I'd also add that covering uninsured depositors isn't new behavior for FDIC, at least as I understand it. The mechanics of how it was done here are different than in previous instances.
I'd also add that covering uninsured depositors isn't new behavior for FDIC, at least as I understand it. The mechanics of how it was done here are different than in previous instances.
And if we are going to expect them to be guaranteed in the future insurance rates must go up, not just to cover more things but to cover the riskier behavior it creates.
If we aren’t going to cover them 100% in the future then apparently it’s true that there are not just different classes of banker but different classes of depositors.
What's the difference between the FDIC insuring all deposits at US banks directly and US banks doing it themselves by forming a complete graph? (Other than there being a clear upper limit in the latter case, which is currently greater than $1b per account.)
But financially I think it's the same. If 400 customers each use 1 bank each, then a single bank failure means the FDIC needs to make whole one customer.
But if every customer put 1/400th of their wealth into each of the 400 banks, then FDIC has to cover all customers for 1/400th each.
The cost to us as depositors/taxpayers is equal.
If customers are only utilizing a single bank, and the FDIC will insure all deposits regardless of amount, they would need 400 times as much than would be necessary if the balances were swept.
> Insurance only pays out . . . if a bank fails
That's a good point. So one difference is that while the money is equally insured in both cases, the payout dynamics would change. Very roughly, the amount of a payout might be expected to go down in the cross-bank case (smaller account values, but then also more accounts per bank, so it isn't quite so simple), and the likelihood of a payout might be expected to go up (higher chance of failure with more and smaller banks). But this all depends on how interlocked the banks become; in the extreme they could end up functionally a single bank.
The first thing that came to mind for me is somewhat related: Spreading deposits across banks is relatively better for small banks and worse for big ones, since the small banks gain deposits and the big banks lose them. So you can definitely argue there's some advantage to keeping a lower insurance limit, although it gets murkier when we bring behavioral considerations and "too big to fail" into the picture.
This is new with SVB. I get the whole "250K minimum" argumemt, but this is the first where we are seeing major 10M++ depositors getting 100% guarantees.
I don't see issue with spreading money across smaller banks - other than perhaps they may not be able to assess risk as well as larger banks. But again, SVB.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that most bank depositors hold far, far less than the 250K guaranteed by FDIC. By a large margin. Id be surprised if the average was above 10K. There are $17T in deposits across the country [1]. The FDIC at the beginning of the year had $128B in balance as insurance to depositors [2].
[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DPSACBW027SBOG
[2] https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/quarterly-banking-profile/inde...
The question is in what way(s) does it matter whether deposits are insured without limit in a single account, which is new, or with limits when spread across an arbitrary number of accounts, which isn't? If one costs 1x, why should the other cost > 1x?
It's a serious question. FDIC assessment rates aren't as simple as tax brackets and for example it's possible that the act of spreading deposits across more accounts in more banks would increase the fees paid into the existing system anyway.
It matters because only 1 (SVB) bank failed. If those depositors had their money swept across multiple banks this point would be moot.
Edit: If deposits are spread about multiple banks, the FDIC does not need to carry as large of a balance to cover the loses of any single bank, which results in less indirect fees to depositors of different banks.
If the deposit is 250k across 100 banks, and only 1 bank fails, FDIC is only on the hook for at most the 250k.
Now multiply that by number of depositors. It's RAID for banks. You're gaining fault tolerance by decreasing the impact of any particular failure.
Just wanted to say this is such a great analogy. Thanks.
Seems like having everyone use at least 400 different banks achieves one of the core goals of the FDIC guarantee - making small/midsize banks viable and preventing everyone from piling into the big four megabanks.
The regulatory regime is one that makes depositors whole when doing otherwise seems likely to cause a major crisis in the banking system. Which we've had for a long time. It merely seems inconsistent because evidence of "likely to cause a major crisis" differs by current possible crisis.
As https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/banking-in-very-uncer... explains in painful detail, the reasons why they likely concluded that there is systemic risk. But long story short, rising interest rates caused the banking sector to have $620 billion in unrealized losses. Unsurprising since the interest rate rise was *INTENDED* to make people lose money, making money more valuable relative to goods and services, which reduces inflations.
But $620 billion is substantially more than the $130 billion in the FDIC insurance fund. It is substantially less than the $2 trillion in equity in the banking sector, but both losses and equity are unevenly spread. Therefore there are banks under water, and others that are fine. But nobody is sure which are which. And given cash outflows from worried people, we were about to find out the hard way. And once there is a bank panic, even fine banks become not fine.
Like Wile E. Coyote, running off this cliff works fine until you look down. But we've looked down. And now the whole sector needs saving. Thus these actions.
They will go back to normal behavior once the crisis is over.
About 50 cents on the dollar.
The typical depositor in post-2008 bank failures (all tiny, until SVB and Signature) got about 75 cents on the dollar.
1. which seemed pretty likely, I know people who over the weekend were planning to pull all of their money out of a regional bank and put it in one of the 4 super banks Monday morning)
As far as I know, regulatory requirements require/encourage holding good bonds but if the FDIC is going to start treating gov/muni bonds of any maturity length as good as cash, then there's less reason to hedge against interest rate risk.