How do rich people guarantee the safety of their money, when savings exceed the FDIC limit?
They might not have to open accounts at 12 bank because the coverage does allow multiple accounts at one institution if the accounts are joint accounts. It also treats retirement accounts a separate account. The bigger issue is that most millionaires don't have all their money siting in the bank. They invest in stocks, bonds, government bonds, international funds, and their own companies. Most of these carry risk, but they are diversified. They also can afford advisers to help them manage and protect their assets. "Rich people use ""depositor"" banks the same way the rest of us use banks; to keep a relatively small store of wealth for monthly expenses and a savings account for a rainy day. The bulk of a wealthy person's money is in investments. Money sitting in a bank account is not making you more money, and in fact as Kaushik correctly points out, would be losing value to inflation. Now, all investments have risk; that's why interest exists. If, in some alternate universe, charging interest were illegal across the board, nobody would loan money, because there's nothing to be gained and a lot to lose. You have to make it worth my while for me to want to loan you my money, because sure as shootin' you're going to use my loan to make yourself wealthier. A wealthy person will choose a set of investments that represent an overall level of risk that he is comfortable with, much like you or I would do the same with our retirement funds. Early in life, we're willing to take a lot of risk, because there's a lot of money to be made and time to recover from any losses. Closer to retirement, we're much more risk-averse, because if the market takes a sudden downturn, we lose a significant portion of our nest egg with little hope of regaining it before we have to start cashing out. The very wealthy have similar variances in risk, with the significant difference that they are typically already drawing a living from their investments. As such, they already have some risk aversion, but at the same time they need good returns, and so they must pay more attention to this balancing act between risk and return. Managing their investments in effect becomes their new job, once they don't have to work for anyone else anymore. The money does the ""real work"", and they make the executive decisions about where best to put it. The tools they use to make these decisions are the same ones we have; they watch market trends to identify stages of the economic cycle that predicate large movements of money to or from ""safe havens"" like gold and T-debt, they diversify their investments to shield the bulk of their wealth from a sudden localized loss, they hire investment managers to have a second pair of eyes and additional expertise in navigating the market (you or I can do much the same thing by buying shares in managed investment funds, or simply consulting a broker; the difference is that the wealthy get a more personal touch). So what's the difference between the very wealthy and the rest of us? Well first is simple scale. When a person with a net worth in the hundreds of millions makes a phone call or personal visit to the financial institutions handling their money, there's a lot of money on the line in making sure that person is well looked-after. If we get screwed over at the teller window and decide to close our acocunts, the teller can often give us our entire account balance in cash without batting an eyelid. Our multimillionaire is at the lower end of being singlehandedly able to alter his banks' profit/loss statements by his decisions, and so his bank will fight to keep his business. Second is the level of control. The very wealthy, the upper 1%, have more or less direct ownership and control over many of the major means of production in this country; the factories, mines, timber farms, software houses, power plants, recording studios, etc that generate things of value, and therefore new wealth. While the average Joe can buy shares in these things through the open market, their investment is typically a drop in the bucket, and their voice in company decisions equally small. Our decision, therefore, is largely to invest or not to invest. The upper 1%, on the other hand, have controlling interests in their investments, often majority holdings that allow them far more control over the businesses they invest in, who's running them and what they do." I found out there is something called CDARS that allows a person to open a multi-million dollar certificate of deposit account with a single financial institution, who provides FDIC coverage for the entire account.  This financial institution spreads the person's money across multiple banks, so that each bank holds less than $250K and can provide the standard FDIC coverage.  The account holder doesn't have to worry about any of those details as the main financial institution handles everything.  From the account holder's perspective, he/she just has a single account with the main financial institution. Most people who have over $250,000 in liquid cash savings would not want to start putting their money into regular savings accounts in different banks, especially with interest rates as ridiculously low as they are now in 2014-15.  People with money will want to diversify their investments in ways that will potentially earn them more money, and they can also afford to seek the advice of financial planners who can help them do this wisely. Even if you decide to put $250,000 into various accounts at different banks, I wouldn't necessarily trust that the FDIC will be able to help you recover your money in the event that your banks go under.  The amount of money available to the FDIC to cover such losses pales in comparison to the actual amount of money that Americans have in their bank accounts. Even assuming hypothetically that you are able to split money in different bank accounts to get full coverage and all your accounts are in top ranking financial institutions in USA, you can not rely on FDIC if all or most of those banks go broke. Because FDIC just has a meagre 25 billion dollars to cover all bank accounts in the USA. And you know the amount of bank deposits in USA run in at least a trillion of dollars. US Deposits & FDIC Insurance figures The FDIC has been pretty good at recovery lost money from failed banks. The problem is the temporary loss from immediate needs. The best thing for anyone to do is diversify in investments and banks with adequate covered insurance for all accounts. Immediate access to available cash is always a priority that should be governed by the money manager in this case yourself. With a lot excess cash you eventually have two goals: Since interest on cash bank deposits does not exceed inflation and you have currency risk, you may want to get into other asset classes. Options that might be, but not limited to are:
"In the case of bank failures You are protected by FDIC insurance.  At the time I wrote this, you are insured up to $250,000.  In my lifetime, it has been as high as $1,000,000 and as low as $100,000.  I attached a link, which is updated by FDIC. In the case of fraud It depends. If you read this story and are horrified (I was too), you know that the banking system is not as safe as the other answers imply: In February 2005, Joe Lopez, a businessman from Florida, filed a suit   against Bank of America after unknown hackers stole $90,000 from his   Bank of America account. The money had been transferred to Latvia. An investigation showed that Mr. Lopez’s computer was infected with a   malicious program, Backdoor.Coreflood, which records every keystroke   and sends this information to malicious users via the Internet. This   is how the hackers got hold of Joe Lopez’s user name and password,   since Mr. Lopez often used the Internet to manage his Bank of America   account. However the court did not rule in favor of the plaintiff, saying that   Mr. Lopez had neglected to take basic precautions when managing his   bank account on the Internet: a signature for the malicious code that   was found on his system had been added to nearly all antivirus product   databases back in 2003. Ouch.   But let's think about the story for a second - he had his money stolen because of online banking and he didn't have the latest antivirus/antimalware software.  How safe is banking if you don't do online banking?  In the case of this story, it would have prevented keyloggers, but you're still susceptible to someone stealing your card or account information.  So: In the bank's defense, how does a bank not know that someone didn't wire money to a friend (which is a loss for good), then get some of that money back from his friend while also getting money back from the bank, which had to face the loss.  Yes, it sucks, but it's not total madness. As for disputing charges, from personal experience it also depends.  I don't use cards whatsoever, so I've never had to worry, but both of my parents have experienced banking fraud where a fake charge on their card was not reversed.  Neither of my parents are rich and can't afford lawyers, so crying ""lawsuit"" is not an option for everyone.  How often does this occur?  I suspect it's rare that banks don't reverse the charges in fraudulent cases, though you will still lose time for filing and possibly filling out paperwork.  The way to prevent this: As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, there is no absolutely safe place to keep your money.  Even if you bought metals and buried them in the ground, a drifter with a metal detector might run across it one day.  You can take steps to protect yourself, but there is no absolute guarantee that these will work out. Account Closures I added this today because I saw this question and have only seen/heard about this three times.  Provided that you get the cashier's check back safely, you should be okay - but why was this person's account closed and look at how much funds he had!  From his question: In the two years I banked with BoA I never had an overdraft or any   negative marks on my account so the only thing that would stick out   was a check that I deposited for $26k that my mom left me after she   passed. Naturally, people aren't going to like some of my answers, especially this, but imagine you're in an immediate need for cash, and you experience this issue.  What can you do?  Let's say that rent is on the line and it's $25 for every day that you're late.  Other steps to protect yourself Some banks allow you to use a keyword or phrase.  If you're careful with how you do this and are clever, it will reduce the risk that someone steals your money." "Government registering of financial institutions usually is to make the government safe (eg FINTRAC is watching for money laundering and financing terrorism) rather than to make it's customers safe.  Most governments have many levels of registrations and regulatory bodies. The most stringent requirements are usually obligatory only for banks, and they indeed often include precautions for insuring customer's deposits. Even this insurances have limits, eg in most EU countries the state guarantees deposits up to 100kEUR. If you deposit more and the bank flops - you lose everything over the limit. Companies like forex or currency exchanges usually make their best effort to avoid as many regulations as possible, just because it's costly. If a given company does have guarantee funds and/or customer insurance, it should be advertised and explained on their website. However the whole issue of trust is misguiding. You don't have to ""trust"" in your grocery store to shop there. There is no government guarantee that the vegetables sold will be tasty. If you buy and the product fells short of your expectations, you call it a loss and start shopping elsewhere. Financial services are no different than any other product. I recommend to your aunt to start small and see how it works. If a service turns out well, she can increase the amount sent through exchange and decrease amount sent through bank. But still, it's always prudent to send eg $1000 every week instead of $4000 once a month. It's more time consuming and cumbersome than having your bank do it - but it's the safety and convenience you're paying premium for." The Securities Investor Protection Corporation is roughly analogous to the FDIC for investments.  There are some important differences like a lack of 100% guarantee you get all of your funds back. The SIPC understands you invested knowing there was some risk, and therefore you take that same risk in getting your money from a failed brokerage.  However there is still a level of commitment and trust that lessen the risk of investing in the wrong place. Also, do not typo the acronym at your work computer.  In the US (and perhaps elsewhere) it is a racist term, and you are likely to get some bad search results. http://www.sipc.org/how/brochure.cfm "Great question. There are several reasons; I'm going to list the few that I can think of off the top of my head right now. First, even if institutional bank holdings in such a term account are covered by deposit insurance (this, as well as the amount covered, varies geographically), the amount covered is generally trivial when seen in the context of bank holdings. An individual might have on the order of $1,000 - $10,000 in such an account; for a bank, that's basically chump change, and you are looking more at numbers in the millions of dollars range. Sometimes a lot more than that. For a large bank, even hundreds of millions of dollars might be a relatively small portion of their holdings. The 2011 Goldman Sachs annual report (I just pulled a big bank out of thin air, here; no affiliation with them that I know of) states that as of December 2011, their excess liquidity was 171,581 million US dollars (over 170 billion dollars), with a bottom line total assets of $923,225 million (a shade under a trillion dollars) book value. Good luck finding a bank that will pay you 4% interest on even a fraction of such an amount. GS' income before tax in 2011 was a shade under 6.2 billion dollars; 4% on 170 billion dollars is 6.8 billion dollars. That is, the interest payments at such a rate on their excess liquidity alone would have cost more than they themselves made in the entire year, which is completely unsustainable. Government bonds are as guaranteed as deposit-insurance-covered bank accounts (it'll be the government that steps in and pays the guaranteed amount, quite possibly issuing bonds to cover the cost), but (assuming the country does not default on its debt, which happens from time to time) you will get back the entire amount plus interest. For a deposit-insured bank account of any kind, you are only guaranteed (to the extent that one can guarantee anything) the maximum amount in the country's bank deposit insurance; I believe in most countries, this is at best on the order of $100,000. If the bank where the money is kept goes bankrupt, for holdings on the order of what banks deal with, you would be extremely lucky to recover even a few percent of the principal. Government bonds are also generally accepted as collateral for the bank's own loans, which can make a difference when you need to raise more money in short order because a large customer decided to withdraw a big pile of cash from their account, maybe to buy stocks or bonds themselves. Government bonds are generally liquid. That is, they aren't just issued by the government, held to maturity while paying interest, and then returned (electronically, these days) in return for their face value in cash. Government bonds are bought and sold on the ""secondary market"" as well, where they are traded in very much the same way as public company stocks. If banks started simply depositing money with each other, all else aside, then what would happen? Keep in mind that the interest rate is basically the price of money. Supply-and-demand would dictate that if you get a huge inflow of capital, you can lower the interest rate paid on that capital. Banks don't pay high interest (and certainly wouldn't do so to each other) because of their intristic good will; they pay high interest because they cannot secure capital funding at lower rates. This is a large reason why the large banks will generally pay much lower interest rates than smaller niche banks; the larger banks are seen as more reliable in the bond market, so are able to get funding more cheaply by issuing bonds. Individuals will often buy bonds for the perceived safety. Depending on how much money you are dealing with (sold a large house recently?) it is quite possible even for individuals to hit the ceiling on deposit insurance, and for any of a number of reasons they might not feel comfortable putting the money in the stock market. Buying government bonds then becomes a relatively attractive option -- you get a slightly lower return than you might be able to get in a high-interest savings account, but you are virtually guaranteed return of the entire principal if the bond is held to maturity. On the other hand, it might not be the case that you will get the entire principal back if the bank paying the high interest gets into financial trouble or even bankruptcy. Some people have personal or systemic objections toward banks, limiting their willingness to deposit large amounts of money with them. And of course in some cases, such as for example retirement savings, it might not even be possible to simply stash the money in a savings account, in which case bonds of some kind is your only option if you want a purely interest-bearing investment." Banks' savings interest is ridiculous, has always been, compared to other investment options. But there's a reason for that: its safe. You will get your money back, and the interest on it, as long as you're within the FDIC insurance limits. If you want to get more returns - you've got to take more risks. For example, that a locality you're borrowing money to will default. Has happened before, a whole county defaulted. But if you understand the risks - your calculations are correct. Either way, letting these humongous institutions fail would have undoubtedly produced a worse result (best case scenario complete credit freeze, i.e no mre credit cards.  Worst case scenario, even the most financially sound banks fail as part of a financial domino effect and we're back to trading deer skin for beaver pelts).  The best way to prevent these kinds of situations is to never get in them in the first place.  Placing graduated capital constraints on larger and larger financial institutions (i.e.  the larger your balance sheet, the greater the percentage of capital you must retain to offset risk) is the best way to protect against financial collapse.  This way competitive market forces would remain intact, while simoutaneosly reducing risk.  Basel 3 addresses some of these issues, but I speculate more will need to be done to prevent another collapse from happening in  the future. They are using several banks, hedge funds or other financial institutions, in order to diversify the risk inherent to the fact that the firm holding (a fraction of) their cash, can be insolvent which would makes them incur a really big loss. Also, the most available form of cash is very often reinvested everyday in overnight*products and any other highly liquid products, so that it can be available quickly if needed. Since they are aware that they are not likely to need all of their cash in one day, they also use longer terms or less liquid investments (bonds, stocks, etc..). The reason they want the transaction to go through is because they make money that way. Remember the overdraft protection might incur a fee. If it does their experience may show them that the fee is a greater source of profit when balanced against the losses incurred because of insufficient funds. Even free overdraft transactions are limited. If they didn't want to make money they would have a way to make sure that multiple overdrafts in a short time window wouldn't require multiple protection events. Remember each time they transfer funds they only bring you to zero. As it is now the coffee you buy after putting money on your subway fare card might also trigger an overdraft transfer.