The U.S.-government-administered insurance fund that protects depositors has gone into the red for the first time since the fallout from the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s as the pace of bank failures accelerated. The fund had a negative balance of $8.2 billion at the end of the third quarter, federal regulators said Tuesday. Bank customers, however, should remain confident that their deposits would be protected since most of the amount reflects money Federal Insurance Deposit Corp. has already set aside to cover the losses from future bank failures. Officials of the FDIC said in October that the deposit insurance fund had been depleted, but Tuesday's third-quarter report card on the banking industry marked the first time that hard numbers had been released. Even amid early signs that the economy is recovering, the report suggested that the country's 8,100 lenders remained in fragile condition. In its state of the industry report, the FDIC reported that banks posted a $2.8 billion gain in the third quarter, after a $3.7 billion loss in the previous period. Meanwhile, the number of 'problem banks' that run the biggest risk of collapse increased to 552, from 416 in the second quarter. Bad loans of nearly every stripe -- credit cards, mortgages, small business and commercial real estate -- continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace. The number of bank failures will probably keep climbing. So far, the FDIC has seized and sold 124 banks in 2009, and analysts expect hundreds more to collapse in the months ahead. That has put significant pressure on the FDIC fund, which posted a negative balance for the first time since 1992 when regulators cleaned up the carnage from hundreds of failed thrifts and other commercial lenders. Federal officials have also taken action to replenish the fund. The agency recently approved plans calling for industry to lend money to the insurance fund by ordering banks to prepay annual assessments that would otherwise have been due through 2012. That move is expected to add about $45 billion to the fund, which stood at $34.6 billion a year ago, but should avoid straining bank earnings because of favorable accounting treatment. It also averts the political risk of tapping an emergency credit line from the Treasury, although some banking experts say they believe such action may still be necessary. 