Whether you’re a CFO, VP of finance, or financial manager, you know that managing your organization’s finances isn’t just about numbers — it’s also about relationships and trust. The key to building and maintaining business relationships is accountability, and any loss in transparency could threaten your professional reputation. The buck stops with you, and it’s your job to ensure that the banking and deposit services you select meet the highest standards.

Choosing a solution to safeguard your organization’s large cash balances can be an easy decision when you take a closer look at ICS®, the IntraFi Cash Service® and CDARS®, the Certificate of Deposit Account Registry Service®. Available at banks nationwide, these tested, trusted solutions are used by tens of thousands of financial professionals and provide safety and transparency. You can keep your clients and stakeholders informed thanks to detailed, streamlined recordkeeping and the ability to see account balances and other important details online, 24/7.

What are CDARS and ICS?

ICS and CDARS are deposit services that provide access to millions in aggregate FDIC insurance across IntraFi’s network of banks. When a network bank places a customer’s deposit (as a Relationship Institution) through ICS or CDARS, it is divided into amounts under the standard FDIC insurance

maximum of $250,000 and placed in deposit accounts at other network banks. Funds are placed in demand deposit accounts, money market deposit accounts, or both with ICS, and into CDs with CDARS. Using ICS and CDARS, you can achieve peace of mind, flexibility, and returns — through a single banking relationship. ICS and CDARS can greatly reduce the administrative overhead required by manually managing deposits earning different rates across multiple institutions.

Note: IntraFi is not an FDIC-insured bank, and deposit insurance covers the failure of an insured bank. A list identifying IntraFi network banks appears at https://www.intrafi.com/network-banks. Certain conditions must be satisfied for “pass-through” FDIC deposit insurance coverage to apply. To meet the conditions for passthrough FDIC deposit insurance, deposit accounts at FDIC-insured banks in IntraFi’s network that hold deposits placed using an IntraFi service are titled, and deposit account records are maintained, in accordance with FDIC regulations for pass-through coverage.

Here’s what two ICS and CDARS customers had to say about it:

“Whoever developed this is genius!”

said the VP of finance for a religious-based fund that provides financial management products for member churches across their state. The VP’s organization became interested in CDARS and ICS after their church clients expressed a strong desire to ensure their money was in FDIC-insured accounts.

Using CDARS and ICS, the organization was able to secure their customers’ funds while providing transparency into where their money was at any given moment. The security and accountability offered by ICS and CDARS led the organization to double the amount of funds under management in a brief period of time, bringing their total customer funds in CDARS and ICS to $120 million.

On top of that, the organization had such confidence in CDARS and ICS that it placed $12-$14 million of its own funds through the services.

The VP of finance said “I like that I can log in and see where funds are and can show a client to explain how more than $250K is insured. It’s nice to pull up a website and show them where their money is, even if [it’s] in 25 different banks overnight. Whoever developed this is genius!"

“I’m comfortable we are protected,”

stated the operations director for a Land Conservancy. The Land Conservancy is responsible for managing funds required to make purchases over the year. When the operations director stepped into their role to manage the conservancy’s $1M annual budget, they noticed that not only were their funds in accounts holding over the FDIC-insured limit of $250K — they were also non-interest bearing.

Recalling ICS, the operations director contacted their banker and secured board approval to transfer their funds. The operations director felt especially confident in using ICS because of the large number of participating banks.

“I’m comfortable we are protected. The money was sitting in a non-interest [bearing] account. Watching [the] interest come in was lovely.

And we need to have access to cash quickly. Some restricted, some operational, some for purchase of land — we account for that separately in house — but it’s all lumped into one account for interest purposes.”

Secure, Traceable, and High-Touch

With ICS and CDARS, financial professionals can provide not just the security of access to FDIC insurance, but also the assurance that the money in their custody is being handled appropriately.

ICS and CDARS help make managing your institution’s funds simple and efficient — so you can get back to doing what you do best. Ask your bank if it offers ICS and CDARS, or find one that does.