UPDATE: 10/17/24: The FDIC extended the timeline of this to be May 1, 2025, rather than January 1, 2025 as noted in the original publish date of this article.
In the effort to increase confidence in, and transparency about insured banking products and services, the FDIC recently finalized its rule around signage and advertising statements for banks. Effective April 1, 2024, this new rule is also aiming to combat false advertising and misunderstandings of what products are insured by the FDIC, and inherently what are not. This final rule is part of a larger “Know Your Risks, Protect Your Money” national pubic awareness campaign that launched in October 2023.
For Banks, this rule – an amendment of part 328 – has significant impacts on channels including bank websites, mobile apps, branch signage, ATMs, advertising and more. Importantly, Banks must have everything updated before January 1, 2025.
Impact on Websites & Mobile Apps
The FDIC has indicated that this new digital sign needs to be displayed “clearly and conspicuously” in a continuous manner, near the top of the relevant page or screen, and in close proximity to the insured depository institution (IDI)’s name. This includes the initial (home) page, landing and login pages, as well as pages where customers transact with deposits.
The logo and accompanying verbiage have both a white and navy option depending on the background color, but because of the amount of content and the size, this will certainly be a design challenge for many web vendors.
Note that for non-deposit product pages not insured by the FDIC, this content should not appear. Therefore, websites and mobile apps will need the flexibility to control the display of this on the page level.
For institutions with the FDIC logo in the footer on pages, this will need to be removed once the logo appears higher up on the page or screen.
FDIC Insurance products display specifics for design and development
For deposit products insured by the FDIC, your design/development teams will need to abide by the following standards:
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The “FDIC” in the FDIC official digital sign will need to be displayed with a wordmark size of 37.36 x 15.74px in navy blue (hexadecimal color code #003256), with “FDIC-Insured - Backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government” in Source Sans Pro Web font (regular 400 italic), 12.8px, displayed in black (hexadecimal color code #000000) lettering.
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If the FDIC official digital sign in these colors would be illegible in a digital-taking channel, due to the color of the background, the entire FDIC official digital sign shall be displayed in white (hexadecimal color code #FFFFFF). Note that ADA conformance contrast guidelines apply.
Non-deposit products display specifics for design and development
For non-deposit products, the rules are as follows.
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If a digital deposit-taking channel offers access to non-deposit products from a non-bank third party's online platform, and a logged-in bank customer attempts to access such non-deposit products, the insured depository institution must provide a one-time per web session notification on the insured depository institution's deposit-taking channel before the customer leaves the insured depository institution's digital deposit-taking channel.
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The notification must be dismissed by an action of the bank customer before initially accessing the third party's online platform and it must clearly, conspicuously indicate that the third party's non-deposit products: are not insured by the FDIC; are not deposits; and may lose value.
Consult with your legal and compliance team
While your web and mobile app agencies are equipped with direction from the FDIC, it’s each bank’s responsibility to have its own legal and compliance team provide exact direction on implementation for each institution. No agency can assume legal responsibility. The information provided above has been collected from several sources in order to help provide direction for the many banks with questions about this recent rule.
ZAG Interactive has been helping banks for 22 years and counting with custom strategy, design, development and marketing. We’re happy to guide our clients through this process so that their websites remain compliant. To discuss your specific institution’s needs, contact us.
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