Tag Archives: financial access

The financial system isn’t working for Latinos

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A new report outlines the challenges and solutions to building a better financial life.

By John Marth, UnidosUS Content Manager

Banking in color | UnidosUS

Checking your debit balance, opening a credit card, or taking out a loan shouldn’t be a struggle. Ideally, financial services and tools should be equally accessible to everyone, making it possible for anyone to make the economy work for them. But for too many Americans, that’s just not the reality.

There are nearly 100 million Americans living in poverty, or nearly in poverty. And without fair access to financial services, they lack the opportunities for upward mobility and a healthy financial life that others take for granted. Communities of color, including Latinos, are hardest hit, and face additional barriers to accessing these services.

“Barriers to financial inclusion prevent people from fully participating in the American economy, and the data shows that minority communities struggle to access traditional banking products and services,” says Marisabel Torres, Senior Policy Analyst at UnidosUS.

Torres presents those barriers in a new UnidosUS report, The Future of Banking: Overcoming Barriers to Financial Inclusion for Communities of Color. She researched and wrote the report with PolicyLink Director Christopher Brown and Rebecca Loya, an independent research consultant. The report was released earlier this week at an event in Florida.

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Latinos and Financial Freedom: NCLR Launches “Community Insights” Series

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Photo: Pictures of Money

Photo: Pictures of Money

Many of the Latino community’s struggles recently have centered around economic stability in the wake of the Great Recession. The Hispanic community lost more than 66 percent of its wealth in the recession and has not yet recovered lost ground. In order to understand more about Latino households’ ongoing economic challenges and how they’re overcoming them, NCLR established a Financial Services Advisory Council with the support of Citi Community Development, the Ford Foundation, and Master Your Card: Oportunidad.

The Financial Services Advisory Council is composed of a group of 10 NCLR Affiliates who serve more than 40,000 clients annually and provide input on how their clients are interacting with financial institutions, what products and services are most useful to them, and how they are managing financial stress. Of the nearly 300 community-based organizations that make up the NCLR Affiliate Network, these 10 are economic first-responders in their communities and offer a range of financial counseling and capability services.

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Banking in Color: How Can Financial Institutions Better Serve Communities of Color?

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bankingincolor_sharegraphic_blog (3)As America edges closer to majority-minority status, new research indicates that communities of color face considerable challenges in meeting their needs in today’s financial services marketplace. Despite most reporting that they own a bank account, use smartphones, and put away monthly savings, large barriers to financial access still exist in the Black, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), and Latino communities.

Banking in Color: New Findings on Financial Access for Low- to Moderate-Income Communities, a new report by NCLR, the National Urban League, and the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, offers a unique look at the financial lives of our nation’s low- to moderate-income population. It takes a deep dive into financial access data in places with large communities of color: Chicago, Houston, and southern Florida.

The organizations behind this report are a part of a coalition known as the Alliance for Stabilizing Our Communities. The coalition tapped its large network of community-based organizations in the target locations to learn how underserved communities interact with banks and save money, as well as whether the financial services industry is working for communities of color.  Continue reading →