Bakersfield, Oct 19 (THAINDIAN NEWS) On Friday regulators closed down the San Joaquin Bank of Bakersfield, California. It was billed as the 99th U.S. bank failure of 2009.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, which was named receiver, said San Joaquin had $775 million in assets and $631 million in deposits.

Citizens Business Bank of Ontario, Calif., agreed to take over the failed bank. It is going to assume all deposits of San Joaquin, whose five branches will reopen on Monday as branches of Citizens Business Bank. This particular failure is expected to cost the FDIC’s insurance fund a whooping figure of $103 million.

This is the 99th US bank failure for 2009, which is a very low figure from the previous year. “These are like aftershocks compared to the earthquakes we experienced in 2008,” said Andrew Kuritzkes, a partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

The FDIC, which insures accounts up to the figure of $250,000, has proposed a plan to increase its liquidity by having banks prepay three years of regular assessments. The agency is expecting bank failures to cost the insurance fund about $100 billion from 2009-2013, and said failures will remain elevated this year and next.

Last year, the largest bank failure of the current crisis was Washington Mutual, which failed in September 2008, and had assets of $307 billion.