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.
Your savings (the sum of all savings, checking, and certificates) are federally insured up to $250,000 by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an agency of the United States Government. Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) are also federally insured to $250,000. This coverage is separate from the insurance coverage for other accounts.
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.
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:
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.
