US Bank Failure History by Year | FDIC
US bank failures by year from the FDIC Failed Bank List, including count and reported assets.
Research period:
Research question
Across the years tracked in PlainBankData's bank-failure history, which calendar years carry the highest count of FDIC-resolved bank failures, and how do those volumes correlate with the aggregate dollar value of assets at failure and FDIC resolution costs?
Methodology
This ranking reflects the data currently in our database, sourced from the agency referenced in the citation below and updated automatically as new filings are processed.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. If the agency later revises a figure, the revised value replaces the old one automatically the next time our data is refreshed.
Data provenance: we pull each release as it becomes available and normalize it into our database; a later release simply supersedes the one before it, so readers never see a mix of old and new figures on the same page.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: a named editor reviews every ranking page before publication (see the byline above). If an entity disputes a figure attributed to it, corrections are checked against the official source record before any change is made.
Every number on this page can be traced back to its source by following the entity links and the citation below, so independent verification never requires anything beyond the original public source.
See the methodology page for the complete ETL pipeline, source vintage, and column lineage.
US Bank Failure History: Top 10 Years by FDIC-Resolved Failures
Live data: reflects the current dataset
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | Year | Bank failures | Assets at failure ($) | Estimated FDIC cost ($) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1989 | 530 | 163,862,508 | 53,353,918 |
| 2 | 1990 | 381 | 146,585,865 | 18,833,879 |
| 3 | 1991 | 268 | 143,444,562 | 15,228,449 |
| 4 | 1988 | 232 | 48,363,949 | 12,580,756 |
| 5 | 1987 | 217 | 15,823,491 | 6,005,758 |
| 6 | 1992 | 179 | 89,554,183 | 6,965,419 |
| 7 | 1986 | 162 | 15,307,286 | 8,216,156 |
| 8 | 2010 | 157 | 92,084,988 | 15,764,775 |
| 9 | 2009 | 140 | 169,709,160 | 25,803,041 |
| 10 | 1985 | 139 | 9,901,523 | 2,938,361 |
Source: U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, FDIC Failed Bank List. Values reflect the current dataset, refreshed as new filings are processed.
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is 1989, with a value of 530 on the Bank failures column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (530) and the 10th-ranked record (139) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking originate from U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, specifically the FDIC Failed Bank List. PlainBankData ingests the source vintage published by the agency and keeps this page current, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published dataset is reflected here within hours. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the steps applied to prepare the data.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
The FDIC Failed Bank List covers FDIC-insured commercial banks and savings institutions that have been resolved by the FDIC through receivership, conservatorship, or assisted-acquisition processes. The list does not cover credit unions (regulated by the National Credit Union Administration) or non-bank financial institutions. Failure clusters during specific years generally reflect the cumulative consequences of broader economic stress that takes years to surface as terminal bank failure, banks may operate in distress for several quarters before regulatory action escalates to resolution. The 'estimated cost' column reflects the FDIC's initial cost estimate at the time of resolution; final realized losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund can differ from the initial estimate as the receivership wind-down monetizes the failed bank's assets. Aggregate dollar values across years are not adjusted for inflation; year-over-year comparisons of nominal dollar aggregates should consider the price-level context. The smaller-bank failure pattern from earlier decades carries different dollar magnitude than a single large-bank failure in a more recent year, which limits the meaning of nominal-dollar aggregates for cross-era comparisons.
Secondary cut from the same source
Top 10 years by aggregate dollar value of failed-bank assets
Sources
- FDIC Failed Bank List - https://www.fdic.gov/bank-failures/failed-bank-list