Pulse Points Spring 2024: Financial Health Challenges in Banking Deserts

Consumers rely on either in-person or online banking services to manage their finances. Yet the number of communities without any physical bank branches, sometimes called banking deserts, has increased in the wake of the pandemic. In addition, accessing internet-based banking services depends on the availability of reliable, high-speed, and secure internet, which is not guaranteed.

By taking into account both bank branch locations and broadband availability, this report provides a more comprehensive depiction of banking deserts and the financial health of the people living in them – underscoring the critical role of the financial sector in supporting consumers’ financial health.

The data used in this analysis comes from the 2023 Financial Health Pulse® survey, the FDIC-insured active bank branch locations as of November 2023, and the FCC Form 477 broadband deployment data to identify respondents residing in either in-person or online banking deserts. The Financial Health Pulse survey was fielded between April 27, 2023 and June 11, 2023 to panelists of the University of Southern California’s Understanding America Study (UAS). The overall sample is weighted using U.S. Census benchmarks to be representative of the noninstitutionalized civilian adult population of the United States along gender, race/ethnicity, age, education, and Census region.

For more details on our research methodology, see the full report.