FDIC Blog

By Camille Wilmes

October’s Accounting Club member meeting featured speakers from an industry that accountants do not often consider when choosing a career. The speakers, Denise Murphy, field supervisor, and John Mayes, supervisory examiner, both work in the Springfield, Missouri office of the FDIC. Denise Murphy has been an employee at the FDIC since 1991 and John Mayes has been an employee since 2006. Denise Murphy discussed the enormous influence that the FDIC has on bank across the United States. The FDIC insures over 250,000 account and insures approximately $7.7 trillion total dollars. The FDIC is also fully funded by the banks they are insuring, not by the federal government. The most banks that have failed since the FDIC was established in 1933 is 157 banks in 2010 which was a side effect of the housing crisis in 2008. However, the market has calmed down and only one bank has failed in the last two years.

The main purpose of the FDIC is to “promote public confidence in the banking system.” The day-to-day job responsibilities of John Mayes, a supervisory examiner, is to regulate and assess bank conditions. John Mayes has to go examine banks every 12 to 18 months in his region located in the Southwest Missouri region. While Denise Murphy’s day-to-day looks responsibilities looks slightly different. She works more on the consumer type issues such as ensuring bank loans are accurate. However, no two day are the same for Denise Murphy. In her position as a field supervisor, she enjoys the great variety of job tasks.

The FDIC has many benefits that are not usually incorporated in other business, especially not public firms. FDIC employees are not required to have any type of certification. However, some employees such as John Mayes has a CPA and CFE. They FDIC attempts to do most things remotely to cut down on the travel time of the more spread out regions.