A savings and loan association (S&L), or thrift institution, is a financial institution that specializes in accepting savings deposits and making mortgage and other loans. While the terms "S&L" and "thrift" are mainly used in the United States, similar institutions in the United Kingdom, Ireland and some Commonwealth countries include building societies and trustee savings banks. They are often mutually held (often called mutual savings banks), meaning that the depositors and borrowers are members with voting rights, and have the ability to direct the financial and managerial goals of the organization like the members of a credit union or the policyholders of a mutual insurance company. While it is possible for an S&L to be a joint-stock company, and even publicly traded, in such instances it is no longer truly a mutual association, and depositors and borrowers no longer have membership rights and managerial control. By law, thrifts can have no more than 20 percent of their lending in commercial loans—their focus on mortgage and consumer loans made them particularly vulnerable during the United States housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.
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👉 Savings and loan association in the context of United States Treasury
The Department of the Treasury (USDT) is the national treasury and finance department of the federal government of the United States. It is one of 15 current U.S. government departments.
The department oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, two federal agencies responsible for printing all paper currency and minting coins. The treasury executes currency circulation in the domestic fiscal system, collects all federal taxes through the Internal Revenue Service, manages U.S. government debt instruments, licenses and supervises banks and thrift institutions, and advises the legislative and executive branches on fiscal policy. The department is administered by the secretary of the treasury, who is a member of the Cabinet. The treasurer of the United States has limited statutory duties, but advises the Secretary on various matters such as coinage and currency production. Signatures of both officials appear on all Federal Reserve Notes.
- ⭐ Core Definition: Savings and loan association
- 👉 Savings and loan association in the context of United States Treasury
- Savings and loan association in the context of Certificate of deposit
- Savings and loan association in the context of Savings and loan crisis
- Savings and loan association in the context of Fannie Mae
- Savings and loan association in the context of List of largest banks in the United States
Savings and loan association in the context of Certificate of deposit
A certificate of deposit (CD) is a time deposit sold by banks, thrift institutions, and credit unions in the United States. CDs typically differ from savings accounts because the CD has a specific, fixed term before money can be withdrawn without penalty. CDs also generally have higher interest rates than savings accounts. CDs require a minimum deposit and may offer higher rates for larger deposits. The issuer expects the CDs to be held until maturity, at which time the funds can be withdrawn and interest paid.
In the United States, CDs are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) for banks and by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) for credit unions.
Savings and loan association in the context of Savings and loan crisis
The savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s (commonly dubbed the S&L crisis) was the failure of approximately a third of the savings and loan associations (S&Ls or thrifts) in the United States between 1986 and 1995. These thrifts were banks that historically specialized in fixed-rate mortgage lending. The Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) closed or otherwise resolved 296 thrifts from 1986 to 1989, whereupon the newly established Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) took up these responsibilities. The two agencies closed 1,043 banks that held $519 billion in assets. The total cost of taxpayers by the end of 1999 was $123.8 billion with an additional $29.1 billion of losses imposed onto the thrift industry.
Starting in 1979 and through the early 1980s, the Federal Reserve sharply increased interest rates in an effort to reduce inflation. At that time, thrifts had issued long-term loans at fixed interest rates that were lower than prevailing deposit rates. Attempts to attract more deposits by offering higher interest rates led to liabilities that could not be paid-for by the lower interest rates at which they had loaned money. Nor could outflowing deposits simply be paid out by sale of now less-valuable assets. The result was that about one third of S&Ls became insolvent, causing a first wave of failures in 1981–83.
Savings and loan association in the context of Fannie Mae
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgage loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations (or "thrifts"). Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac.
In 2025, with over $4.3 trillion in assets, Fannie Mae is the largest company in the United States and the fifth largest company in the world, by assets. Fannie Mae was ranked number 25 on the Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue and was ranked number 50 on the Fortune Global 500 rankings of the largest global corporations by total revenue. In terms of profit, Fannie Mae is the 17th most profitable company in the United States and the 32nd most profitable in the world.
Savings and loan association in the context of List of largest banks in the United States
The following table lists the 100 largest bank holding companies in the United States ranked by total assets as of March 31, 2025 per the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, along with the market capitalization of public banks.
In the first quarter of 2025, there were 3,917 commercial banks and 545 savings and loan associations in the United States insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) with US$24.5 trillion in assets.