Stay Informed!

By Ethan Geiling on 12/24/2011 @ 10:00 AM

Tags: Just For Fun

When people picture the North Pole, they think about elves, Santa Claus, reindeer and toy workshops. What they don’t think about is access to convenient, appropriately-priced financial products that help families save, build assets and climb the economic ladder. We want to change that.

And so, in one of the most anticipated moves of the year, CFED released the unbanked and underbanked rates for the North Pole yesterday.

The data show that 5.5% of households in North Pole, Alaska are unbanked and 17.0% of households are underbanked. Unbanked households do not have a checking or savings account, while underbanked households may have an account but primarily rely on alternative financial services. These numbers compare favorably to the national findings from the 2009 FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households.

Although there is a tremendous amount of work being done across the country to help families access safe and affordable financial services, people often forget small, rural places like the North Pole. And unlike the North Pole, many of those small, rural areas – like Holmes County, MS – have some of the highest unbanked rates in the country. In fact, all of the top 100 unbanked cities/towns in the country have less than 4,000 households.

We don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that this new data will completely change how people think about financial access in the North Pole, and it’s absolutely just the beginning.

Building on the powerful momentum of this new data, CFED plans to introduce a groundbreaking new financial product next year. CFED Vice President Ida Rademacher said, “I don’t want to give anything away, but I’ll say this: elf savings accounts.”

Happy holidays from all of us at CFED!

Comments

Leave a Comment

Email*

First Name*

Last Name

Title

Comment*

Formatting Help

You Type	You See
*italics*	italics
**bold**	bold
[ask google](http://google.com)	ask google
+ item 1 + item 2 + item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> a really cool quote from a nice person	a really cool quote from a nice person

Comment

* Required information

Preview