Failed banks cost insurance fund about $99.5 million in 2020, FDIC annual report shows

The federal bank deposit insurer reported a total of four bank failures in 2020, with those failures estimated to have cost the deposit insurance fund a total of $99.5 million, according to the agency’s annual report released Monday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) resolved all four failures – of Ericson State Bank (Ericson, Neb.), The First State Bank (Barboursville, W.Va.), First city Bank of Florida (Fort Walto Beach, Fla.), and Almena State Bank (Almena, Kan.) – through purchase-and-assumption agreements with other banks.

The report shows that the FDIC Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) insured some $8.9 trillion in deposits as of year-end 2020, or 56.8% of insured banks’ total domestic deposits. The fund itself totaled some $116.4 billion.

An influx of deposits amid the COVID-19 pandemic helped drive a decline in the DIF’s ratio from 1.41% to 1.3% of insured deposits as of Sept. 30, the report notes.

Other data in the report shows the agency in 2020 approved 18 applications for deposit insurance, 430 applications for new branches, and 159 mergers.

FDIC 2020 Annual Report