HOUSTON – Five Houston area credit unions have joined banks in a new project aimed at bringing the more than one million people in the metropolitan area into the formal banking system.
The “Bank on Houston” project is being modeled after a similar program in San Francisco that has succeeded in signing more than 11,000 people to credit union or bank accounts in the Bay Area.
Primeway FCU, Investex CU, Members Choice CU, Smart Financial CU and Peoples Trust FCU are members of the Bank on Houston steering committee, which had its meeting yesterday, according to Janice Evans, spokesman for the Houston Controller, who is organizing the program.
As in the Bank on San Francisco program, participating credit unions and banks have offered to provide low-cost accounts and products to help lure the area’s burgeoning population of unbanked into the formal banking system, said Evans. San Francisco is providing its marketing materials and plans with Houston and other cities to bring the program broader exposure. “We’re sharing the San Francisco package so they can use it, adopt it or tweak it to their own specifications,” Evans told The Credit Union Journal yesterday.
Credit unions and banks in San Antonio are putting together a similar program to capture more of the unbanked.
The Houston credit unions and banks hope to roll out the program in mid-September.
(c) 2008
