Welcome

DR. SMITH: Well, good morning, everyone. My name is J Otis Smith, and I'm here to welcome you to "Tapping the Unbanked Market: Helping People Enter the Financial Mainstream." Now you're here because you're already involved in that process, and you're already committed to it. So let us move quickly into what is going to be a power packed and hopefully information packed day for you, and a great opportunity for exchange.

Now to begin the process. I want to welcome to the stage, Mr. Michael Zamorski, who's the Director of the Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection for FDIC. Michael.

DR. ZAMORSKI: Thanks a lot, Dr. Smith. Good morning and welcome to the FDIC's Symposium on "Tapping the Unbanked Market: Helping People Enter the Financial Mainstream." Financial education for every American is a corporate commitment at the FDIC. We developed Money Smart as a basic curriculum to improve financial literacy, and the Community Affairs Team that developed the program was recently presented with a Service to America medal to honor their achievement.

We continue to develop alliances with financial institutions, bank trade associations, national non profit organizations, community and consumer based groups, and federal, state, and local agencies to achieve our five year goal of reaching 1 million consumers with the Money Smart Program.

Financial education is a major issue relating to the reasons why people are unbanked. Accordingly, this symposium will begin with a Congressional Panel, and we anticipate that they will discuss financial education and the unbanked. The primary focus of the symposium is to discuss success stories with products and programs to bank the unbanked, and explore those situations where new products and programs might be helpful.

There are a variety of estimates on the number of unbanked in the country, but 10 million unbanked households is pretty much agreed to by all parties. Banks on their own or with community groups, have already begun a variety of programs and products to reach the unbanked. Representatives from some of those banks and community groups, as well as academicians who have studied the unbanked, will discuss success stories and opportunities for new initiatives during the three panel discussions.

Each panel is focused on a specific reason why people are unbanked, and will include time for audience questions. And we have four main panels, as Dr. Smith alluded to; "Financial Literacy and Reaching the Unbanked: Perspectives from Congress"; "Laying out the Welcome Mat: How to Attract and Retain the Unbanked"; "Beyond Toasters: Account Incentives That Really Work and Why"; "Thinking Outside the Bank: How Groups in Your Community Can Help You Reach the Unbanked".

We hope and believe that we have created an exciting program, and I think that the forum, as has been mentioned, is very conducive to having interaction and dialogue, and that's our goal today to have a constructive dialogue on how we might reach out and expand opportunities to the unbanked.

So without further delay, or by way of introduction, the first speaker is Donald E. Powell, the Chairman of the FDIC. We're very pleased he could be here. At the staff level at the FDIC, we certainly appreciate his support in sponsoring forums such as this that reach out and have a public dialogue on various very important public policy issues.

Chairman Powell came to the FDIC as its 18th Chairman on August 29th, 2001. He has 30 years experience in the financial services industry, and a long history of community service. Let me please introduce Chairman Powell.

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