Carolinas unbanked at higher rate than U.S.

A higher percentage of people in North and South Carolina are without bank accounts or regularly use non-bank financial services than the country as a whole, a report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. says.

About 360,000 households in North Carolina, or 9.3 percent, have no bank account, and another 840,000, or 21.7 percent are considered "underbanked," meaning the household has a checking or a savings account at a bank but also uses non-bank check cashing, remittance, money order or payday loan services.

That's an increase from 2009, when 8.1 percent were without bank accounts and 20.3 percent used so-called "alternative financial services," according to the FDIC.

In South Carolina, an equal percentage are unbanked, and 20.6 percent used the non-bank services. That was actually a decrease from 2009, when 10.3 percent had no bank account.

Nationwide, the majority of unbanked households reported not feeling like they had enough money for a bank account or did not want one. The number of people forgoing the traditional banking system increased slightly, perhaps as people have lost trust in the system.

The FDIC, for its part, encouraged banks to reach out and create services tailored to the unbanked and underbanked.

	Unbanked	Underbanked	Fully banked
U.S.	8.2	20.1	68.8
N.C.	9.3	21.7	66.5
S.C.	9.3	20.6	68.2