As the economy improves, more people are landing jobs and using traditional bank accounts, a new survey shows.
The share of consumers who were unbanked fell faster than expected last year to 7 percent, down from 7.7 percent in 2013, according to a new report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. That percentage has been dropping since it peaked at 8.2 percent in 2011 and is now the lowest it’s been since the survey was started in 2009.
Consumers were defined as being unbanked if no one in their household had a bank account. The FDIC also looked at the underbanked, meaning that someone in the household had a bank account, but that the person still turned to nontraditional — and sometimes costly — financial services, such as payday loans, pawn shops or auto title loans.
About one in five consumers said they were underbanked last year, about the same as in 2013.
Consumers across income brackets and racial groups became more likely to have bank accounts over the past couple of years. African-American consumers saw the share of households that are unbanked drop to 18.2 percent last year from 20.6 percent in 2013. Among Hispanic households, the rate dropped to 16.2 percent from 17.9 percent. One exception was Asian households, which saw the share of unbanked nearly double to 4 percent in 2015 from 2.2. percent in 2013.
Even households with very low income below $15,000 a year, who are typically less likely to have bank accounts, saw their unbanked rate drop “significantly” to 25.6 percent in 2015 from 27.7 percent in 2013.
It’s unclear exactly why there was such a strong increase in the share of people with bank accounts. The FDIC is still studying the reasons why different groups are more or less likely to be unbanked, chairman Martin Gruenberg said in prepared remarks. More details will be released along with the full report in October.
