FDIC & NCUA Coverage Calculator
Coverage runs to $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category — so what is protected depends on structure, not just balance.
The three words doing all the work: per ownership category
Coverage runs to $250,000 per depositor, per institution, per ownership category — and that final clause is where nearly all the confusion lives. Your single-owner accounts share one $250,000 limit however many CDs you split them into. A joint account with your spouse is a separate category insured to $500,000. Your IRA makes a third. A revocable trust or POD account naming two children makes a fourth, at $250,000 per beneficiary. Used deliberately, those categories let one couple insure well over $1.5 million at a single bank.
The categories never borrow from one another. $300,000 in single-owner CDs leaves $50,000 exposed even when your joint account sits empty — the fix is retitling, not rate shopping.
What really happens in a failure
Historically, insured depositors reach their money within a business day or two, since the FDIC usually transfers accounts to an acquiring bank over a weekend. Uninsured balances turn into claims against the failed bank’s assets: often partially recovered, slowly, and with no guarantee. The practical lesson is unglamorous: review your categories once a year and whenever a CD matures, because credited interest is how a comfortably-under-limit balance quietly stops being one.