This issue of Banking and Community Perspectives explores the features and limitations of two of the existing products and services for the financially underserved--prepaid cards and small-dollar loans.

Bankers may find census and survey data useful when exploring reaching the unbanked and underbanked in their communities.

In 2008-09, Mexico was wracked by the global financial crisis, suffering its largest one-year economic contraction since at least the 1930s. But the banking sector withstood the shock and made important strides in one area--bringing previously unbanked households into the financial system....

Remarks by President Dudley at the Quarterly Regional Economic Press Briefing, New York City.

Banks and the government have mounted a major effort to extend financial services to those without them.

This publication aims to help donors, creditors and investors evaluate the performance, condition and risk of individual microfinance institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, in hopes of strengthening the microfinance industry and building the microenterprise sector. It provides concrete...

In traditional banking arrangements, households hold their savings in the form of deposits at the bank, which makes loans to both firms and households and holds these loans to maturity. But in the United States, and to a lesser extent in other developed countries, markets have increasingly taken...