This is very cool.
Since 2011, the City of San Francisco has automatically opened bank accounts on behalf of kindergarten students, depositing $50 in each one and providing a variety of mechanisms to help students and their families save more. The purpose of the accounts is to help students save for college, and, so far, the program has been an unqualified success. The program has 52,000 active accounts with a total balance of $15 million—$10 million of which came from deposits made by the students and their families.
A few fintech nerd notes:
The program couldn’t partner with California’s established 529 College Savings plan because the city wanted its program to be opt-out by default, more convenient for families to contribute to, and accessible to all families, including those who are undocumented (which presents KYC challenges).
Instead, the City designed a custom bank account product structure with Citibank, which mimics some of the structural components of a 529 plan (e.g. the funds can only be used for qualified educational expenses) but is built on top of a FBO account/sub-account structure (with the City of San Francisco being the master account holder).
Not that it probably matters to Citibank all that much, but I’d imagine that $15 million is a wonderfully sticky source of deposits. Perhaps regional banks should work with cities and states in their own backyards on similar programs?