"The film offers three very important perspectives on economic equality and minority-group advancement. First, Abacus provides a window into the operation of a small family-run, community-focused ethnic bank, both in general and in a time of crisis. Second, Abacus exposes the incompetence of a prosecution that, in failing to understand the cultural context of an ethnic minority bank and its customers, winds up exploiting and reinforcing economic stereotypes and biases about them. Finally, Abacus illustrates the importance of informal and flexible lending practices to bringing the unbanked and underbanked members of racial and ethnic minorities into the formal market for financial services and credit, a notion known as “the democratization of credit.”"