Better Tools to Build Better Bank Ons: New Community Data Resources from CFED and the Pew Charitable Trusts

While most of our work at New America focuses on policy solutions to improve financial inclusion in the US, the actual legwork of connecting unbanked and underbanked households to the financial mainstream is done in communities rather than in Congress.  City leaders in San Francisco, with the help of Senior Policy Fellow Anne Stuhldreher, recognized this back in 2005 and launched a partnership where government agencies, financial institutions and non-profit community organizations worked together to link unbanked households with consumer-friendly banking services.  The initiative was called Bank On San Francisco and it was able to bring about 20% of the city’s unbanked population into the financial mainstream.

Seeing the success of the Bank On public/private partnership model in San Francisco, other cities and states started creating similar programs, but the implementation and success of the subsequent Bank Ons varied widely.  As a result, Anne co-authored a paper detailing the top 10 lessons from Bank On San Francisco with Leigh Phillips, the manager of San Francisco’s Office of Financial Empowerment.  Going even further, CFED created a new online portal to provide communities with easy access to information and resources for starting or enhancing local Bank On programs.  The new website was developed in partnership with the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment, the National League of Cities, and the New America Foundation and with support from the U.S. Department of the Treasury. 

JoinBankOn.org went live this morning and includes a “Research Your Community” tool to get estimates and maps of the number of unbanked and underbanked households in local communities around the US.  I spent a portion of my morning playing with the community research tool and appreciate how it gives a quick profile of unbanked and underbanked households in any given city, town or county.  For those that really want to get into the wonky weeds of how the local estimates were done, technical documentation and a review of unbanked data sources and estimation techniques are provided in the Resources section of the website.  A directory of Bank On programs, guides, and discussion forums to provide comprehensive support to local advocates are also available.          

While the JoinBankOn community research tool is a great way to quickly understand the consumer needs in a community, last week, the Pew Charitable Trust’s Safe Checking in the Electronic Age group released an info-graphic that provides a snapshot for the types of fees currently being levied through checking accounts across the US.  The map provides median bank fees and policies for checking accounts by state and also statistics on the number of unbanked households in the state.  The data on the map don’t include fees from every bank within each state, but it does help to remind financial inclusion advocates of the costs associated with banking services.  These costs drive a very real perception that banking services are unaffordable for lower-income households.  That’s why the Bank On model requires negotiating with bank partners to tailor lower-cost products and services in addition to promoting banks in communities. 

Hopefully, these new tools are steps towards deeper national and local coordination to support the good work being done in communities.  The discussion boards at JoinBankOn.org will be open soon for feedback and recommendations.  Keeping the conversations going about the current tools available will help to further expand the toolbox and hopefully fix the current gaps in financial inclusion one community at a time.