--- title: "Uninsured Deposits: definition, formula, and thresholds" description: "Uninsured deposits are balances above the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit. Because depositors stand to lose money if the bank fails, uninsured deposits are the most flight-prone funding, the fuel of the 2023 bank runs." canonical_url: https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/uninsured-deposits/ source: BankRegReports category: "Liquidity & Balance Sheet" units: "$" schedule: "Schedule RC-O" --- # Uninsured Deposits > Uninsured deposits are balances above the $250,000 FDIC insurance limit. Because depositors stand to lose money if the bank fails, uninsured deposits are the most flight-prone funding, the fuel of the 2023 bank runs. ## Formula ``` Uninsured Deposits = Total Deposits - Estimated Insured Deposits (≤ $250k per depositor, per category) ``` Banks with $1 billion or more in total assets report an estimate of uninsured deposits on Schedule RC-O, Memorandum item 2. Expressed as a share of total deposits, it is the uninsured deposit ratio, a direct gauge of how much of the funding base could run in a loss-of-confidence event. ## Why it matters Uninsured depositors have every incentive to flee at the first sign of trouble, and modern digital banking lets them move in hours. Silicon Valley Bank's extraordinarily high uninsured share turned a securities-loss problem into a same-day run; the metric is now front-and-center in liquidity analysis. ## How to read it Read uninsured deposits as a share of the total and pair it with liquidity and unrealized securities losses. A high uninsured ratio is survivable with ample liquidity and few hidden losses; combined with large HTM/AFS losses and thin liquidity, it is the textbook run-risk profile. ## Thresholds | Range | Reading | What it means | |---|---|---| | < 30% of deposits | Strong | Mostly insured, run-resistant funding base. | | 30-50% | Adequate | Typical uninsured share for a commercial bank. | | 50-70% | Watch | Elevated uninsured exposure; liquidity matters more. | | > 70% | Concern | Very high run risk, as seen at the banks that failed in 2023. | ## Worked example A bank with $2 billion of deposits and $1.1 billion estimated uninsured has a 55% uninsured ratio. If it also carries large unrealized securities losses and limited on-hand liquidity, that combination is precisely what made the 2023 failures move so fast. ## Questions ### How much deposit insurance does the FDIC provide? Standard FDIC insurance covers $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, per ownership category. Balances above that limit are uninsured and would be at risk if the bank failed. ### Why did uninsured deposits matter so much in 2023? Banks like Silicon Valley Bank had a large majority of deposits uninsured and concentrated among connected customers. When confidence broke, those depositors ran almost instantly, draining liquidity faster than the bank could respond. ## Sources - [FFIEC Call Report Schedule RC-O (Assessments)](https://www.ffiec.gov/sites/default/files/data/reporting-forms/FFIEC031_FFIEC041_202606_i.pdf) (PDF) ## Related metrics - [Uninsured Deposit Ratio](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/uninsured-deposit-ratio/): The Uninsured Deposit Ratio measures deposits above the $250K FDIC insurance threshold as a percentage of total deposits. Made infamous by the Silicon Valley Bank failure in 2023, it captures deposit base run-risk. - [Total Deposits](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/total-deposits/): Total deposits is the sum of all money customers have placed with a bank (checking, savings, money market, and time deposits) across domestic and foreign offices. It is a bank's primary and cheapest source of funding. - [Core Deposits](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/core-deposits/): Core deposits are a bank's stable, relationship-based funding (checking, savings, and smaller time deposits) excluding rate-sensitive jumbo CDs and brokered money. They are the cheapest and stickiest funding a bank has. - [AFS Unrealized Losses](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/afs-unrealized-losses/): AFS unrealized losses are the mark-to-market losses on a bank's available-for-sale securities. Unlike HTM losses, they are recognized. They flow through accumulated other comprehensive income (AOCI) and reduce book equity each period the securities are underwater. - [HTM Unrealized Losses](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/htm-unrealized-losses/): HTM unrealized losses are the gap between the amortized-cost carrying value of a bank's held-to-maturity securities and their lower current market value. The loss is disclosed but not recognized on the balance sheet, a hidden hit to economic capital. ## About this document This is the markdown twin of the page named in `canonical_url` above. Source filings are public record; the cleaning, normalization, cross-source linkage, and derived metrics are BankRegReports' own. Attribute with a link to the canonical URL. Markdown twins are published for editorial content only. Institution data pages do not have them. For data at scale use the API, which is documented at https://www.bankregreports.com/api/ and specified at https://www.bankregreports.com/openapi.json. It returns typed JSON with explicit units and periods, and one call replaces hundreds of page fetches. ## Sitemap - [Glossary](https://www.bankregreports.com/glossary/): every metric, with formula and thresholds - [Blog](https://www.bankregreports.com/blog/): analysis and explainers - [API documentation](https://www.bankregreports.com/api/): the programmatic way to get this data - [XML sitemap](https://www.bankregreports.com/sitemap.xml): the complete crawlable index