Title: Ethnobanking in the USA: from antidiscrimination vehicles to transnational entities

Authors: Gary Dymski, Wei Li, Carolyn Aldana, Hyeon-Hyo Ahn

Addresses: UC Center Sacramento, 1130 K Street, Suite 150, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA. ' Asian Pacific American Studies, School of Geographical Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. ' Department of Economics, California State University, San Bernadino, CA, USA. ' Department of Social Studies, Daegu University, Daegu, Korea

Abstract: This paper addresses a meta-question: Does ethnic banking matter as a social-economic phenomenon? It discusses the roles of banks in immigrant- and minority-community building and their connections to the USA |new migration| with our definition of ethnic banks while comparing and contrasting the differential trajectories of ethnobanking development using Los Angeles as a primary case study. Evidence suggests that ethnic banks may represent important, independent and long-term determinants of ethnic communities| growth and prosperity (or failure to grow and prosper). Banks owned by racial-ethnic minorities usually flaunt banking industry trends in one or more ways – by retaining both |relationship banking| and branches as offices for delivery of services, by focusing on culturally specific growth rather than |plain-vanilla| growth, by making loans for purposes and to customers that have been written off by non-ethnic banks and so on. They often target different categories of ethnic customers differently, in ways that differ from the conventions of mainstream banking.

Keywords: African American; branch networks; Chinese American; ethnobanks; financial exclusion; immigrants; Korean American; Los Angeles; Latino; racial minorities; ethnic minorities; ethnic banking; USA; United States; relationship banking; culture.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBG.2010.030667

International Journal of Business and Globalisation, 2010 Vol.4 No.2, pp.163 - 191

Published online: 30 Dec 2009 *

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