Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

 

Ricki Tigert Helfer, Chair

550 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 10429

 

(202) 393-8400

http://www.fdic.gov/

 

 

The board of directors is made of five members:

One is the Comptroller of the Currency

One is the Director of the Office of Thrift Supervision

Three others, one designated as the chair

 

 

The FDIC was established June 16, 1933 under section 13B of the Federal Reserve Act.

 

One of the major activities (in fact, basically the only major activity) of the FDIC is to insure deposits for savings and loan associations.  Its funding for this comes not from Congress but from income on assessments from banks and interest on the investment of funds from government securities.  The FDIC also provides for periodic examinations of State-chartered banks which are not members of the Federal Reserve system.

There are regional field offices for the FDIC as well.  These include the Division of Liquidation, the Division of Resolutions and the Division of Supervision.  Each of these are headed by directors.  Under these are an indeterminate number of field employees, most of whom are examiners and liquidators.

Under the control of the FDIC is another related corporation known as the Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF), created August 9, 1989 under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act.  Also under FDIC control is the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF), with similar purposes.

For the purposes of insuring deposits, the FDIC has the authority to borrow money from the US Treasury.  Currently, the limit is set at $30 billion.

The biggest problem for the corporation is probably funding, since (as explained), it does not get money appropriated by Congress.  Instead, it is forced to draw upon interest from various sources, namely the investments it is required to make.