The Bank Staff Perspective on Reducing Financial Exclusion through Affordable Bank Accounts

ABSTRACT

In semi-structured in-depth interviews in one mid-western city with a high percentage of financially excluded consumers, 22 staff members from 15 banks describe their employer bank’s efforts to serve low- and moderate-income consumers. Six themes were found: (1) Banks are aware of the problem of financial exclusion; (2) Financial education poses challenges to deliver, and lacks outcomes; (3) Few rewards are evident for offering basic checking accounts; (4) Little advocacy pressure exists for affordable accounts; (5) Regulatory and other pressures fail to facilitate solutions; and (6) Solutions are a mix of policy, organizational capacity, and methods to influence consumer behavior.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial exclusion
• banks
• financial products
• affordable accounts

Acknowledgments

Lauren Masten, MSW, Student, Saint Louis University School of Social Work, provided invaluable assistance to the project. The authors thank her for her contribution.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Data availability statement

There is a qualitative dataset associated with this paper. Interested researchers may contact the authors to discuss it’s availability.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained of each subject under the structure approved by the IRB of the author’s institution.

Research involving human participants

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s institution (IRB #29,517) and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and it’s later amendments.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Emmett J. and Mary Martha Doerr Center for Social Justice Education and Research.