Underbanked

Countries including Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia and India have proved that there are viable ways to find alternatives to branches, use mobile devices to increase the reach of financial services and roll out government-supported financial inclusion projects.

A new service from Cardtronics asks consumers to pay up to $10 a month for unlimited access to 5,000 of the company's ATMs. That may not sound like a great deal — but it could have a lot of appeal among people who make use of alternative financial services.

The finance and technology industries should take some of the energy they've poured into mobile payments and put it toward making small-dollar loans more affordable.

Banks are transforming branches, rolling out new products and experimenting with alternative data, in an effort to bring more people into the financial mainstream. Such initiatives might have been a footnote in the past, but they have grown into a serious business strategy lately.

Could getting people to save more money be as easy as changing around the office furniture? Based on Emily Garbinsky's research, the answer is yes.

It's easy for banks to spin their wheels on local reinvestment, financial education and other efforts to help underserved communities. To make outreach programs successful, bank executives need to carefully vet nonprofit and other partners, listen to their employees on the front lines and reflect on their own reasons for getting into banking.

Daunted by the challenge of how your bank can help underserved members of the community? Here are some simple tips and bits of wisdom from bankers, nonprofit leaders and local government officials.

One way to help the global economy prosper is to think of the poor and the middle class as untapped assets for entrepreneurship and job creation. That was the premise underlying a panel discussion at a recent conference on financial inclusion.The panel included, from left, Clare Woodcraft-Scott, the chief executive of the Emirates Foundation; Monica Mehta, managing principal of Seventh Capital in Houston, a family office that invests in lower-market consumer businesses, and author of "The Entrepreneurial Instinct: How Everyone Has the Innate Ability to Start a Successful Small Business," and Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif. Their discussion took place in Atlanta at the 2015 Hope Global Forum, presented by Operation Hope.

Aja Brown, the mayor of Compton, Calif., says introducing young people to what's possible, so that they don't feel limited by their current circumstances, is a way of continuing the mission that Martin Luther King Jr. started. Brown was a featured speaker at the recent Hope Global Forum, which focused on the theme of financial inclusion. She was there to discuss several initiatives underway in Compton, including one with the University of Southern California to offer industry-specific employment training.

Banks need outside help to deliver credit to the underserved, says Tim Wennes, the West Coast president of MUFG Union Bank, who shares advice on what kind of partners to seek and how to vet them.

Rallying bank employees to participate in outreach projects takes hard work in the beginning, but their involvement is essential to building a rapport with the community, OneWest Bank CEO Joseph Otting says.

There are some fairly basic, decisive steps banks could take to educate people outside the financial mainstream, and it would make banking more profitable, says John Bryant, the chairman and CEO of the nonprofit Operation Hope.

Racial disparity in small-business loans remains glaring, despite some improvement. Lenders' unfamiliarity with African-American communities is part of the problem, but so is the need for financial education among prospective borrowers.

Elected officials in Santa Fe and Seattle are considering plans to form municipal banks to promote affordable housing and reach out to the underbanked. Bankers are wary since such institutions could present competition.

Affordable pre-paid cards and checking accounts targeted at low-income customers are among the positive trends likely to gain steam in the months ahead.

Opus Bank in Irvine, Calif., has received regulatory approval to form a broker-dealer subsidiary that will expand its merchant banking capabilities.

By linking mobile payments with money transfers, Western Union created a new use for Apple's mobile wallet. But it must still rigidly conform to the basic requirements of an Apple Pay transaction — without a bank account, there is no payment.

Banks partnering with prepaid card providers face the potential of higher deposit insurance fees and other ramifications from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. classifying accounts as "brokered."

Citigroup has agreed to change its policies that prevented low-income consumers from opening checking and savings accounts.

Ten financial institutions, including four banks, will accept the new IDNYC card as a primary form of identification for new accounts. Community advocates hope the move will help more immigrants and unbanked individuals use banking products.