Over the last year, more than 100 million American households experienced a financial shock. This year the Financial Solutions Lab’s second $3 million challenge was seeking solutions that could help Americans to weather such shocks.

The Financial Health Network has developed eight indicators to measure financial health. We believe that these indicators establish a framework for shifting the financial services industry towards a focus on financial health, a focus on improving consumers’ lives.

The 2016 Challenge topic of the Financial Solutions Lab is Helping Americans Weather Financial Shocks. This issue brief introduces the topic, the reasons it is an important problem to solve, and some innovative approaches to doing so.

Despite strong member satisfaction and negative consumer sentiment towards banks, credit unions’ market share of key profit drivers like mortgages and credit cards is in the single digits.

In 2010, Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) launched its Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Credit Builder program with the primary goal to establish or improve credit for low-income Latino immigrants and help them responsibly manage credit over the long term.

Center for Community Self-Help’s (Self-Help) “Just Right” line of small-dollar credit (SDC) products was designed to test features of SDC products offered to clients as affordable and safe credit options.

Piggymojo built an online and mobile tool that uses goal visualization, social sharing and mobile technology to help savers turn impulse buys into “impulse saves.”

The Survey Instrument is the full questionnaire that was fielded for the Consumer Financial Health Study, Understanding and Improving Consumer Financial Health in America.

The Financial Health Network’s letter to the CFPB focuses on four main areas, each framed around what is best to achieve the overall goal of consumer financial protections that support financial health:

Read case studies and discover recommendations for using prepaid cards to promote financial health by helping consumers spend, save, and manage their money.