{"id":186926,"date":"2026-03-11T07:33:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T07:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/186926\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T07:33:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T07:33:09","slug":"bank-on-miami-expands-access-for-the-underbanked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/186926\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank on Miami expands access for the underbanked"},"content":{"rendered":"

\tWritten by Kelly Sanchez<\/a> on March 11, 2026<\/p>\n

\"www.miamitodaynews.com\"\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Advertisement\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Bank<\/p>\n

Local nonprofit Branches helps lead Bank On Miami to add residents\u2019 access to financial products and services to build their financial futures.<\/p>\n

The Bank On movement works to expand access to safe and affordable banking products for people who are unbanked or underbanked. Bank On Miami has more than 40 partners, including financial institutions Amerant Bank, Banesco USA and Bank of America.<\/p>\n

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) says an unbanked person doesn\u2019t have a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union. A person who is underbanked has a checking or savings account but regularly uses alternative financial services, such as payday lending, check cashing and money transfer services.<\/p>\n

Brent McLaughlin, the president and CEO of Branches, said that being underbanked \u201cis really the more pressing issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople may \u2026 either at some point in the past or even currently have a bank account of some sort or a credit union account, but what tends to happen is they opt into alternative financial products, and sometimes those products \u2013 and I want to kind of emphasize the word sometimes \u2013 can be predatory in nature, can be actually a path towards a debt cycle that basically harms people and holds them back from financial stability and economic mobility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A Federal Reserve report showed that 6% of adults were unbanked in 2024. A 2023 FDIC survey found that 4.2% of U.S. households \u2013 about 5.6 million \u2013 were unbanked in 2023, while 14.2% of households, or about 19 million, were considered underbanked.<\/p>\n

The most-cited reason people gave for being unbanked was cost, with the data showing that 42.3% of unbanked households reported not having enough money to meet minimum deposit requirements as the primary reason they did not have a bank account.<\/p>\n

Distrust in banks was the second most-cited reason for not having an account. The report indicated that 95.8% of U.S. households \u2013 about 129 million \u2013 were banked, meaning at least one household member had a checking or savings account at a bank or credit union. The 4.2% unbanked rate was the lowest recorded since the FDIC survey began in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if I have really geographic specific information for here in South Florida, but nationwide, things are improving, and we\u2019ve been turning a corner, in part because of Bank On and its efforts to serve communities with \u2026 safe and affordable banking products, so there\u2019s no hidden fees, for example, so that customers don\u2019t have to worry about, all of a sudden there\u2019s an extra $25 coming out of their account every month and they don\u2019t know why,\u201d Mr. McLaughlin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minimum opening deposits are generally around $25, so it\u2019s easier for people to open that account and then start using it,\u201d he said, \u201cand the Bank On certified accounts are also checklists, basically, so they provide a debit card, they have Zelle, there\u2019s different ways and means to transfer and pay money, but it\u2019s digital, and so people can access it on their phone through an app like it\u2019s been proven now over the last decade to help people have better confidence and use \u2013 they opt into it more frequently now that it\u2019s so easy to use.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than going to the check cashing store or whatever for their needs,\u201d he said, \u201cnow they can set up direct deposit and then access their money right out of their account.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bank On was launched in 2006 in San Francisco as a pilot program to help unbanked households access financial services. In 2010, the Obama administration expanded it nationally, announcing the creation of Bank On USA.<\/p>\n

Later, in 2015, Bank On Miami was formed as part of Miami-Dade County Commission Chairman Jean Monestime\u2019s Council for Prosperity Initiatives to help improve the financial stability of low- to moderate-income families throughout the community.<\/p>\n

Isabelle Pike, Branches\u2019 senior vice president of development, said Bank On Miami recently received a fellowship grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund to hire a full-time program manager.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s coming,\u201d Mr. McLaughlin said, \u201cis that we\u2019re going to be making more and more connections between community-based organizations and financial institutions, as well as city government, county programs that may be touching large numbers of people and connecting that with financial institutions as well so that information is flowing \u2026 financial education opportunities are there and then people will begin to see how banks and credit unions are actually here to serve them, support them on their journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019ll be making more and more of these connections through Bank On Miami, and it\u2019s going to yield good benefits for the community overall in many different ways as people\u2019s finances, hopefully through these projects, are going to stabilize and we can see more upward mobility in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Written by Kelly Sanchez on March 11, 2026 Advertisement Local nonprofit Branches helps lead Bank On Miami to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-186926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}