see how your specific mix of accounts stacks up against the limits, the FDIC’s Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator (EDIE) at edie.fdic.gov walks through each ownership category and calculates your coverage down to the dollar. It handles personal, business, and government accounts and produces a printable report.¹⁰ For anyone with balances near $250,000 or accounts spread across categories, ten minutes on EDIE is the fastest way to know exactly where you stand.

1
FDIC.gov. Understanding Deposit Insurance
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FDIC.gov. Deposit Insurance At A Glance
3
National Credit Union Administration. Share Insurance Coverage
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FDIC.gov. Deposit Accounts
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FDIC.gov. Payment to Depositors
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FDIC.gov. Health Savings Accounts
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FDIC.gov. Financial Products That Are Not Insured by the FDIC
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FDIC.gov. FIL-46-98 Attachment B
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FDIC.gov. Your Insured Deposits
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FDIC.gov. Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator (EDIE)
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FDIC.gov. Your Insured Deposits – Corporation/Partnership/Unincorporated Association Accounts
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FDIC.gov. Corporation, Partnership and Unincorporated Association Accounts
13
DallasFed.org. Reciprocal Deposit Networks Provide Means to Exceed FDIC’s $250,000 Account Cap
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FDIC.gov. Priority of Payments and Timing
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FDIC.gov. FAQs Regarding Determination of Insufficient Assets
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FDIC.gov. Merger of IDIs