IndyMac customers keep more of their cash

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Consumers who banked with failed mortgage lender IndyMac will lose a whole lot less money than originally feared.

Based on updated figures from the FDIC, just $600 million in deposits were uninsured, an FDIC spokesman said Wednesday, confirming the news that was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

That's down from the $1 billion estimate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation initially gave when federal regulators first took control of IndyMac on July 11.

So far, the FDIC has managed to return more than half of the $600 million to IndyMac customers with uninsured deposits. Those depositors, which ranged from individuals to non-profits to businesses, could get additional money back when the FDIC sells the bank, said spokesman David Barr.

FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair has said publicly that the agency hopes to sell IndyMac as a complete entity within 90 days from the time that regulators seized the bank.

The amount of uninsured deposits will typically decline following the failure of a bank as regulators determine how accounts are structured and the relationships between different account holders.

The FDIC fully insures traditional bank accounts up to $100,000 per deposit and $250,000 for most retirement accounts. However, individuals with multiple accounts in the same name at the same bank are limited to the $100,000 cap.

IndyMac, with assets of $32 billion and deposits of $19 billion, was the eighth bank to fail this year.

The failure of the Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac marked the largest collapse of an FDIC-insured institution since the 1984 failure of Continental Illinois, which had $40 billion in assets, according to FDIC records.