If you have amassed a significant amount of money and it’s in an institution insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, do you really know how much of it is protected?

Probably not and I wouldn’t fault you if you didn’t. Even some bank employees get it wrong, as one reader suspected.

“On several occasions at several different banks I have been told that the limit on insured accounts for my wife and I is a total of $200,000 irrespective of ‘ownership categories,'” the reader wrote. “Specifically, I have been told that my wife and I could have a single account insured for $100,000 each, but that opening another joint account would not extend the insurability of our deposits beyond that combined $200,000.”

There has been a heightened interest in deposit insurance coverage because, for the first time in 25 years, the limit for retirement savings accounts was increased to $250,000, up from $100,000, effective April 1. That news drew questions about the new limits and the old ones.

To help answer these questions, I asked the FDIC. To those who wanted to double check, the basic insurance limit for deposits in banks, thrifts and credit unions is still $100,000 per depositor per insured institution.

So what about the reader who was told that the insurance coverage for him and his wife was limited to $200,000?

That information was incorrect, according to Kathleen Nagle of the FDIC’s division of supervision and consumer protection.

Perhaps we all need to take the following to the bank:

¢ Single accounts are insured up to $100,000 per person per insured bank. Single accounts are deposit accounts that you set up in your name alone. In the case of the reader, he can have one or more single accounts totaling up to $100,000, and his wife can have single accounts totaling up to $100,000, at the same bank, and the accounts would be fully insured, Nagle pointed out.

¢ One or more joint accounts owned by a husband and wife at the same bank are insured up to $200,000, provided all co-owners have equal withdrawal rights and personally sign the account signature card (unless the account is a certificate of deposit). Joint accounts are insured up to $100,000 per co-owner, separately from any single accounts that co-owners may have at the same bank.

So a husband and wife could have up to $400,000 in FDIC insurance coverage at the same bank simply by placing the money into three deposit accounts – $100,000 in his name alone, $100,000 in the wife’s name alone, and $200,000 in a joint account for the two of them.

Some readers wanted clarification about the new limits for retirement accounts. “Please verify that if a $250,000 CD for an IRA was opened in each of 10 different banks that (the depositor) would be insured for a total of $2.5 million.”

It is possible to get that much coverage. To determine insurance coverage, the FDIC adds together all the deposits that an individual owns in one or more self-directed retirement accounts at a financial institution and insures the deposits now up to a total of $250,000.

Since the FDIC insures deposits on a “per bank” basis, if you open accounts in different banks you get more insurance coverage. If you deposit $250,000 in IRAs in your name at 10 different FDIC-insured banks, your maximum insurance coverage would in fact be $2.5 million, according to Nagle.

For more information, click on www.fdic.gov or call (877) 275-3342.