Types of accounts covered under the Financial Claims Scheme
The Financial Claims Scheme (FCS) applies to a wide range of deposit accounts held with banks, building societies and credit unions (also known as authorised deposit-taking institutions or ADIs) that are incorporated in Australia, but only applies to deposit accounts with funds in Australian dollars. Under the FCS, deposits are protected up to a limit of $250,000 per account holder per ADI.
The list of banks, building societies and credit unions covered by the FCS is available here.
Under the FCS an account holder can be:
- an individual
- a body corporate (including companies)
- a body politic
- a partnership
- any other unincorporated association or body of persons
- the trustee(s) of a trust
- the trustee(s) of a superannuation fund (including a self-managed superannuation fund)
- the trustee(s) of an approved deposit fund.
An account holder can be an Australian resident/citizen or non-resident/non-citizen. In other words, the citizenship or residency status of an account holder does not have an impact on whether a deposit account is covered under the FCS. A group of individual trustees of a trust, superannuation fund or approved deposit fund are treated as a single account holder.
In the case of superannuation, an ADI deposit account held by the trustee of a superannuation fund on behalf of fund members is covered under the FCS up to the limit of $250,000. However, in most cases the $250,000 FCS limit would be applied to the whole fund, not each individual member.More information on coverage and account holders in relation to superannuation funds is available here.
The FCS applies to the following types of deposit accounts:
- savings accounts
- call accounts
- term deposits
- current accounts
- cheque accounts
- debit card accounts
- transaction accounts
- personal basic accounts
- cash management accounts
- farm management deposit accounts
- pensioner deeming accounts
- mortgage offset accounts (either 100 per cent or partial offset) that are separate deposit accounts
- trustee accounts
- retirement savings accounts
The FCS does not apply to the following accounts:
- accounts with funds that are not in Australian dollars
- accounts kept at overseas branches of Australian banks
- credit balances on credit card facilities or other loans
- pre-paid card facilities or similar products
- ‘nostro’ accounts and ‘vostro’ accounts of foreign corporations that carry on banking business or otherwise provide financial services in a foreign country
APRA strongly recommends that account holders contact their bank, building society or credit union directly if they have any questions about whether their accounts are covered under the FCS.