Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: if you are married, $1,000,000 is covered at a single bank with three ordinary accounts and no paperwork — two individual accounts at $250,000 each and one joint account at $500,000. If you are single, one bank gets you $250,000 individually plus up to $1,250,000 in the trust category, so the realistic single-institution answer is beneficiary designations, not more accounts.
Married: three accounts, no structure
- Her individual account — $250,000
- His individual account — $250,000
- Joint account — $500,000, being $250,000 per co-owner in a category separate from the individual accounts
That is the whole of it. No trust, no second institution, no fee. The joint category is insured separately from single-ownership money by regulation (12 CFR 330.9(a)), which is what makes the arithmetic work.
Single: the beneficiary route
One person’s own-name accounts are added together and capped at $250,000 in aggregate, however many accounts there are (12 CFR 330.6(a)) — opening a second account at the same bank does nothing. Naming beneficiaries does: a payable-on-death designation moves that money into the trust category, worth $250,000 per beneficiary up to five. Three beneficiaries covers $750,000 on top of the $250,000 individual limit.
The simplest answer of all
Two banks. The limit is per insured institution, so splitting $1,000,000 across two banks needs no structure, no beneficiaries and no conversation with anyone. It costs you one extra login. For a lot of people that is genuinely the right answer, and no article selling you a product will say so.
The 2024 change that broke the standard advice
The advice you will still find published almost everywhere is to open a payable-on-death account and a living trust account at the same bank, on the theory that they sit in different categories and therefore stack. That stopped working. The FDIC now aggregates them: informal revocable trusts (payable-on-death, in-trust-for, Totten), formal revocable trusts (living and family trusts) and irrevocable trusts from the same grantor are one category at one bank — and the whole category is capped at five beneficiaries.
The regulation is blunt about it: trust deposits that pass from the same grantor “are aggregated for purposes of determining coverage under this section, regardless of whether those deposits are held in connection with an informal revocable trust, formal revocable trust, or irrevocable trust” (12 CFR 330.10(b)(2)). So $250,000 × five beneficiaries — $1,250,000 per grantor per bank — is the ceiling on that whole category, no matter how many separate trust documents you sign.
The full category table, with every citation: how to insure more than $250,000. Credit unions run on different rules until 1 December 2026 — FDIC vs SIPC vs NCUA.
At this level the structuring is the easy half.
Insuring the balance is free and you can do it yourself. What to do with a position this size — how much stays liquid, what it costs you to hold it in cash — is the question worth getting two or three independent views on.
Before you start, what actually happens. The matching service is run by WiserAdvisor, an independent advisor-matching company. It opens on their site, asks for your ZIP code and a few questions, and matches you with 2 to 3 vetted advisors. It is free to you.
WiserAdvisor states the service is built for portfolios of $250,000 and above. By submitting, you consent to emails, phone calls and text messages from WiserAdvisor and up to three advisors, so expect to be contacted. Clear Money Guide is paid when you complete the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone.
Compare fees, scope, conflicts, credentials and fiduciary duty before you hire anyone. Structuring deposit insurance is something you can do yourself, for free, at the bank.
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Every coverage figure on this page is read from the regulation itself — 12 CFR part 330 (FDIC) and part 745 (NCUA) via the official eCFR, the Federal Register for rules not yet in force, and SIPC’s own statement of what it covers. General information, not legal or financial advice; confirm your own position with your institution or the FDIC’s EDIE tool before relying on it.