My CFSI colleague, Karen Andres, took this picture recently while on a date with her husband – to Krogers in Norwood, OH. This isn’t just proof that we at CFSI take the underbanked seriously. It’s also another compelling data point that retailers are the most exciting thing happening in financial…
It’s not rate, it’s life
There are people, myself included, who love provoking innocent bystanders about how insanely high the interest rates are for various short term loan-type products: “a payday loan can cost 500% APR!” “No! That’s criminal!” “Oh, but an overdraft charge on a normal checking account could easily be 1000% APR!” “What…
Of medicine and credit
I spent the day at the US Capitol yesterday, at an event sponsored by CFSI, Pew and New America to discuss how the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) should contemplate the underbanked (Marketplace on NPR did a little piece on it, quoting Melissa Koide and myself). Representative Barney Frank spoke and…
No Longer Ignored, but where is the innovation?
In a Washington Post story, entitled ‘Unbanked,’ but No Longer Ignored, last week, industry advocates argue “that innovation — not legislation — is the key to reform. And the private sector has been quick to step in with other solutions.” Yes and no. As far as I can see, the establishment…
Savings Lottery
Peter Tufano at HBS has been doing research on savings based lotteries for a while. The basic idea is that lots (generally poorer) people buy lottery tickets – the average American household spends $500 per year on lottery tickets – and it is a well known fact that we don’t…
Cap and Trade
For quite a while I’ve been thinking about the similarities between CFSI’s perspective on using market forces to mitigate poverty and the green movement. Both are double bottom line enterprises – with the ability to yield profit and social returns – which address complex, system problems, with material vested interests…
Marketing!
Today, like so many other days, I received at a call from a new company which believes to be the only one to stumble on the idea of using general purpose prepaid cards to help the underbanked live better lives. Ok, we generally agree. And today, like most other days,…
Why the underbanked
When thinking about the underbanked, it’s easy to assume there are people at the bottom of the economic pyramid who are generally underserved. What’s not so obvious is what appears as a small fringe of financially disenfranchised people, is actually a very large consumer market: over 100 million adults strong in…