The Dynamics of Retail Deposit Balances

Bronson Argyle; Benjamin Iverson; Jason D. Kotter; Taylor D. Nadauld; Christopher Palmer

doi:10.3386/w34742

The Dynamics of Retail Deposit Balances

Bronson Argyle, Benjamin Iverson, Jason D. Kotter, Taylor D. Nadauld & Christopher Palmer

Working Paper 34742

DOI 10.3386/w34742

Issue Date January 2026

We investigate the dynamics of household deposits using account-level data from 12 million accounts across 154 U.S. credit unions. Significant skewness in the retail deposit distribution–with 10% of depositors controlling 70% of total deposits–means large-balance accounts drive aggregate retail deposit flows. On average, high-balance accounts become large after significant one-time inflows and are more likely to experience large, idiosyncratic drawdowns. Unlike low-balance households, high-balance retail depositors are not sensitive to interest rate shocks. Additional evidence suggests that overall retail deposit stickiness is driven by high-balance accounts that are used as medium-run liquidity stores rather than for interest income.

For helpful comments, we thank Scott Baker, Anthony DeFusco, Mark Egan, Julia Fonseca, Ray Kluender, Elena Loutskina, Brian Melzer, John Mondragon, Amit Seru, Luke Taylor, Yevhenii Usenko, Emil Verner, and seminar and conference participants at BYU, NBER Household Finance, SFS Cavalcade, SITE, University of Virginia, and the WFA. Sam Passey and Eric Vorkink provided helpful research assistance. The deposit data were provided by nCino OpCo, Inc. Palmer acknowledges funding from NSF CAREER Grant 1944138. This project received exempt status from MIT’s IRB. A previous version of this paper was titled "Sticky Deposits, not Depositors." The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Taylor D. Nadauld
Taylor Nadauld has a financial interest in the anonymous financial services software company that provided the data for this project.

Christopher Palmer
This research received exempt status from MIT’s Institutional Review Board. Our data provider nCino OpCo, Inc. had the right to review this manuscript for the inadvertent release of confidential information. Taylor Nadauld serves as chief economist of nCino. Christopher Palmer acknowledges funding from NSF CAREER Grant 1944138. Christopher Palmer has consulted on litigation involving deposit accounts. We have nothing else to disclose.
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Bronson Argyle, Benjamin Iverson, Jason D. Kotter, Taylor D. Nadauld, and Christopher Palmer, "The Dynamics of Retail Deposit Balances," NBER Working Paper 34742 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w34742.

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