Union Bank offers banking to poor areas in the shape of check cashing and loans that are payday. Its efforts usually do not win admiration that is universal.
Driving through Bayview Hunter’s aim, an undesirable, mostly African-American community near bay area’s 3Com Park, Union Bank of California Vice Chairman
Richard Hartnack Richard Hartnack
views among the bank’s branches and sighs: “I am able to say without doubt it is never ever made cash.” Why not near the branch? Due to the fact government that is federal as an amount for approving Union Bank’s merger with Ca First Bank, compelled it to find branches in low-income areas.
Farther south into the rough Southern Central section of Los Angeles, it really is a picture that is far different the $36 billion (assets) bank. Standing down in their grey suit and tie that is red a dusty Hispanic community, Hartnack enthuses in regards to the organization’s bustling 15-unit Cash & Save check-cashing string, which Union has run since 1993, and its own more modern endeavor with Carson, Calif.-based Nix Check Cashing.
“It is this kind of market that is underserved” he beams, as Hispanic and African-American clients make to cash checks while watching dense, green bulletproof glass of the Nix socket.
Here is the side that is flip the debate about check-cashing and payday-loan clothes. In states such as for example Florida, California and Illinois, politicians and customer activists are making an effort to rein within the thriving trade by capping rates of interest and limiting the capacity to sign up for consecutive loans to settle current people. But there is however a valid reason these organizations survive into the inner-city vacuum cleaner produced by the lack of big banking institutions. Bad areas simply do not produce sufficient big account balances to guide a traditional branch. Continue reading