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.
Filene Research Institute
Lisa Servon leads the the Center of Excellence for Consumer Financial Lives in Transition at Filene Research Institute. 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.”
