You’ve probably heard the term food desert to describe a place where residents have limited access to affordable, healthy foods. But what about bank desert? That’s where residents may have limited to no access to bank branches and are forced to rely on ATMs or make a long drive. Such a desert is growing in the rural areas outside of Charlotte and even in some neighborhoods within the city. Reporter Catherine Muccigrosso wrote about it for the Charlotte Observer. She joins WFAE’s Marshall Terry to talk about bank deserts.
Marshall Terry: In your story, you cite data from the Carolinas Credit Union League showing North Carolina lost a quarter of its bank branches between 2013 and last year. That’s about 650 branches. Why are branches disappearing?
Catherine Muccigrosso: For one thing, there’s a shift toward more customers going online. There’s not a service that most banks provide that you can’t access financially through your mobile device. Another reason is that a bank branch has to be economically viable, of course. A bank branch can need about $30 million in deposits to cover a branch’s expenses, such as technology, insurance, electricity and staffing. That’s what N.C. Bankers Association CEO Peter Gwaltney told me. And yet another reason, he explained, is that branches closed because of mergers…