Bush banking: financial institutions educate rural clients.

• Author: Kalytiak, Tracy
• Position: FINANCE

Tracy Cooper says cash can be hard to come by in villages out in rural Alaska--even the Unalakleet Native Corp. at times has to wait for currency to arrive so it can, in turn, cash checks for people like Cooper who live the Unalakleet area.

"I don't normally cash a check, but my daughter was leaving for Anchorage and I wanted to give her some cash for shopping," said Cooper, who works in Unalakleet as a community agent for Wells Fargo. "I waited a day. My check wasn't very big, so they just asked me the amount of the check, said they had the amount available and gave me the cash."

Cooper and other residents of rural Alaska face special challenges when trying to get or use money.

Many people in smaller villages don't have bank accounts at all. They cash Social Security, Alaska Permanent Fund dividend and social agency checks at Alaska Commercial Co. stores, or buy money orders in various amounts from the local post office branch. Others might have accounts, but experience trouble accessing them because of a scarcity of ATMs and lack of ready access to computers with high-speed broadband service for Internet banking.

And, some village residents may be unversed in understanding cash- and credit-based financial transactions that occur outside a subsistence economy. Children and youth might not know how to budget or manage debit transactions or a checking account.

DIFFICULT TO CASH

Don Strand, city administrator for Egegik, says check cashing is a particularly vexing problem because banks have lowered limits on the dollar amount of two-party checks they will accept for deposit, making it extremely difficult for people without bank accounts to cash paychecks, dividend checks and social-service checks.

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"A considerable number of people in rural Alaska don't have bank accounts (for a number of reasons) and use cash or postal money orders as a medium of exchange," Strand wrote in an e-mail. "Postal money orders are made out with an amount of money on them, but no payee or payor, so they pass from one person to the next just like currency. This system works as long as people can cash checks to get the money or the money orders in the first place."

Another problem people face, Strand said, is getting loans and using real estate as collateral.

"Since many places in rural Alaska don't have property taxes, there are no assessed valuations, and because of the small size of many villages there are few (if any) comparable sales to base...