Best Savings Accounts for Large Deposits ($100K+)

You sold a house. Or you inherited money. Or your business had a good year and now you're sitting on $300,000 in cash. Congrats — you now have a problem most people would kill to have, but it's a real problem.

The FDIC insures deposits up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank, per ownership category. That's a hard cap. Bank fails? You get $250K back. Anything above that? Good luck being an unsecured creditor.

Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023 with about $151 billion in uninsured deposits. Most of those depositors got made whole eventually — but that was government intervention, not the rules. Don't count on a repeat performance.

So what do you do with $400K, $700K, $1.2M in cash? You have more options than you think — and the right answer depends on how long you're parking it, how much you care about state tax savings, and how much operational hassle you're willing to deal with.

The simplest approach is just opening accounts at multiple banks. $250K at Bank A, $250K at Bank B. Both fully insured. Done.

This sounds obvious but most people don't do it because it's annoying — multiple logins, multiple statements, multiple ACH setups. That friction is real but it's manageable.

The math is simple though. If you've got $750,000 to park: - Bank 1: $250,000 — fully insured - Bank 2: $250,000 — fully insured - Bank 3: $250,000 — fully insured

You can also use different ownership categories at the same bank to expand coverage — individual account gets $250K, joint account with a spouse gets another $250K per owner (so $500K for a couple at one bank), plus retirement accounts like IRAs get their own separate $250K limit. It gets complicated fast but the rules are real and you can use them.

For current rates worth parking at: Axos Bank is sitting at 4.21% APY, CIT Bank at 4.10% APY, Varo up to 5.00% APY (though that top rate comes with balance and direct deposit conditions — read the fine print before you celebrate). Marcus by Goldman Sachs is at 3.65% — solid and reliable, just not the leader right now.

The DIY approach works fine up to maybe $500K-$750K before the operational overhead starts adding up. Above that, you want a system.

This is how businesses, nonprofits, and wealthy individuals handle millions in cash without losing sleep over FDIC limits.

IntraFi (formerly Bankers Edge, formerly the organization that created CDARS) runs a network of about 3,000 FDIC-insured banks. You open one account at one participating bank. That bank takes your $2 million, cuts it into sub-$250K chunks, and distributes it across dozens of network banks — all FDIC-insured, all under the limit. You deal with one bank, one statement, one rate.

For savings-style deposits, the product is called ICS (IntraFi Cash Service). For CDs, it's CDARS (Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service). Same concept, different product type.

The catch? You're usually going to earn a slightly lower rate than if you shopped around yourself. The bank offering IntraFi access needs to make their spread, and they're charging you convenience. But for someone parking $3 million, giving up 20-30 basis points for full FDIC coverage and a single login is often worth it.

To access IntraFi, you find a participating bank (most community banks and credit unions participate, plus many larger regional banks). They handle the mechanics. The depositor just sees one account.

This is legitimately one of the best-kept secrets in retail banking. Financial advisors use it for clients. Trust departments use it. Most regular depositors have never heard of it.

Before going to IntraFi, it's worth understanding how the FDIC ownership categories work — because you can often extend coverage further than people realize without opening new banks.

At one bank, a married couple can have: - Individual account (spouse 1): $250,000 - Individual account (spouse 2): $250,000 - Joint account (both): $500,000 ($250K per owner) - IRA (spouse 1): $250,000 - IRA (spouse 2): $250,000 - Revocable trust (naming 2 beneficiaries): up to $500,000

That's potentially $2 million of coverage at a single institution if you structure it right. The trust rules get complicated above 2 beneficiaries but the FDIC has a calculator on their website — use it.

This takes some paperwork and coordination but it's free. No rate discount, no middleman, no operational overhead beyond setting it up once.

Fair warning: the revocable trust rules changed in 2022 and a lot of outdated information is floating around online. Check the current FDIC guidance directly for trust account calculations.

Here's where it gets interesting for large balances. T-bills — Treasury bills with terms of 4, 8, 13, 17, 26, or 52 weeks — are sitting at around 3.54% for the short end of the curve as of mid-March 2026. That's below the best HYSA rates.

But T-bills have a massive advantage nobody talks about enough: the interest is exempt from state and local income taxes.

If you're in California (top marginal rate: 13.3%), New York City (combined state+city around 12%), or any other high-tax state, that exemption is enormous. A T-bill at 3.54% yields the same after-tax return as a savings account paying roughly 4.07% for someone in a 13% state tax bracket. Run your own numbers but for large deposits in high-tax states, T-bills often win on effective yield even when the headline rate is lower.

You can buy T-bills directly at TreasuryDirect.gov with no fees. Or through a brokerage account (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard) if you want more flexibility — brokerages let you sell before maturity on the secondary market, which TreasuryDirect doesn't handle well.

T-bills are also backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, which means no FDIC limit headaches. You can park $5 million in T-bills and sleep fine.

The liquidity trade-off: a 26-week T-bill locks up your money for six months. If you need it earlier, you can sell it on the secondary market but you might get a slightly different price depending on where rates moved. For true emergency funds you probably want a HYSA instead. For money you won't need for 3-6 months, T-bills are worth modeling.

Most savings accounts are flat-rate — you get the same APY whether you deposit $5,000 or $500,000. A few offer tiered rates.

Barclays is notable here: accounts below $250,000 earn 3.70% APY, but balances at or above $250,000 bump to 3.85% APY. That's a meaningful premium for large deposits — not massive, but it's something.

Axos Bank at 4.21% APY is flat-rate and competitive for large balances. Their account has no balance-tier shenanigans, which I appreciate — what you see is what you get.

CIT Bank's Platinum Savings account is specifically designed for large deposits. The headline rate is 4.10% APY but only on balances above $5,000 — below that you earn 0.25%. So it's not exactly a large-deposit product, but if you're parking $100K+ you'll hit the high-rate tier easily.

Varo's 5.00% APY is attractive but comes with conditions: you need to receive $1,000+ in direct deposits per month and maintain a positive balance. Easy for a primary checking situation, potentially annoying if this is a dedicated large-balance savings account.

For genuinely large balances — think $500K+ — the honest answer is that no single savings account is optimal. You want a combination: maybe $250K in a high-rate HYSA for liquidity, and the rest split between T-bills, IntraFi, and CDARS depending on your time horizon.

If you're at Fidelity or Vanguard or Schwab, there's another option that banks actively try not to compete with: money market funds.

Vanguard's Treasury Money Market Fund (VUSXX) is sitting at 3.62% 7-day SEC yield. Fidelity's Government Money Market Fund (SPAXX) is similar. These aren't FDIC-insured — they're technically securities — but they're about as safe as cash equivalents get. They've broken the buck exactly once in history (Reserve Primary Fund in 2008, and it was only briefly).

More importantly, like T-bills, the income from Treasury money market funds is exempt from state taxes. And unlike T-bills, they're liquid — you can sell same-day or next-day without a secondary market.

For balances above the FDIC limit, money market funds deserve serious consideration. No bank can touch you on the combination of safety, liquidity, and tax efficiency they offer for large sums. The rate isn't the highest but the full package is compelling.

The catch is you need a brokerage account. If all your money is at Chase, moving it to Fidelity feels like a production. It's worth it for large balances but it takes a day.

This is the real question. Not what the theory says — what would a real person do with half a million sitting in cash in March 2026.

Here's my honest take:

First $100K: stays in a high-yield savings account at Axos or CIT for immediate access. Emergency fund plus near-term spending. 4%+ APY, liquid, FDIC-insured, done.

Next $200K: T-bills in 13-week rolling ladder through Fidelity. Buy $100K every 6 weeks, so one matures every 6 weeks. Effective yield after California taxes probably beats most savings accounts. Backed by the government, no FDIC limit concerns.

Remaining $200K: If I have a specific 6-12 month horizon, I'm probably in a no-penalty CD or short-term CD. If the time horizon is indefinite, I'm splitting between longer T-bills and potentially a CDARS product through a local bank that participates in IntraFi.

Nothing fancy. No complexity for its own sake. The goal is: don't lose money, stay insured, earn a reasonable real return.

What I wouldn't do: leave $500K sitting in a 0.01% big-bank savings account. That's almost $20,000 a year in foregone interest at current rates. That's a vacation. That's a car payment for a year. That's real money that people are leaving on the table because they didn't spend two hours setting up better accounts.

One more option worth knowing about if you're managing large cash positions: brokered CDs.

These are CDs issued by banks but sold through brokerage platforms (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard). You can buy them in $1,000 increments, from dozens of different banks, all in one account. Each CD stays FDIC-insured up to $250K at the issuing bank — so you can effectively build a diversified, fully-insured CD portfolio without opening multiple bank accounts.

The brokerage keeps track of everything. One login. One statement. The rates are competitive with direct bank CDs.

The downside: if you need to sell before maturity, you're selling on the secondary market at whatever the current price is. Early withdrawal is not a fixed penalty like it is at direct banks — you could lose principal if rates moved against you. So brokered CDs are really for money you're confident you won't need until maturity.

For $500K+ split across 10-12 brokered CDs with staggered maturities, you get full FDIC coverage, competitive rates, and a single platform to manage it all. That's a legitimate strategy that more people should know about.