Federal Deposit Insurance
Corporation
Ricki
Tigert Helfer, Chair
550
17th Street NW
Washington,
DC 10429
(202)
393-8400
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.