It may come as a surprise to you that over 100 million Americans don’t have access to critical financial services. Even before the pandemic hit, a growing number of people had income less than their expenses and suffered from lumpy, unsteady income due to faulty corporate and public policies. To top that, they were denied access to even services created for the underserved as they were deemed “risky” due to non-traditional work arrangements or traditional work arrangements that were lumpy (due to no fault of their own), or lacked “relevant” credit history. Most of these people are either women or people of color. In the wake of an incredibly painful economic period and record inflation, you can only imagine how much this has been exacerbated.