The recent demise of Silicon Valley Bank has shined a light on the risk of bank deposits in case of contagion. There is a lot of chatter about not keeping more than $250K per bank. First of all, if that is a problem for you, congrats, you are among the lucky ones. Second of all, it’s not true.
According to the FDIC website, the standard insurance amount is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category.
As it turns out, my wife and I were merging another bank account into our main accounts at Wells Fargo. In the unlikely event that Wells Fargo fails, are we safe? My wife and I are both depositors, and have both single and joint accounts. I think so?
Over the weekend, I emailed my banker, and on Monday, she introduced me to the FDIC’s Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator, aka EDIE.
Running EDIE
I will demonstrate EDIE by using some fictitious accounts at Wells Fargo.
Consider for example that my wife and I both have individual checking accounts with $1000 each…