I’ve been tracking publicly traded underbanked companies for several years.  I’m dubbing this index the Core UnderBanked (CUB) Index.  It includes the Greendots, the Western Unions, the Cash Americas, the MetaBanks, and Rent-A-Centers of our industry.  Market caps vary from $10million to $10billion.  I’ve excluded retail banks, like BofA and Chase, the card networks, like Visa and Discover, the processors, like First Data and Fiserv, and credit bureaus, like Experian and Equifax- although they all play a critical role in the underbanked industry.

As you can see, CUB Index outperformed the S&P by 24% during the the past 365 days.  While a range of company types are in the Index, I attribute the performance to the growth in payments and alternative financial services, relative to the economy in general.