She might not be a tech-savvy, time-pressed, financially proactive customer, but she probably visits the branch twice as often as somebody half her age.
As a result, teams around the company started identifying new opportunities to use existing business capabilities to serve financially excluded customer segments.
"A large, modern technologically advanced desalination project like the one in Carlsbad is not financeable without a secure, financially viable customer for the water," authority spokesman Mike Lee said by email.
UK banks are being urged to handle their fair share of financially troubled customers following the Co-operative Bank's decision to stop offering basic banking services to new customers who are undischarged bankrupts.
Polling shows that many Americans think financially stable customers have the same opportunities to obtain good housing regardless of race, he added.
Analysts said the revised expectations were probably inevitable after recent announcements by financially strained customers like Qwest International, Sprint and WorldCom that they were cutting back their capital spending.
The City regulator is being urged to impose caps on charges for unarranged overdrafts to stop financially vulnerable customers being ripped off by their banks.
And, thanks to his business office's reminders that credit card payments are accepted, about 15percentt of his financially strapped customers now pay that way.
For companies such as Walmart, with financially stretched customers, the problem is not one of environmental good will but of economic necessity, says Miranda Ballentine, Walmart's director of Sustainability, for her customers, who often live paycheck to paycheck.
Some will be cynical about Barclays' reasons for getting involved, and may wonder whether the real agenda is creating a new group of financially naive customers for its products.
