Monday, March 3, 2014

Almost A Million Joined Ranks Of Unbanked Since 2009

By Cornelius Nunev


A recent FDIC survey has found that more people are becoming unbanked, or are living without a banking account of any sort. They are gradually but steadily increasing in number.

Many not banking

A lot of people conduct all their transactions in cash, such as getting paid every month. That means it is not that ridiculous to assume that many people do not need a bank account to survive in the country, though many people think that this is the case.

In some cases, it's because an individual has an almost military like discipline in staying away from the financial system. Given the misbehavior, to say the least, of the American financial system, there is a very understandable rationale to that idea.

About 10 million people fall into this class, called "unbanked," and the group is growing, according to CNN.

Knowing more with FDIC

There was a study done by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2009. It looked at the unbanked and the underbanked, which contains all people who do not use banks but use other financial institutions such as payday loan lenders.

In that survey, 7.7 percent of households in the U.S. held no accounts, roughly 9 million people. An update to the outcomes of that survey, performed in 2011, found it had increased to 8.2 percent. Roughly 10 million households or 17 million adults lack any bank account, a rise, according to Businessweek, of 821,000 people.

There was a study done by Fox Business that showed a lot of people really use other providers for their accounts. Only 88.5 percent of households have a checking account and 69.2 percent have a savings. The extra accounts elsewhere make up the difference.

Taking a look at reasons

According to CNN, approximately 33 percent of respondents in the FDIC's survey of the unbanked reported not having enough cash on a regular basis to maintain a bank account. A further 21 percent reported neither wanting nor needing a banking account; 7.7 percent reported not wanting to deal with banks and 5.4 percent reported that minimum balances were too high or that fees were too costly, or both.

About 6.4 percent of people said that they had too many overdraft fees and got their account closed while 6.6 percent said they had a negative history with banks or did not have identification to open an account.

Alternative financial services were found to be how the unbanked are able to get by. 59 percent had used pawn shops, personal loan companies or check cashers within the past year, according to Fox Business, and 12 percent had done so in the previous 30 days of the survey. Prepaid cards were used by 18 percent of unbanked respondents.




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