The amount of federal deposit insurance covering your savings is $250,000. Following is a brief description of how deposit insurance works and how coverage can be expanded beyond $250,000.

And How Coverage Can Be Expanded
If you have no more than $250,000 in all of your accounts at the credit union (savings, certificates, checking) rest assured. All of your funds are covered by federal deposit insurance.

If you have more than $250,000 there is much more coverage available depending on how you set up the ownership of these accounts.

IRAs Are Separate: Regardless of how much you have in other credit union accounts, money that you have in any type of Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is separately insured up to $250,000.

What is Federal Insurance?
You'll see an insurance emblem that says "NCUA, National Credit Union Administration, a U.S. Government Agency." Further, it says "Your savings backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government." NCUA's insurance program for credit unions is just like the FDIC insurance program for banks.

Insurance funds cannot be used for any other purpose. In the unlikely event that all of the funds were paid out, federal law requires that the government's general revenue funds cover any remaining insurance claims.

Federal deposit insurance provides an important safety net for savers. In the event of a federally insured institution failing, you will get your insured savings.

Overview of Deposit Insurance Coverage
Here's an overview of how federal insurance applies to your credit union accounts, and how you can have more than $250,000 at the credit union and still be fully insured. These insurance coverages apply separately at each bank or credit union where you have deposits.

Funds in Individual Accounts Insured to $250,000
The total of funds held in your own name without a joint owner are insured to $250,000 (remember, IRAs are separate). These accounts include:

• Your individually-owned savings, checking and time certificate accounts.
• Any accounts you use for a business where the business is not a legal partnership or corporation.
• Any account where an agent, guardian or conservator represents your interests.

Joint Accounts Are Separately Insured
If you have joint accounts at the credit union (accounts jointly owned by more than one person) the account is insured up to $250,000 of each owner's interest in the account. This is separate from the insurance on a person's individually-owned account.

This is an important aspect of deposit insurance that most people aren't aware of. It is common for couples to have jointly-owned accounts. Such accounts are actually insured to $500,000 (each person's $250,000 interest is separately insured) . Again, this is in addition to insured savings in individual accounts. If there happened to be three joint owners, the account would be insured to $750,000.

A couple can expand their insurance to $1,000,000 by the way they structure account ownership. Example: John and Mary have a joint account of $500,000. The $250,000 interest of each is separately insured. In addition, John has an individual account of $250,000 and Mary has an individual account of $250,000. On these accounts the spouse is not a join owner, but is a beneficiary. John and Mary have taken their total deposit insurance up to $1,000,000.

Should John and Mary each also have an IRA, each of those IRA accounts is separately insured to $250,000.
Funds in trust accounts are also separately insured from other savings accounts.

Learn More About Deposit Insurance
Savings in federally insured credit unions are covered by an insurance fund that is like FDIC but is solely for credit unions. It's called the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund (NCUSIF) and is administered by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an independent agency of the federal government. We encourage members to learn more about the federal insurance on their accounts.

The website of the NCUA at www.ncua.gov is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of information about credit union deposit insurance.