A glitch prevented her account from being displayed for a few days, then was resolved. Your money, when covered via FDIC/SIPC and federal regulations, doesn’t just “disappear”.
My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
Which is why all of my accounts mail a physical statement each month. Yes, just about every time I log on they beg me to switch to electronic only, I say no and move along.
> My bank just sends a note that a statement is available, rather than an actual statement.
Yep. If they had implemented it just like the mail, they'd just email me the PDF (encrypted if necessary). But they don't, so I don't ever agree to "go electronic statements".
Pretty much had to physically find it myself. Was the last time I let that happen…
Deposit insurance coverage protects depositors against the failure of an insured bank; it does not protect against losses due to theft or fraud, which are addressed by other laws
A good reminder that your emergency fund should be held in cash at a bank, not in shares a brokerage. Not that a glitch like this couldn’t block access to your bank account too, but rather that the process of liquidating and transferring securities is much slower than ACH or Zelle.
This is not merely a theoretical risk. Patelco (a Bay Area credit union with half a million members) got hit with ransomware back in 2024 that disrupted banking services for two weeks.
When the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, funds were only inaccessible for 72 hours, and no depositors lost any money [0]. Which is still not ideal, but most people will never experience a bank collapse, and there are plenty of banking activities that will take longer than 72 hours to process in regular circumstances anyways.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_Silicon_Valley_Ban...
That doesn't seem relevant here. The account disappeared due to a data maintenance error; it wasn't extracted via a legitimate transfer to another account, they literally forgot about it.
And in a worst case scenario where I can’t access the front half of my savings due to a bank run or other failure, I am only a week or so away from getting access to some part of my savings.
danso•2h ago