July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of Wyoming in Thermopolis was closed by regulators, the 53rd lender to fail this year, amid rising unemployment and home foreclosures in the deepest recession in a quarter century.

Bank of Wyoming, with $70 million of assets and $67 million of deposits, was closed by the state’s Department of Audit, Division of Banking and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was named receiver, the FDIC said today in a statement. Central Bank & Trust in Lander, Wyoming, will assume the deposits and the failed bank’s only office.

“There is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance coverage,” the FDIC said.

Regulators have accelerated the pace of bank seizures this year, shuttering the most since 1992 and more than twice as many as last year. The recession has wiped out about 6.5 million U.S. jobs in the past two years, pushing unemployment in June to a 26-year high 9.5 percent, making it harder for consumers to pay their bills.

Central Bank will buy all of Bank of Wyoming’s deposits except for $8 million in brokered deposits, and agreed to purchase about $55 million of assets. Bank of Wyoming, the state’s first failed bank since 1991, will open as a branch of Central Bank “during normal business hours,” the FDIC said.

The FDIC estimates closing Bank of Wyoming will cost the agency’s deposit insurance fund $27 million. The fund, supported by fees on insured banks, fell to $13 billion in the first quarter, the lowest since September 1993.

To contact the reporters on this story: Margaret Chadbourn in Washington at mchadbourn@bloomberg.net; Ari Levy in San Francisco at alevy5@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 10, 2009 19:33 EDT