The percentage of U.S. households that are “unbanked,” meaning no one in the household has a bank account, fell to 7 percent in 2015, compared with 7.7 percent in 2013, according to preliminary results of an FDIC survey, the “2015 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.”
The changes are occurring across demographic groups, with the unbanked rates among black and Hispanic households falling by about 10 percent.
The findings were contained in published remarks by Martin J. Gruenberg, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., who spoke Sept. 8 to the FDIC 16th Annual Bank Research Conference in Arlington, Virginia. In his speech, Gruenberg shared a preview of the 2015 FDIC survey of the banked and underbanked, a survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau every other year.
Gruenberg said the survey, for the first time, asked consumers for their perception of how interested banks are in serving households like their own. “A majority of unbanked households reported that they believed that banks were not at all interested in serving households like theirs,” he said. “This level contrasts sharply with the four-in-five banked households who indicated banks were very or somewhat interested in serving households like their own.”