Americans in rural communities are losing access to locally available, affordable financial services and products.

Secured credit cards can be an effective way to build U.S. credit history and thereby access affordable credit products and fully benefit from inclusion in the U.S. financial system.

The Financial Health Network offers its first quality assessment of the payroll card industry.

Financial technology (“fintech”) has tremendous potential – as a delivery channel for high-quality products and services – to help consumers improve their financial health.

The Financial Health Network is submitting this letter in response to the request for comments on the “Proposed Guidance for Third-Party Lending” issued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and published on July 29, 2016.

This executive summary examines new consumer research on secured credit cards.

New research reveals just how much money financially underserved consumers spend on financial products and services. The latest data shows that in 2014, consumers spent $138 billion to simply manage their financial lives.

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.

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 Financial Health Network recognizes that access to high-quality financial products are crucial to help consumers improve and maintain their financial health.

U.S. Financial Diaries Case study: Mateo Valencia, 31, and Lucia Benitez, 30, are an unmarried couple living in Queens with their four year-old son Pablo.

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:

Learn about the different phases of Start2Save, Opportunity Fund's savings program, which has provided $83 million in microloans and microsavings for clients in need since 1994.

Learn how international nonprofit organization Goodwill Industries provided prepaid cards to its employees so that they could avoid fees associated with check-cashing services.

We at the Financial Health Network have seen instances where potentially high-quality innovations and products never make it to market because of regulatory concerns.

Reliable access to high-quality small-dollar credit (SDC) is vital to the financial success of millions of U.S consumers.

The U.S. Financial Diaries (USFD) is an ambitious research project first-of-its-kind undertaken in the U.S. The project is collecting detailed financial data from more than 200 low- and moderate-income households over the course of a year.

From the U.S. Financial Diaries: Learn how and why short-term savings matter, especially for people in the United States who are earning unsteady incomes and facing unforeseen financial challenges.

U.S. Financial Diaries: Mike Smith, a single man in his mid-50s, lives in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in Kentucky, in a small town near the Ohio River.

U.S. Financial Diaries: Tim and Clara Adrian are in their early 30’s and live in Mississippi in a four-bedroom house that they own.

The emerging industry of technology startups providing financial services, known as FinTech, has typically targeted a relatively affluent customer base.

The National Community Tax Coalition is a national network dedicated to strengthening economies, building communities, and improving lives through tax assistance and asset building.

Increasingly, underserved Americans are turning to prepaid cards to meet their basic financial services needs.

The Financial Health Network led a consumer research study on secured card products, conducted with MasterCard and Blue Flame Consulting.

Mainstream financial institutions have struggled to meet the needs of low-income families living paycheck to paycheck.

This paper outlines some of the major themes which emerged during Fourth Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum, in 2009, inlcuding an exploration of the heterogeneity of underbanked market segments

In the face of today’s economic crisis, Americans have started saving again. And while saving could be a short-lived response to the crisis, the current impetus to save has created an opportunity for financial services organizations to lead the way in encouraging saving, especially those institutions targeting financially underserved consumers.

Gain insights from this third annual event, including the importance of building relationships, understanding the underbanked market, and increasing our conversations around saving.

This research paper describes some of the strategies that three major banks are using to supplement current disclosure practices, including working directly with the legal disclosures to improve readability and clarity.

This event underscored the business opportunities inherent in serving the underbanked market and identified opportunities to help move consumers along a pathway to savings.

The unbanked and underbanked still face many barriers to asset building, but recent innovations show that it is possible to overcome these challenges through creative strategies.

This paper discusses the implications of stored value cards for unbanked and underbanked consumers, exploring positive effects such as the potential to build assets and improve credit records.

Learn key findings about retail locations in which consumers can access financial services, including the impact of ATMs, point of sale and kiosk technology, and reloadable stored value cards.