History of H&R Block Bank

The name of H&R Block conjures up images of April 15, tax time and bookkeeping for many. The tax services provider did indeed start out that way, based on the vision of Harvard Business School graduate Henry Bloch. In 1946, Bloch (with his brother Leon) opened a business in Kansas City, MO. and focused his efforts on providing bookkeeping services to small businesses.

Tax Return Services

At first, the business struggled but managed to stay afloat for about 9 years. Then in 1955, the brothers advertised tax preparation services in The Kansas City Star and business really started to bloom. The brothers officially incorporated in January, 1955 under the now familiar name H&R Block. By 1978, H&R Block was one of the largest tax preparers in the nation resulting in their offices preparing more than one out of every nine tax returns filed in the nation.

H&R Block Bank Created

The company’s main headquarters are still stationed along Main Street in Kansas City, but a lot has changed since its first corporate inception. In 2006, the H&R Block Bank was opened as a federal savings bank and member FDIC. Under that charter, in 2007 the H&R Block Emerald Prepaid MasterCard was released and more than 2 million prepaid debit cards were opened during the first year of the program.

The goal of H&R Block Bank is to ” To help our clients achieve their financial objectives by serving as their tax and financial partner.” Since the launch of H&R Block Bank, the financial services have evolved to offer a full array of banking services to their customers such as checking accounts, savings accounts, IRAs, CDs and loan services to meet the overall H&R Block Bank objective.