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When I started a company in Denmark, we were made very aware that we were not insured by the national depositors insurance schema and that we had no protections.

We were offered to buy insurance for e-banking theft and other types of fraud _and_ insurance for our deposits.

Is it really the case, that Americans assume to have all these sorts of insurances taken care of automatically?



For individuals (or rather, up to $250k UDS per account), it is. There's other opt-in systems for businesses that have different risk profiles.


“On June 16, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Banking Act of 1933, a part of which established the FDIC. At Roosevelt's immediate right and left were Sen. Carter Glass of Virginia and Rep. Henry Steagall of Alabama, the two most prominent figures in the bill's development”

https://www.fdic.gov/about/history/


> Is it really the case, that Americans assume to have all these sorts of insurances taken care of automatically?

For consumers, yes. For businesses, this falls under the "treasury management" responsibilities of the CFO position.

If they make this assumption (i.e. by foregoing insurance, T-bill ladders, etc.), they're a poor fiduciary. The VCs and relatively mature startups that stood to lose money in the last week have come out of this looking really bad to the adults in the industry.


How reliable is the insurance? In other words, how bad would things have to get for it not to pay out?


That would be a part of the terms – we didn't get it, we knowingly took the risk.


I was thinking more about counterparty risk. If it gets bad enough, your insurer won't exist any more, right?


Your insurance company is re-insured. Reinsurance is a business in its own.

So your insurer will be able to meet their obligations.

If not, then it is so bad that it is societal. And then we all have an interest in having it resolved no matter what.




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