Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: you do not need a second bank to insure more than $250,000 — you need a second ownership category. Coverage is $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per category, and a married couple can reach $1,000,000 at a single bank using nothing but two individual accounts and one joint account. Beyond that, trust accounts add up to $1,250,000 per grantor — but the rule that made trust stacking work was rewritten in 2024, and most of what is published about it is now wrong.
The five categories, and what each is worth
Every figure below is the regulation’s, with the citation attached:
| Ownership category | Coverage at one bank | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Single ownership | $250,000 for all of one person’s own-name accounts added together If anyone else can withdraw — other than under a power of attorney — it is treated as a joint account instead. | 12 CFR 330.6(a) |
| Joint accounts | $250,000 per co-owner, across all joint accounts combined, separate from single-ownership money A husband-and-wife joint account funded with community property is insured up to twice the limit. | 12 CFR 330.9(a) |
| Trust accounts POD / ITF / Totten, living trusts and irrevocable trusts — one category since 2024 | $250,000 × beneficiaries, capped at five = $1,250,000 per grantor All of one grantor’s trust deposits at that bank are aggregated, whatever form they take. | 12 CFR 330.10(b)(1)–(2) |
| Retirement / employee benefit | $250,000 per participant’s non-contingent interest, on a pass-through basis | 12 CFR 330.14(a) |
| Corporation / partnership / association | $250,000 for the entity in aggregate Divisions and unincorporated units do not get their own limit. | 12 CFR 330.11(a)(1) |
The worked example almost everyone can use
A married couple at one bank, with no trusts and no lawyer:
- Her individual account: $250,000 insured (12 CFR 330.6(a))
- His individual account: $250,000
- Their joint account: $500,000 — $250,000 for each co-owner’s interest, in a category separate from the individual accounts (12 CFR 330.9(a))
$1,000,000 at one bank, with three ordinary accounts and no structure at all. That is the answer most people who ask this question actually need, and it costs nothing.
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.
Where the trust category still helps
It still adds real capacity — it just no longer multiplies across document types. A grantor naming five eligible beneficiaries gets $1,250,000 in the trust category, on top of single and joint coverage, at the same bank. Two spouses each naming five beneficiaries reach $2,500,000 in that category between them. What no longer works is opening a second trust, of a different kind, to get a second allowance.
Two details worth knowing before you count on it. Where a trust has multiple grantors and the bank’s records say nothing else, ownership is presumed equal (12 CFR 330.10(b)(4)) — so the account records matter. And trust-category coverage is expressly separate from your other categories at that bank (12 CFR 330.10(b)(3)), which is why it stacks on top of the $1,000,000 above rather than replacing it.
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 order to work through it
Add up what you hold at each institution separately — the limit is per bank, so two banks is the simplest answer of all and needs no paperwork. Then, at each bank, sort the money by category rather than by account. Most households discover they are already covered and did not know it; the ones who are not usually fix it with one joint account or one beneficiary designation. Confirm your own position with the FDIC’s EDIE calculator or your institution before relying on any of it.
Deeper on each piece: how payable-on-death beneficiaries multiply coverage · whether a living trust changes anything · FDIC vs SIPC vs NCUA. At specific amounts: $1 million and $2 million.
You have structured the insurance. The next question is the harder one.
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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.