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The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives Kindle Edition

by Lisa Servon (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 260 ratings
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Why Americans are fleeing our broken banking system: “Startling and absorbing…Required reading for fans of muckraking authors like Barbara Ehrenreich.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
What do an undocumented immigrant in the South Bronx, a high-net-worth entrepreneur, and a twentysomething graduate student have in common? All three are victims of our dysfunctional mainstream bank and credit system. Nearly half of all Americans live from paycheck to paycheck, and income volatility has doubled over the past thirty years. Banks, with their high monthly fees and overdraft charges, are gouging their lower- and middle-income customers while serving only the wealthiest Americans.
 
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.
 
“Valuable evidence on the fragility of the personal economies of most Americans these days.”—Kirkus Reviews
 
 “An intelligent plea for financial justice…[An] excellent book.”—The Christian Science Monitor
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  1. Print length
    277 pages
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    English
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  4. Publisher
    Mariner Books
  5. Publication date
    January 10, 2017
  6. File size
    2757 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The Unbanking of America is an eye-opening and compelling read about an issue that touches us all: financial security. Local banks were part of the fabric of our communities; their disappearance has tilted the playing field further toward the rich but also opened the door to a new and much more service-oriented financial industry. The unbanked may be leading the way!"—Anne-Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family
 
“Lisa Servon is one gutsy professor.  Unlike so many academics – who just theorize – she lived her story.  She actually rolled up her sleeves and worked as a teller and a loan collector in several poor neighborhoods.  She also provides a smart, lucid, and original take on how our banking system became such a mess.  This is an important book.”—Jake Halpern, author of Bad Paper:  Inside the Secret World of Debt Collectors
 
“In her eye-opening book, Lisa Servon does a Barbara Ehrenreich and goes to work at a check-cashing shop and a payday lending store to illuminate how this little-understood side of the financial service world works.  Servon shows keen insights into the financial problems that millions of Americans face, how and why banks and other financial institutions often fail them, and what’s on the horizon for financial services for the new middle class.” —Steven Greenhouse, long-time journalist and author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker
 
“A startling ethnographic investigation of everyday financial life, based on Lisa Servon's work as a teller, lender, and loan collector in some of America's most insecure communities, and extensive research on banking among the middle class. The Unbanking of America muddies the distinctions between reputed and stigmatized financial institutions, showing that we're all overpaying for low levels of service. It's an important story, and a powerful read.” —Eric Klinenberg, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University

"The failure of banks to meet the needs of the 99%—and the cottage industries filling the gap—are thoughtfully explored in this startling and absorbing exposé ... Required reading for fans of muckraking authors like Barbara Ehrenreich, this fascinating look at the future of money management insists that the ever-growing number of the 'unbanked' are a sector deserving of respect and solid options." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The author delivers valuable evidence on the fragility of the personal economies of most Americans these days . . . An indictment of a financial structure bent on large returns at the expense of all else, but also offers hope for ways around that ravenous system."
—Kirkus Reviews

"An intelligent plea for financial justice . . . [An] excellent book . . . Servon’s compassion and intelligence light up every page of this valuable book.  'Unbanking' exposes core reasons why many Americans aren’t gaining financial traction as she skewers huge banks for maneuvers and manipulations that have little to do with providing service."
—Christian Science Monitor

"[An} exceptional piece of academic research that not only masters the statistics and the implications of an important social problem, but informs that cool account with frontline observations in the great tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich . .  Unlike too many other commentators, Servon does not let mainstream banks off the hook in her rigorous analysis of the dynamics of lower- and middle-class debt . . . A readable, informative, thorough, and even gut-wrenching account of an under-reported problem that causes much misery. Viewed as a piece of muckraking journalism, her book is a significant contribution to the progressive narrative regarding the biggest problems we confront."
—The American Prospect

About the Author

LISA SERVON is Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania and a former dean of the New School.  Her work on consumer financial services has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic online, and The New Yorker online, among many others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01912OYO0
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; Reprint edition (January 10, 2017)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 10, 2017
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2757 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 277 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 260 ratings

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Lisa Servon

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
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260 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining and eye-opening. It's good to see the curtain pulled back.
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
This book disarms the blind belief that all check cashing and payday lenders are the spawn of satan, and that big banks like Chase and Wells Fargo are guardian angels. This book changed my perception of the financial industry overnight. After reading the book, I find it amusing that big banks refer to check cashers as "predatory," when the banks themselves are much more deceptive about their fees. The pot is calling the kettle black. Sure, the check cashers are more upfront about the true costs of their services, but the banks hide their high prices in 40 pages of fine print that almost nobody reads or seems to care about when they open their account. The book was written by a university professor, and the last 20 percent of the book is notes & bibliography stuff, so it's very interesting for people who like to learn and fact-check the information. There's a lot of "fake news" recently, so it's refreshing to have proof for such a persuasive and eye opening book. I hope more books are written and formatted like this, especially in the entertaining academic/documentary style that the author used throughout.
P.S.: It was hard to put down. I read it in 2 days. I flipped through the notes and bibliography at the end hoping for more to read, like at the end of the Marvel movies, but there was no funny comment or teaser for the sequel :(
All good things must end, I suppose
23 people found this helpful
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Patrick Cleary
4.0 out of 5 stars Short, but Powerful
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2017
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Lisa Servon went into a check cashing and payday loan company to work within the system of alternative financing and see how it works. While expecting predatory behavior and bad customer decisions, the results were surprising. This book is a little too forgiving of the institutions she worked at and a little too starry-eyed over startups, but overall, it's a good overview of how the so-called underbanked use their money. My biggest complaint is that nearly half this book is made up of end notes and an index, so the actual stories of real people are extremely thin. Still worth a read.
2 people found this helpful
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Athan
5.0 out of 5 stars Packed with info, strong views and passion
Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2017
Verified Purchase
The Unbanking of America is better than a treatise on US consumer financial services has any right to be.

Author Lisa Servon, a university professor, has dedicated a large part of her life to this book, exploring “unbanked” America from every possible aspect: the data (which she found inadequate), the literature (often straight from the author, such as Sudhir Venkatesh of Freakonomics fame), the history of the relevant regulation (again, under the guidance of experts), a survey of fintech initiatives (straight from the founders) and, most significantly, the people: the unbanked themselves.

For this last bit, nothing less than proper fieldwork would do. The author got two separate full-time jobs serving underbanked Americans and volunteered for a third one: as a teller behind the bulletproof counter at a Brooklyn branch of Rite Check, as a payday loan officer in Oakland with Check Center and as a helpline operator from her mobile phone for the Predatory Loan Help Hotline of the Virginia Poverty Law Center. Even her research assistant was enlisted, as a saver with a tanda in South Bronx (an unofficial Rotating Savings and Credit Association).

My interpretation of her findings is that not only have the banks moved away from America’s middle class, but the definition of what it is to be a middle class American has shifted as well.

So, on one hand the banks’ business model toward serving the less affluent population’s banking needs has been repurposed to work through (often hidden or, even worse, unfairly calculated) fees for overdrafts. And following Bill Clinton’s (he’s never mentioned by name) 1994 repeal of interstate banking restrictions, a large wave of mergers has swallowed most of the small banks that used to serve neighborhoods, to the point that the author now believes that cash checking services, which advertise their fees as clearly as a fast-food shop, rather than bury them in fifty page agreements, offer a better deal to the masses.

Moreover, regulation on lending, especially in the shape of the, generally speaking, well-intended, 2009 CARD act, has made it unprofitable for banks to lend to the less affluent, with the result that banks have totally abandoned this segment of the market.

But there is a more sinister side to this, and it’s that an enormous proportion of the US population is less financially stable than its parents’ generation. Special emphasis (a whole chapter) is given to the “millennials” and the book avoids strident claims, but the point is driven home through a barrage of facts, statistics and personal testimonies that almost a hundred million Americans are merely “making do” and are unable to live with the uncertainty inherent in waiting for a check to be cashed by their mainstream bank, for instance.

This is not a story of despair however. The author explores alternative banking arrangements such as Rotating Savings Corporations and Associations, visits with private pioneers in providing financial services to the “precariat” and offers a series of proposals for government programs, including for example a return to a basic account the Post Office used to offer to savers until 1967.

So the book left me optimistic about the future of the unbanked; or rather, it left me optimistic that their banking needs will soon no longer feature among their higher sources of stress.

One issue at a time!
20 people found this helpful
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Jeffrey Ashe
5.0 out of 5 stars What check cashers, payday lenders and loan sharks teach us about how the poor can survive in America
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2017
Verified Purchase
I found Servon's book a concise and compelling story of how the ways the poor manage their finances when banks are increasingly uninterested in serving them. Check cashers charge a lot but their fees are transparent, they know your name and they are open when you need them. Payday loans serve a purpose but unless you can pay back in two weeks these loans are almost impossible to pay back. Even money lenders have their role if you don't get in too deep and payback the loans quickly. The most promising alternative are the savings circles (ROSCAS) - where a group of ten or so of trusted friends each contribute a set amount to a pot each week with each in turn taking out the amount collected that week until all have received their payout. These groups abound in every ethnic community. Where else can you save up for emergencies, to fix the car, to pay the rent, or even make the downpayment on a house. Disciplined savings and mutual accountability are the keys to taking the first steps out of poverty and you don't need to pay interest - well maybe a tip for the woman who organized the group. Immigrants have a lot to teach us about getting ahead with almost nothing. The alternatives Servon profiles at the end of the book are a small drop in the bucket compared to to financial services reality that the great mass of those struggling paycheck to paycheck face every day. It turns out that financial services for the poor in this richest of countries are truly third world - and efforts are being made to gut the feeble protections the poor have against predatory banks. Highly recommended.
13 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Ian Robertson
4.0 out of 5 stars An Insider's View of Finance for the Masses
Reviewed in Canada on February 11, 2018
Verified Purchase
In 2000, Robert Putnam wrote , which traced the decline of an integrated American society into one of segmented and stratified sub-societies. This book continues that vein by looking specifically at its impact on financial services.

According to Lisa Servon, a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, "more than one million people with low incomes have been deemed ineligible for bank accounts" by the credit scoring system. For this and other reasons, about 8% of Americans unbanked, and another 20% underbanked. So where do they go? Where do they cash their paychecks, get loans, or transfer money? According to Servon, they use payday loan services, check cashing companies, and informal networks within their neighbourhoods - options that seem expensive - even foolish - to those who use regular banking services (which are also far more expensive than in years past), but they do so both out of necessity and because those alternative systems serve their needs well.

The Unbanking of America begins by tracing the divergent interests of the banking system and America's dwindling middle class. While banks strove for wealthier clients and higher margin business, a changing economy left a growing number of people with less stable or predictable income. For the banks, weeding out less profitable customers via the aforementioned ChexSystems credit scoring system proved to be a match made in capitalist heaven. It's hard not to see the systemic complicity as people become unbanked, but Servon provides just the facts along with explanations and context. Readers are left to draw their own conclusions about political implications; those on the right may applaud banks' business acumen and drive for profits, while those on the left may see it as a failure of markets.

Some explanation and context about the issue can be gleaned from magazine articles or academic journals, but it is the following chapters - the core of the book - where Servon really shines. She recounts in an easy-flowing, almost chatty style, her immersive experience working at several alternative financial service providers. Servon neither works 'under cover' nor shies away from on the record interviews of the companies' leaders and employees. The result is an objective and sympathetic portrayal of both the companies and their clients - a surprising and thought-provoking perspective that presents this segment of the financial services industry quite differently from the prevailing media and political characterizations, where companies are predatory and their clients irrational. Rather it is the banks that implicitly come across as predatory, essentially exiling a large swath of the population to a higher cost, but welcoming and service oriented alternative.

The Unbanking of America has much in common with another recent publication, JD Vance's , in that both are first person narratives about cultures and systems that are foreign to most. In both books, the insider's viewpoint and warm style gives so much more insight than any statistically driven narrative could. Highly recommended; a short, quick read that provides valuable perspective. One publishing note: in my Kindle version the footnotes were not linked, and I needed to scroll manually back and forth to use them - a serious error in today's digital world. Not a reflection on the author's fine work, but nonetheless unfortunate.
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Ajita Chakraborty
4.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting read
Reviewed in India on April 27, 2018
Verified Purchase
This book is a product of research of several years by the author. If you like to read personal finance books then you can go for it. It is written completely in American​ context. The laguage is lucid and the book bears many real life examples.
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