Picture this: you wake up on a Monday and hear that your bank failed over the weekend. Your paycheck landed there Friday. The mortgage payment comes out Wednesday. How long until you can get to your money?
For most people, the answer has been about one business day. The FDIC wants to keep it that way, and on October 30 its board voted to propose changing the rules behind that promise for the country’s biggest banks.
What the FDIC proposed
The FDIC’s board approved a notice of proposed rulemaking that would do two main things.
First, it would scrap a 2016 rule known as Part 370. That rule requires banks with 2 million or more deposit accounts to build and maintain IT systems that can calculate each customer’s deposit insurance coverage within 24 hours after the FDIC takes over as receiver.
Second, it would rewrite an older 2008 rule, 12 CFR 360.9, which requires large banks to keep depositor data in a standard format and to place automatic holds on accounts when a bank fails. The proposal adds a new tier of “larger covered institutions” with at least $2 billion in deposits and 2 million or more accounts, which would have extra recordkeeping duties. It would also tie the rule’s dollar thresholds to inflation.
The FDIC argues that it has improved its systems enough that it no longer needs every large bank to run a separate insurance calculator. Under the proposal, 31 banks are covered by Part 370 today, and 29 would fall under the revised 360.9.
Does this change how fast you get paid?
Not on paper. Federal law requires the FDIC to pay insured deposits “as soon as possible” and sets no hard deadline. In the proposal, the FDIC says that “the FDIC has typically been able to allow most depositors access to their insured deposits on the next business day after a bank’s failure.” The stated goal is to keep that standard while cutting costs.
The FDIC estimates the banks involved would save about $33 million a year from dropping Part 370, minus about $14 million in one-time costs to meet the revised rule. Over 10 years it puts the savings at about $31 million a year, on an annualized basis.
Here’s the honest part. When a big bank fails, speed depends on how clean its records are and how good the FDIC’s systems are. This is a proposal, not a final rule. As of November 1, it hadn’t been published in the Federal Register, and the public gets 60 days to comment once it is.
What hasn’t changed: your coverage
The proposal is about recordkeeping, not the coverage limit. According to the FDIC, deposit insurance still covers $250,000 per depositor, per FDIC-insured bank, for each account ownership category. And “since the FDIC was founded in 1933, no depositor has lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds.”
Covered accounts include checking, savings, money market deposit accounts, CDs, and cashier’s checks. Not covered: stocks, bonds, life insurance policies, safe deposit boxes or their contents, U.S. Treasury bills, bonds, or notes, and crypto assets. That holds even when you buy those products through your bank.
How to make a bank failure a non-event for your family
- Know your number. Add up what you keep at each bank, by ownership category. A single account and a joint account at the same bank are insured separately. An IRA held in bank deposits is its own category too.
- Use the FDIC’s free tools. BankFind confirms your bank is FDIC-insured, and the Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator (EDIE) calculates your coverage. You can also call 877-ASK-FDIC.
- Spread large balances. If you’re holding more than $250,000 in one category, say from a home sale, consider a second insured bank.
- Keep a backup account. A small checking account at a second bank, with a debit card, covers groceries and gas if one bank’s systems go down for a day or two.
- Keep good records. Save recent statements somewhere other than your bank’s app, so you can prove what you had.
An emergency fund belongs in insured deposits. Long-term money, like retirement savings, belongs in diversified investments that you understand, with the knowledge that they aren’t FDIC-insured and can lose value.
The Bottom Line
The FDIC’s proposal changes the plumbing behind deposit insurance at the biggest banks, not the $250,000 coverage you rely on. The agency says it expects to keep paying most insured depositors by the next business day. Your job is simple: stay under the limits, know which accounts are covered, and keep a backup account so a bank failure is an inconvenience, not a crisis.
Photo: Andre Carrotflower via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped.
Sources and Further Reading
- FDIC, “FDIC Board Approves Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Large Bank Deposit Insurance Determination Modernization” (Oct. 30, 2026)
- FDIC, Financial Institution Letter on the proposed rulemaking (Oct. 30, 2026)
- FDIC, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, “Bank Deposit Insurance Determination Modernization” (PDF)
- FDIC, “Large-Bank Deposit Insurance Determination Modernization”
- FDIC, “Understanding Deposit Insurance”