In the UK, you are only covered up to £80k though... I could understand people wanting to get at least money over £80k out, but also how long does it take to get access to your cash if you have to go through the government insurance procedure. Is it days, weeks, months ? I have no idea and wouldn't want to have to find out.

In the US, typically the bank is closed Friday afternoon and depositors have access to their insured money Monday morning.

In this case, depositors lost access to their money in the middle of Friday morning and will have access to their insurances deposits Monday morning.

So a very brief outage in the typical case. And about five or so extra hours in the SVB case. An FDIC takeover is efficient and well oiled.

I was suprised to learn that in the US deposits are insured up to $250K since 2008. In the EU it's only 100K euros and it seems low.

> In the UK, you are only covered up to £80k though...

Per bank.

Per banking group - a dangerous distinction! If you have 80k GBP in each of Bank of Scotland, Halifax and Lloyds Bank then you have 160k GBP at risk!

But if they panic, bank will go down.