We all love to get piping mad about how terrible and predatory pay-day lenders are with rates – annual percentage rates (APR) – of 400%, 500% and up. It sounds unconscionable, doesn’t it? I believe APR is an inflammatory and completely ineffective way to evaluate or understand short-term loans. APR stifles innovation;…
Underbanked Inspire a Wealth of Services
My friend and colleague, founder and CEO of CFSI, Jennifer Tescher, writes a monthly column for the American Banker. This month it was on the Core Challenge (see my previous post), available here for those with a subscription. For those who don’t, here’s a long excerpt, and my encouragement to…
The Core Challenge Finalists
A couple months ago we announced the first Core Underbanked Innovation Challenge for the most innovative new products serving the unbanked and underbanked in America. Since our fund is the premiere venture fund targeting innovation for this segment, it seemed like a logical thing to do. Much to our…
Let’s Finovate
The last couple days at Finovate San Francisco have been fun. The conference – focused on one-track, demo-only, 7 minute limit presentations by any financial technology company willing to spend a couple grand to hawk their wares to assembled gaggle – is getting big enough, as Brian McLoughlin pointed out,…
Don’t forget, the “underbanked” are actually real people.
My partner in underbanked crime (no pun intended), CFSI’s Innovation Meister Rachel Schneider, has been thinking about real people. Oddly enough, we all do that too little. Besides, this is a very cool project. Behold: It can be hard to understand why 30-40 million households in the U.S. use non-bank…
The Curse with Helping the Poor Save
A big part of why I love my job is because we are trying to provide the underbanked mass market with greater financial freedom. It’s great to provide lower cost payments, the ability to build credit, better credit decision tools, greater transparency and convenience. But the holy grail, really, is…
Keeping up with the Kards
My most recent post on FastCompany re: prepaid accounts, not proudly invoking the Kardashians.
Check Your Financial Health
Our portfolio company, GoalSpring Financial, has been working on the big idea of encapsulating your financial health in a small, digestible package for a while. Most people are now familiar with what their credit score is – if not due to the credit crunch of the past couple years, then…
ConsumerFinance.gov
Just posted some comments at FastCompany.com on CFPB’s new online presence. If you’re interested, click here.
Involuntarily Unbanked
On the last day of last year, the St. Louis Fed banked published a fascinating and somewhat bizarre report, titled “A System Dynamics Approach to Understanding the Use of Banks and Alternative Financial Services in St. Louis.” Drawing on their apparently famed complex systems capabilities, the report breaks down into smaller pieces how and why…