Formal regulation of important aspects of the Financial Claims Scheme has taken until now to be finalised. Despite the scheme having been introduced as an emergency measure in 2008 and then made permanent in 2011, Banking Amendment (Financial Claims Scheme) Regulation 2014, which lists the accounts protected by the FCS, was only registered on Monday.It has taken six years for someone in government to get around to clarifying the financial products that are protected accounts and those that are not.In 2008 the Labor government made a declaration listing protected products but this declaration was never formally included in legislation or regulation. This has left lingering uncertainty about what is legally valid under the scheme.The FCS protects depositors with authorised deposit-taking institutions and policy holders of general insurance companies from loss due to the failure of these institutions.The scheme provides deposit protection up to $250,000 per account holder per ADI.For the record, protected accounts include savings accounts, at call accounts, cash management accounts, cheque accounts, current accounts, debit card accounts, farm management deposit accounts, first home saver accounts, mortgage offset accounts that are separate accounts, pensioner deeming accounts, personal basic accounts, retirement savings accounts, term deposits, transaction accounts and trustee accounts.Accounts that are not protected under the FCS include accounts kept at a foreign branch of an ADI, accounts with a specialist credit card institution, credit balances on credit card facilities or other loans, purchased payment facilities, prepaid card facilities and nostro and vostro accounts of foreign corporations.The regulation also formally excludes foreign branches of Australian ADIs from the scheme.