Thread: CA-Poorest of poor urged to use banks

Published: Feb. 1, 2010
Updated: 8:26 a.m.
Poorest of poor urged to use banks
By DOUG IRVING

COMMENTS 18| RECOMMEND 1

SANTA ANA - Banks here have started to offer a special low-cost checking account in an attempt to win over potentially thousands of people who live entirely by the cash in their hands.

Those people are mostly poor and wary of giving their money to a bank. But they pay a price by keeping their money in cash – from high fees to cash their paychecks to the constant danger that a single robbery will wipe out their earnings.

The effort to bring them into mainstream banks is called Bank on Santa Ana, and it officially launched over the weekend. It's part of a much larger Bank on California campaign that drew almost 100,000 new bank customers in the first nine months of last year.

"We're talking about a segment of the population that's been shut out of mainstream banking," said Eloy Villafranca, the director of Bank on California. "We're saying, 'You know, you don't have to spend a lot of money to cash your checks, to pay your bills.' "

Those check-cashing fees alone can add up to around $700 a year for the median, non-banking household in California, according to a 2008 study by the Pew Charitable Trusts. That doesn't include the cost of money orders to pay the bills.

The Pew study estimated that as many as 23,800 households in Santa Ana have no relationship with a bank. It also found that the city has more than twice as many non-bank financial service providers, such as check-cashing businesses, as banks and credit unions.

An earlier report by a group called Social Compact found that nearly 70 percent of the households in some of Santa Ana's poorest neighborhoods don't use banks.

Those "unbanked households" tend to be the poorest of the poor, less educated and foreign-born, the Pew study found. Many told the study's pollsters that they distrust banks, worry about high fees and aren't sure mainstream banks will speak their language.

The Bank on Santa Ana campaign is meant to at least get them in the door. Its slogan is, "Everyone is Welcome," and its handouts and pamphlets are in Spanish as well as English.

Its centerpiece is a special checking account with no minimum balance and monthly fees of $10 at most – and none at all in some cases. Participating banks will accept passports, Mexican matricula cards and Guatemalan consular identification cards as ID to open the accounts.

The program will also offer some money-management education – such as how to stay on a budget and how to manage a checking account.

The city and Orange County United Way are running the Bank on Santa Ana project. Eight banks and credit unions have signed up to participate and offer the special checking accounts: Bank of America, Bank of the West, Chase Bank, Citibank, Communidad Latina Federal Credit Union, Pan American Bank, Union Bank and Wells Fargo.

Organizers of the Bank on Santa Ana project plan to launch a Web site, at www.bankonsantaana.ca.gov. But it was not yet up and running as of Monday morning.

http://www.ocregister.com/news/bank-231 ... banks.html

"...Participating banks will accept passports, Mexican matricula cards and Guatemalan consular identification cards as ID to open the accounts..."

Sooooo, are you going to make SURE that you aren't catering to illegal alien law breakers? Or should we read this to mean that you are going to take advantage of the illegal segment of the local population to boost your earnings?