The largest bank failures in US history

By total assets at the last report before closing, the largest bank failure on FDIC record is Washington Mutual Bank, closed on September 25, 2008 with $307 billion. The next three are First Republic Bank ($213 billion, 2023), Silicon Valley Bank ($209 billion, 2023) and Signature Bank ($110 billion, 2023). Those four alone account for 44% of the assets of all 3,375 failures with a reported size since 1934.

The top 25

The list below ranks every failure the FDIC records by total assets. It counts only banks that were closed: assistance transactions, where an insurer helped a bank that stayed open, are kept apart. The figures are in dollars of the year of failure. Nothing here is adjusted for inflation, which flatters recent failures against older ones, but it is how the FDIC publishes them.

The 25 largest bank failures, FDIC records 1934 to 2026

Bank	Year	State	Total assets	Est. loss
1. Washington Mutual Bank	2008	NV	$307 billion	none recorded
2. First Republic Bank	2023	CA	$213 billion	$15.5 billion
3. Silicon Valley Bank	2023	CA	$209 billion	$18.7 billion
4. Signature Bank	2023	NY	$110 billion	none recorded
5. IndyMac Bank	2008	CA	$30.7 billion	$12.0 billion
6. Colonial Bank	2009	AL	$25.5 billion	$2.4 billion
7. First RepublicBank Dallas	1988	TX	$17.1 billion	$2.0 billion
8. Guaranty Bank	2009	TX	$13.5 billion	none recorded
9. Bank of New England	1991	MA	$13.4 billion	$573 million
10. Gibraltar Savings	1989	CA	$13.4 billion	$94.6 million
11. BankUnited	2009	FL	$13.1 billion	$5.2 billion
12. Downey Savings and Loan Association	2008	CA	$12.8 billion	$151 million
13. HomeFed Bank, Federal Savings Bank	1992	CA	$12.2 billion	$752 million
14. AmTrust Bank	2009	OH	$11.4 billion	$1.7 billion
15. Southeast Bank	1991	FL	$11.0 billion	none recorded
16. United Commercial Bank	2009	CA	$10.9 billion	$572 million
17. Westernbank Puerto Rico	2010	PR	$10.8 billion	$2.2 billion
18. Goldome	1991	NY	$9.9 billion	$779 million
19. City Federal Savings Bank	1989	NJ	$9.8 billion	$1.6 billion
20. Imperial Savings Association	1990	CA	$9.6 billion	$203 million
21. Great American Bank, a Federal Savings Bank	1991	CA	$9.5 billion	$995 million
22. Franklin Savings Association	1990	KS	$9.3 billion	$38.2 million
23. Centrust Bank, A State Savings Bank	1990	FL	$8.2 billion	$672 million
24. Empire of America	1990	NY	$8.2 billion	$1.2 billion
25. California National Bank	2009	CA	$7.8 billion	$182 million

Which eras fill the list

Of the 25, 10 failed between 2008 and 2013, 3 in 2014 or later and 12 before 2000. The highest-placed failure from before 2000 is First RepublicBank Dallas, National Association, closed in 1988 with $17.1 billion, in seventh place. Every one of the 12 older entries on the list failed between 1988 and 1992, the years of the savings and loan crisis, and 8 of them were handled by the Resolution Trust Corporation, set up for failed savings associations.

Geography is lopsided too. Ten of the 25 were based in California and two in Texas. Size is lopsided in a different way: the median failure since 1934 reported $48.2 million in assets, so even the smallest bank on this list, at $7.8 billion, was about 161 times the size of a typical failed bank.

Size is not the same as cost

A large failure is not automatically an expensive one. Four of the 25 carry no estimated loss to the fund in the FDIC's record as of July 31, 2026, Washington Mutual Bank, Signature Bank, Guaranty Bank, Southeast Bank among them. In those cases the deposits and assets went to the acquirer on terms that left the fund whole, at least on the current estimate. The costliest failures are a different list, covered in what bank failures cost the insurance fund.

Bigger rescues that were not failures

Some of the largest FDIC transactions never appear among the failures because the banks were not closed. The record lists Continental Illinois in 1984, with $40.0 billion in assets, as an assistance transaction, and the open-bank assistance of November 2008 and January 2009 to Citibank and Bank of America entities, each with assets above a trillion dollars at the largest unit. Those records sit on the 2008 and 2009 pages under assistance transactions, with no loss estimate attached.

Reading the ranks

Each bank page shows where that failure ranks by assets in its year, in its state and in the full record. Ranks use the same dollar figures as this list, so they inherit the same caveat about inflation. To rank failures over any other range of years or for one state, the failure explorer sorts all 3,526 by size.

The largest failure of each decade

Ranking within decades removes some of the distortion that unadjusted dollars bring. In the 1930s the largest failure on record was The New Jersey Title Guarantee & Trust Co. of Jersey City, New Jersey, with $30.7 million in assets; the largest failure of all is about 9,986 times that size. The table shows how the ceiling rose decade by decade, and how few failures some decades had at all.

The largest failure of each decade by total assets

Decade	Failures	Largest	Location	Total assets
1930s	207	The New Jersey Title Guarantee & Trust Co.	Jersey City, NJ	$30.7 million
1940s	54	Banco Di Napoli Trust Co. of New York	New York, NY	$13.8 million
1950s	28	First State Bank of Elmwood Park	Elmwood Park, IL	$17.5 million
1960s	43	Public Bank	Detroit, MI	$110 million
1970s	75	Franklin National Bank	New York, NY	$3.7 billion
1980s	1,466	First RepublicBank Dallas	Dallas, TX	$17.1 billion
1990s	919	Bank of New England	Boston, MA	$13.4 billion
2000s	197	Washington Mutual Bank	Henderson, NV	$307 billion
2010s	367	Westernbank Puerto Rico	Mayaguez, PR	$10.8 billion
2020s	19	First Republic Bank	San Francisco, CA	$213 billion

The largest failure in each state

Across the 53 states and territories with at least one failure, the largest failure dates from 2000 or later in 24, from the savings and loan years of 1980 to 1994 in 27, and from before 1980 in 1. Each state page names its largest failure and lists every other one, newest first.

What kind of banks they were

Savings institutions make up 15 of the 25: savings associations and savings banks, the lenders that specialised in home loans. The other 10 were commercial banks, 4 of them with national charters. Among the 24 with a founding year in the FDIC's records, the median age at closing was 57 years; the oldest was Bank of New England, National Association, founded 160 years before it failed.

Sources

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation: BankFind Suite failures, institutions and financials data; Failed Bank List. All figures computed by this site from those records; see how to read the data.