FDIC Failed Bank List: Historical Closures and Data

The FDIC Failed Bank List is the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's official public record of every insured bank and thrift that has failed since 2000, with supplemental historical data extending back to 1934. The list identifies each closed institution by name, charter type, and location, and links to transaction documents detailing how the FDIC resolved each failure. For depositors, researchers, legal professionals, and policy analysts, the list functions as a primary reference for understanding the scale and geography of bank failures across business cycles.

Definition and scope

The FDIC Failed Bank List is a structured dataset maintained on the FDIC's public website, cataloguing insured depository institutions for which the FDIC was appointed receiver. Each entry in the list represents a formal closure in which state or federal chartering authorities revoked the institution's charter or placed it into FDIC receivership under the Federal Deposit Insurance Act (12 U.S.C. § 1821).

The list covers both commercial banks and savings institutions (thrifts) that carried FDIC deposit insurance at the time of failure. Credit unions are excluded — those institutions fall under the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) and its separate Share Insurance Fund. The distinction matters because the two systems operate under different statutory frameworks and maintain independent failure records.

Each record in the Failed Bank List includes the following structured fields:

1. Institution name — the legal name of the failed bank or thrift
2. City and state — geographic location of the institution's main office
3. Certificate number — the FDIC's unique institutional identifier, which links to deeper data in the FDIC BankFind Suite
4. Charter class — indicates whether the institution was a national bank, state member bank, state nonmember bank, or savings association
5. Transaction type — identifies how the FDIC resolved the failure (purchase and assumption, deposit payoff, or open bank assistance)
6. Closing date — the date on which the chartering authority officially closed the institution
7. Acquiring institution — the bank or entity that assumed deposits and, in most cases, selected assets

The list is downloadable in CSV format, enabling systematic analysis. The FDIC Statistics on Depository Institutions database provides additional financial ratios and call report data for each failed institution prior to closure.

How it works

When a bank or thrift fails, the chartering authority — either the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for national banks or the applicable state banking regulator for state-chartered institutions — closes the institution and appoints the FDIC as receiver (12 U.S.C. § 1821(c)). The FDIC then adds the institution to the Failed Bank List, typically within one business day of the closure date.

The resolution method recorded in each list entry reflects the FDIC's least-cost determination — the statutory obligation under 12 U.S.C. § 1823(c)(4) to select the resolution strategy that imposes the lowest cost on the Deposit Insurance Fund (FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund overview). The three primary resolution types are:

• Purchase and Assumption (P&A) — a healthy institution acquires the failed bank's insured deposits and some or all of its assets; the most common resolution form
• Deposit Payoff — the FDIC directly pays insured depositors when no acquirer is identified; all assets are liquidated through the receivership
• Open Bank Assistance (OBA) — financial assistance is provided to a still-operating institution to prevent failure; rare and subject to systemic risk exception procedures

The FDIC bank failure process and receivership process pages detail the procedural mechanics that precede and follow each entry's appearance on the list.

Common scenarios

The historical record in the Failed Bank List reflects distinct clustering patterns tied to macroeconomic stress. The Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s produced more than 1,000 thrift failures, many resolved through the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) before the FDIC absorbed those functions in 1995 (FDIC History: The S&L Crisis). The 2008–2012 financial crisis generated 465 bank failures between 2008 and 2012 alone, according to the FDIC's own published failure data, with 2010 representing the peak year at 157 closures (FDIC Failed Bank List).

In contrast, the period from 2012 through 2022 saw a sustained decline in failures — fewer than 10 institutions closed in each year from 2017 through 2021. The 2023 failures of Silicon Valley Bank (assets of approximately $209 billion at closure) and Signature Bank represented the second- and third-largest bank failures by asset size in U.S. history, according to FDIC press releases issued in March 2023.

Researchers and journalists frequently cross-reference the Failed Bank List with the FDIC Problem Bank List to assess how long institutions remained in deteriorating condition before closure. The two lists are related but distinct: problem bank status reflects CAMELS ratings below a threshold, while failed bank status is a terminal event.

Decision boundaries

The Failed Bank List records only institutions for which the FDIC was appointed receiver — it does not capture voluntary liquidations, mergers driven by financial weakness that did not reach receivership, or institutions placed under consent orders that subsequently recovered. An institution that receives FDIC enforcement actions and later merges voluntarily will not appear on the list.

The list also does not reflect the financial condition of individual depositors post-closure. Insured deposit coverage limits — $250,000 per depositor per ownership category under current statute (12 U.S.C. § 1821(a)(1)(E)) — determine whether a depositor recovers funds without loss; the Failed Bank List itself does not document individual claimant outcomes. The FDIC deposit payout process page addresses how insured and uninsured claims are handled after a closure is recorded.

Institutions chartered outside the United States are also outside scope. Foreign bank branches operating in the U.S. that hold FDIC insurance are eligible for inclusion, but foreign parent entities or uninsured U.S. branches are not tracked in the list.

For the broadest context on FDIC authority and its institutional role in bank failure prevention and resolution, the FDIC Authority homepage provides an orientation to the full scope of federal deposit insurance oversight.