LATEST BOOK: THE UNBANKING OF AMERICA
Lisa Servon delivers a stunning indictment of America’s banks, together with eye-opening dispatches from inside a range of banking alternatives that have sprung up to fill the void. She works as a teller at RiteCheck, a check-cashing business in the South Bronx, and as a payday lender in Oakland. She looks closely at the workings of a tanda, an informal lending club. And she delivers engaging, hopeful portraits of the entrepreneurs reacting to the unbanking of America by designing systems to creatively serve those outside the one percent.
An urgent, absorbing exposé—why Americans are fleeing our broken banking system in growing numbers, and how alternatives are rushing in to do what banks once did
Filene Research Institute’s Center for Excellence: Consumer Financial Lives in Transition
Working with Filene Research Institute to lead the Center of Excellence for Consumer Financial Lives in Transition. This four-year research project focuses on strengthening credit unions’ capacity to adapt to consumers’ changing financial lives and livelihoods as they face new forms of economic struggle and financial fragility.
“The work from this center will help credit unions serve people facing different kinds of transitions – income volatility, retirement, physical health and inequalities. If we can understand the frequency of these kinds of transitions and when people are going through them, we may be able to help alleviate the financial burdens that have been historically created.”
