Ironically, the banking and finance industry is one of the largest employers of the underbanked, according to FactorTrust, a leading financial reporting and statistic firm which has published its first FactorTrust Underbanked Index.

“Our goal in launching this quarterly index is to share the knowledge we've been able to mine from our database of millions of records related to underbanked consumers. We want to empower lenders to reach these consumers effectively as well as educate a broader audience about who these consumers are,” said Greg Rable, CEO of FactorTrust.

“With this inaugural quarterly index, we help define this subset of consumers to show how valuable they could be to financial services decision makers,” Rable said.

According to the firm's data, the banking and finance sector, which includes credit unions, employs 11% of the nation's underbanked consumers, or about the same percentage of underbanked consumers that rely on disability or retirement benefits.

The leading employers of underbanked consumers are retail stores (24%) and governments (17%), the firm reported.