Microfinance Focus, August 27, 2011: Citi Community Development and the Center for Community Self-Help have joined to advance Self-Help’s Micro Branch - a check-casher/credit union hybrid model that provides responsible financial products and services for unbanked Californians. It will be supported with a $200,000 contribution from Citi Community Development.

Self-Help’s first Micro Branch, which serves primarily Latino immigrants, opened in San Jose in January 2010. Together with meeting financial service needs of low-income people, the Micro Branch connects them with actionable education and asset-building products that create economic opportunity and security for the future.

It provides critical asset-building opportunities including depository services; the chance to develop or repair credit ratings; and access to responsibly provided credit. To help clients take advantage of these opportunities, the Micro Branch model makes use of innovative, “in-line” financial education, in which bite-size financial management concepts are delivered at the teller line,

Citi’s support also will fund an analysis of the Micro Branch operating model and customer outcomes to explore how Self-Help and other Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) can replicate and scale the program.

The nonprofit Center for Community Self-Help and its affiliates Self-Help Credit Union, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and Self-Help Ventures Fund provide financing, technical support, consumer financial services, and advocacy for those left out of the economic mainstream.