Dena Jo Squyres, like a typical 16 year-old girl, enjoys hanging out with her friends, shopping and playing softball. But Dena — a student at the Cherokee Nation’s Sequoyah High School in Oklahoma — can add entrepreneur, saver and spokeswoman to her list of after-school activities.
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CFED welcomes the opportunity to work with consultant Anne Stuhldreher and the Mayor and Treasurer of the city of San Francisco on the innovative initiative, ‘Bank on San Francisco.’ This initiative illustrates the exciting avenues for asset building that can be taken on the local level.
Bank on San Francisco
An initiative to bring all residents into the financial mainstream
By Anne Stuhldreher
Consultant, CFED
Fellow, New America Foundation
On December 2, 2005, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and City Treasurer José Cisneros invited the presidents of the city’s financial institutions to a breakfast at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Their purpose was to challenge the financial institution leaders to launch an unprecedented initiative called Bank on San Francisco. The goal would be to bring
10,000 of the city’s estimated 50,000 “un-banked” households into the financial mainstream by helping people to open low-cost starter accounts. The Treasurer and Mayor urged the bank presidents to see the un-banked as an untapped market, one that could be served profitably to benefit their bottom line, individuals, and the San Francisco community.
Bank on San Francisco was launched in September 2006. San Francisco is the first city in the country to launch a comprehensive initiative to bring its “unbanked” residents into the financial mainstream. This case study describes why and how Bank on San Francisco was started. It is written for individuals in other cities who may be considering similar initiatives.
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