The proportion of U.S. households without access to a bank account fell in recent years but could be driven up again by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a survey released Monday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), the Wall Street Journal reported. The unbanked rate declined to 5.4 percent in 2019 from 6.5 percent in 2017, as some 1.5 million households saw at least one member open a checking or savings account, the FDIC said in the biennial report. That rate represents the lowest level since at least 2009, when the survey began. Most of the decline reflected improvement in the circumstances of households that didn’t previously have bank accounts, the FDIC said. Unemployment is strongly correlated with lack of access to banking services and had fallen to 50-year lows before the pandemic sent the U.S. economy reeling this year. Officials warned that the economic disruption caused by the pandemic is likely to derail the trend of rising access to banking services. The U.S. jobless rate stood at 7.9 percent in September, more than double its year-ago levels. The reason for not having a bank account most frequently cited by respondents in the FDIC’s survey was inability to meet minimum balance requirements. Many of the nation’s largest banks charge monthly fees unless customers maintain several hundred dollars or more in their accounts.
