| Banks Springing Up to Serve the Underserved |
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| Saturday, 08 March 2008 | |
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By LIZ GALST AT first glance Raleigh, N.C., may not seem like a logical place to open a Latino-oriented bank. After all, Raleigh is not a city like Los Angeles, for instance, where more than 47 percent of the population is Hispanic. But David Flores, a former senior vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank, looked at the skyrocketing Hispanic population in North Carolina — from 1990 to 2006, it rose to 593,385 from a mere 76,726 — and saw a business opportunity. Last September, Mr. Flores opened Nuestro Banco, offering a host of specially tailored services that other banks in the area were not, among them check cashing for new immigrants and small business loan applications in Spanish. The bank building is replete with Hispanic-inflected touches: a stucco exterior with a tile roof and bilingual signs. “Our long-term goal is to become a regional Hispanic bank in the Southeast,” said Mr. Flores, the bank’s president and chief executive. READ MORE: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/business/yourmoney/08money.html?ref=business               |
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