NEW YORK—Citibank has formed the Citi ATM Community Network, a pilot program providing more than 300,000 accountholders of participating minority-owned banks and credit unions with the ability to withdraw cash with no surcharge fee at Citibank branch ATMs in six major markets.
The initiative is part of the bank’s Community Reinvestment Act responsibilities.
The National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, which partnered with Citibank in developing the concept for the Network, told CUToday.info that if the pilot proves successful the Federation hopes to convince other large national banks to offer the same sort of service to the underserved—not only extending the reach of small banks and credit unions, but also providing greater access to financial services for low-income people.
Pilot In Six Cities
The Citibank pilot is running in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., over the next several months.
“Citibank has been fantastic with this effort and as a result a huge number of community development credit union members can be served by this,” said Federation CEO Cathie Mahon, who added that Citibank is absorbing the cost for the network by foregoing its foreign transaction fee. “In addition to these six major markets, we have quite few credit unions in smaller urban and rural markets that Citibank does not serve. We’d love to be able to say to some major banks that serve those areas—‘Look at what Citibank got from this, the exposure, the results, the ROI.’ We hope this program will lead to other banks saying they would like to work with the Federation to do something similar.”
Mahon said the pilot kicked off with a soft launch more than a month ago and has been going well in tests with small groups of credit union members and staff.
“Citibank is monitoring this carefully,” said Mahon. “They want to make sure nothing goes wrong, that no accidental charges slip through. So far this is going super smoothly.”
'At Citi, We Share the Same Goal'
Will Howle, head of U.S. retail banking at Citi, said the bank takes seriously its “role of providing financial services to the broad spectrum of populations in the communities in which we operate, and the Citi ATM Community Network is yet another way we will do it.”
“At Citi, we share the same goal as minority-owned banks and credit unions, which is to provide wide access to safe and affordable financial products and services, especially in low-income communities and communities of color,” added Bob Annibale, global director of Citi inclusive finance and community development, and member of the FDIC Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. “The Citi ATM Community Network enables us to collaborate in a new way by expanding access and convenience for the customers of these partner institutions while at the same time, strengthening local trusted credit unions and minority-owned banks.”
The Citi ATM Community Network will mean participating organizations have free access to roughly 2,400 branch ATMs in Citi’s markets in the U.S. The new Network was unveiled at a public meeting of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Minority Depository Institutions Advisory Committee.
“The Federation is pleased to be working with Citi to dramatically expand surcharge free access to ATMs for members of credit unions participating in this unique pilot,” said Mahon. “Members will benefit from the convenience of Citi’s extensive ATM network while continuing to benefit from the safe and affordable products and services of their credit union. We value Citi’s commitment to thinking beyond the traditional boundaries to support credit unions serving underserved communities.”
'Makes A Lot of Sense'
Mahon emphasized that Citibank has been a large supporter of Federation programs and that the Network emerged out of discussions around how the bank could increase its support outside of funding programs.
“The Network just makes a lot of sense,” said Mahon. “And in some ways it’s low-hanging fruit—because a lot of this project has been about figuring how to open up a network that is already in place and make it surcharge free for accountholders of certain institutions.”
Mahon said the effort is a “great example” of a bank meeting its Community Reinvestment Act responsibilities under the Service Test.
“We think this is kind of program that Community Reinvestment Act was intended to produce—leveraging the strength and power of larger institutions to open up more financial services for the underserved,” said Mahon.
Network Participants
Participating in the Network include: District Government Employees Federal Credit Union; Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union; Neighborhood Trust Federal Credit Union; New York University Federal Credit Union; Brooklyn Cooperative Federal Credit Union; Quontic Bank; North Jersey Federal Credit Union; Northeast Community Federal Credit Union; Southern California Edison Federal Credit Union; University of Southern California Credit Union; Family Federal Credit Union; JetStream Federal Credit Union; Self-Help Federal Credit Union; Continental National Bank; and Mission National Bank.