Banking can be designed and delivered to help people live better lives. As DUCA’s mission indicates, we believe financial institutions should exist to help people and businesses, do more, be more and achieve more. The current reality is, this isn’t always the way banking works.
Most banks make decisions on services such as credit in the same way, using more or less the same criteria. For many, this means that if you can check the right boxes, accessing the right banking services and advice is just a matter of contacting your local bank branch.
But what if you aren’t able to check the right boxes? Almost everyone has a bank account. However, large numbers of people are excluded from accessing the specialized financial services they need, causing the most vulnerable in our community to pursue high cost and often detrimental solutions outside of the financial mainstream.
Even for those that are granted access, the question of are they getting the right advice and a fair deal is difficult for most people to answer. Many people in Canada have borrowed as much as they possibly can and pay high fees to access their own money. This means bigger and bigger portions of income are channelled towards financial institutions with limited opportunity for banking customers to participate in the profits they enable.
This is not banking at its best. We believe banking can be better.
