FDIC / NCUA Insurance

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits at banks; the National Credit Union Administration does the same job for federally insured credit unions through its share insurance fund. The protection is identical in substance — $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category, backed by the full faith and credit of the US government.

What counts as a deposit is narrower than people assume. Checking, savings, money market deposit accounts, and CDs are covered. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, annuities, life insurance, and crypto are not — even when bought through the same institution. Brokerage holdings fall under SIPC instead, which protects against the broker failing, not against investments losing value.

The phrase "per ownership category" is where most of the headroom lives. Individual accounts, joint accounts, certain trust accounts, and retirement accounts are each insured separately at the same bank, so a household can hold well over $250,000 at one institution and remain fully covered.

Coverage is automatic. There is nothing to sign up for and no fee, and in the bank failures of recent decades insured depositors have typically regained access within a business day or two.

Two practical checks: keep balances above the limit split across institutions or ownership categories, and confirm that an unfamiliar online brand is itself insured. Some fintech apps are not banks and merely pass deposits through to partner banks — an arrangement that has proven materially weaker than holding the account directly.