Published: Friday, 23 Oct 2009 | 6:21 PM ET

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Bank closings for the year surpassed 100 on Friday when regulators shut down small banks in Florida and Georgia.

Financial institutions nationwide have collapsed under the weight of soured real estate loans and the Great Recession.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Partners Bank, a small bank in Naples, with $68.7 million in assets and $63.4 million in deposits. Stonegate Bank, based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., agreed to buy the deposits and assets of Partners Bank.

American United Bank in Lawrenceville, Ga., with $111 million in assets and $101 million in deposits also failed. Ameris Bank, based in Moultrie, Ga., is buying its deposits and assets.

The 101 failures are the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. They have cost the federal deposit insurance fund about $25 billion so far this year, and hundreds more bank failures are expected to raise the cost to around $100 billion through 2013.

Depositors' money is not in danger. The FDIC is backed by the government, and deposits are guaranteed up to $250,000 per account. But the deposit insurance fund has fallen into the red.

The 101 bank failures this year compare with 25 last year and three in 2007. It's the highest number in a year since 1992 during the savings-and-loan crisis, when 120 institutions collapsed. Closures peaked during that crisis in 1989, when 534 banks were shuttered.

The most severe financial crisis since the 1930s has hit banks large and small. With unemployment rising, consumer spending slack and businesses shuttered, experts say up to 400 more banks could fail in the next couple of years.

Banks have been especially hurt by failed real estate loans. Banks that had lent to seemingly solid businesses are suffering losses as buildings sit vacant. As development projects collapse, builders are defaulting on their loans.

The 101 failures may not fully reflect the depth of banks' travails. Many more banks — perhaps hundreds — are so weak they could have been shut down already, experts say. Many vulnerable banks are in limbo.

Regulators have threatened to close them unless they shore up their balance sheets, but the recession has made it difficult to raise capital or sell assets.

The number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem list" jumped to 416 at the end of June from 305 in the first quarter. That's the most since June 1994. About 13 percent of banks on the list generally end up failing, according to the FDIC.

• Slideshow: Largest Bank Failures of 2009

Last month, for example, regulators seized Corus Bancshares, a major Chicago-based lender that made construction loans nationwide, specializing in condominium, office and hotel projects. The bank has staggered for weeks under the weight of bad real estate loans.

The closure of Corus Bank, one of the largest banks to fail this year, will cost the FDIC $1.7 billion.

Many of the banks that have failed since the pace accelerated late last year have been small community banks, with less than $1 billion in assets. Failures have been especially concentrated in Georgia, California and Illinois.

Many smaller banks were felled by losses on ordinary loans amid the souring economy, tumbling home prices and spiking unemployment. These loans contrasted with the complex securities favored by Wall Street investment banks that triggered the financial meltdown and global economic crisis.

The FDIC's plan to have U.S. banks prepay about $45 billion of their insurance premiums isn't a long-term remedy for the depleted fund. But it would spare ailing banks the immediate cost of an alternative idea: paying an emergency fee for the second time this year.

And the FDIC still has billions in loss reserves apart from the insurance fund. It can also tap a Treasury credit line of up to $500 billion — $100 billion of which does not require Treasury's approval.

The agency's fund has been diminished by failures at both small and big banks, stretching back to last year. Seattle-based thrift Washington Mutual fell in September 2008 with about $307 billion in assets, the largest U.S. bank failure ever. JPMorgan Chase

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[JPM  Loading...      ()] acquired it for $1.9 billion in a deal brokered by the FDIC.

California lender IndyMac Bank, shut down in July 2008, was the costliest failure for the insurance fund — an estimated $10.7 billion loss.

In August, Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial Bank, a lender in real estate development, became the biggest U.S. bank to fail this year and the sixth-largest in U.S. history, with about $25 billion in assets.

It's expected to cost the fund about $2.8 billion. A new Obama administration plan unveiled this week would provide infusions of money to small banks at low interest rates, provided they agree to increase lending to small businesses. Financial institutions, including credit unions and banks, that serve low-income areas would get help at even lower rates to aid small businesses in the hardest-hit rural and urban areas.

The aid for the banks — the amount not specified by the administration — would come from money still available in the $700 billion financial bailout fund.

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