FDIC finds 96% of U.S. households are banked

Bank Regulatory Federal Issues FDIC Unbanked Consumer Finance

On October 25, the FDIC announced that approximately 96 percent of U.S. households had a depository institution account in 2021, according to the FDIC’s 2021 National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households. According to the biennial survey, an estimated 4.5 percent of U.S. households (representing 5.9 million households) lacked a bank or credit union account, the lowest national unbanked rate since the FDIC survey began in 2009. The survey also found that approximately 1.2 million more households were banked since 2019. Nearly half of newly banked households that received government payments said these payments contributed to their decision to open an insured bank or credit union account. The survey also found that while unbanked rates were higher among some racial and ethnic minority groups, the gaps had shrunk since 2019, with the unbanked rate falling by 2.5 percentage points for Black households, 2.9 points for Hispanic households and 9.4 points for Native American and Alaska Native households, compared with a 0.4 point decrease for white households. According to the FDIC, other key findings include that: (i) 4.5 percent of U.S. households were “unbanked” in 2021; (ii) 2.1 percent of White households were unbanked, compared with 11.3 percent of Black households and 9.3 percent of Hispanic households; (iii) mobile banking use increased sharply among banked households between 2017 (15.1 percent) and 2021 (43.5 percent); (iv) 21.7 percent of unbanked households cited “don’t have enough money to meet minimum balance” as the main reason for not having an account; and (v) the use of some nonbank financial transaction services, such as check cashing, and nonbank credit products, including payday or pawn shop loans, continue to decrease. The FDIC noted that its #GetBanked (covered by InfoBytes here) was a way to inform consumers about how to open a bank account online and to facilitate the safe and timely distribution of Economic Impact Payments through direct deposit. The FDIC requested that community groups and government agencies “join the movement and help bring more people into the banking system.”