The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has chosen nine banks for a pilot study on accounts targeting low-income users.
The agency said Tuesday the institutions will test the feasibility of an FDIC template for basic accounts used safely by low- and moderate-income customers, who may otherwise be underserved. The banks, which vary in size and geography, will use new or existing products that comply with the template.
Under the template, crafted by the FDIC advisory committee on economic inclusion, safe accounts for LMI consumers are largely electronic and have reasonable costs. Transactional accounts would lack overdraft fees, while savings accounts would contain an "auto-save" feature to automatically transfer funds into savings.
