Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: FDIC insures deposits at banks, NCUA insures shares at credit unions, and SIPC does neither — it covers what happens when a brokerage fails, not when an investment falls. All three are $250,000 at the headline, which is exactly why they get confused. The real differences are in what counts and, right now, in the trust rules.
What each one actually covers
- FDIC — deposits at an insured bank: checking, savings, money-market deposit accounts, CDs. $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category (12 CFR 330.1(o)).
- NCUA — the credit-union equivalent, insuring share accounts on the same $250,000 headline.
- SIPC — not deposit insurance at all. It restores cash and securities held at a failed SIPC-member brokerage. The limit is “$500,000, which includes a $250,000 limit for cash” (SIPC).
The confusion that costs people money
SIPC does not protect you from losing money on an investment. If your fund falls 30%, that is not a SIPC event and never will be. SIPC exists for the case where the brokerage itself fails and customer assets are missing. Conflating the two is the single most common error in this area, and it runs in both directions — people also assume cash at a brokerage is uninsured when it may in fact be swept into insured bank deposits.
Credit unions are on different rules until 1 December 2026
This is the part almost nobody has caught up with. The NCUA has not yet made the same change. Under the rule currently in force, a revocable trust with five or fewer beneficiaries is covered at beneficiaries × $250,000, and a revocable trust with more than five beneficiaries uses a different formula altogether — one that is not capped at five (12 CFR 745.4(a)).
That changes on 1 December 2026. The NCUA’s Simplification of Share Insurance Rules creates a single trust-accounts category matching the FDIC’s, caps coverage at $250,000 per beneficiary up to five beneficiaries — $1,250,000 per grantor per credit union — and, in the rule’s own words, “eliminate[s] formulas in the current rules for revocable trust accounts with more than five beneficiaries and irrevocable trust accounts” (89 FR 79397, final rule, effective 1 December 2026).
The practical consequence, with the date attached. If you hold money at a credit union in a revocable trust naming more than five beneficiaries, some of your coverage is scheduled to disappear on 1 December 2026. You have until then to move the excess to another institution or restructure. Nothing about this is an emergency — but it is a deadline, and it is not being advertised.
The practical upshot
If your money is at a bank and a credit union, you currently have two different trust rulebooks applying to it, and they converge on 1 December 2026. If your money is at a brokerage, the question is not SIPC at all — it is which program banks the cash is swept to and how much sits at each. Check that with the brokerage directly; the answer is specific to the program and it changes.
Structuring the bank side: how to insure more than $250,000 · POD beneficiaries and coverage · whether a living trust changes anything.
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.