October 29, 2016

Why we need postal banking

Atlantic - The number of American families without a bank account dropped to about 9 million in 2015, the lowest rate on record since the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation started gathering data in 2009. Still, around 24 million households are considered underbanked, meaning that they have checking accounts but still rely on alternative services—such as pawn shops, check-cashing operations, and payday or auto-title loans—for their credit and cash needs. And that number, a new report finds, hasn’t improved much at all in the past few years, which means that tens of millions of Americans still struggle without access to basic financial services.

... Around 7 percent of all households don’t have a bank account, down from around 7.7 percent in 2013, according to the FDIC. The most common reason families cited was not having enough money to open and maintain a checking account at a mainstream bank.

1 comment:

LarryC said...

I don't disagree with the concept or the reason, just the agency. The USPS has been grossly mismanaged and corrupt for over two decades and getting worse. This is the last place you want having any type of involvement in banking. In fact, I'd be hard pressed to think of anything in government that would be safe. Then again, the private sector is even worse in most cases.