Building a Better Future: How Clear Standards Unlock Financial Health for All

Imagine constructing a building without a blueprint, on guidelines for energy efficiency, sustainability, or long-term resilience. Without clear standards, every structure would be a gamble – costly, inefficient, and uncertain in its durability. Fortunately, frameworks like Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) certification transformed the construction industry, offering a voluntary but highly respected path for builders to go beyond the bare minimum and create spaces that are not just functional, but also thriving, sustainable, and forward thinking.

Yet today, millions of Americans face precisely this uncertainty with financial products and workplace benefits. Complex terms, hidden fees, and poorly designed offerings leave families navigating their financial journeys without adequate support, reliable products, or well-structured benefits.

As economic pressures grow and consumer safeguards weaken, institutions have a choice: Will they take the lead in designing systems that support long-term prosperity, or will families continue building their futures on unstable foundations?

We’re at a critical crossroads. Clear, actionable financial health standards are urgently needed to ensure financial products, employee benefits, and policies reliably protect and serve consumers, employees, and communities.

Many American families are Financially Vulnerable, navigating rising costs, growing debt, and a lack of savings. According to the Financial Health Pulse® 2024 U.S. Trends Report, only 47% of households spend less than their income, and even fewer (43%) are confident they are on track to meet their long-term financial goals. Simultaneously, critical consumer protections are under threat, with recent challenges to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the rollback of key regulations, such as the proposed payday lending rule. These changes leave fewer safeguards in place to ensure that financial products serve consumers’ best interests, placing greater responsibility on institutions to act proactively.

But where should institutions start? What actions would be effective for driving impact? Currently, without a blueprint for success, the financial services industry takes a fragmented approach. Some reduce overdraft fees, others launch savings programs, while many focus purely on complying with harm-reduction-based regulations and profit maximization rather than creating lasting positive customer impact. This falls short of delivering on what consumers need to improve their financial health. 

The financial industry and employers have the opportunity to redefine their role – not just as service providers or benefits administrators but as architects of financial health. Institutions need clear benchmarks to guide the design of products and services that truly meet consumer needs.  

The Financial Health Network is launching an initiative to provide just that. We believe the future of financial health requires a structured, evidence-based framework: a set of standards that define what good looks like to help organizations measure progress and create accountability toward meaningful outcomes.

Setting financial health standards could offer clear, research-backed criteria for financial health, provide tools for measurement and accountability, and drive industry adoption through public commitment, collaboration, and ongoing evolution.

Our approach is holistic. We’ll develop standards across all essential aspects of financial health – spending, saving, borrowing, and planning – creating a comprehensive and adaptable set of standards over time. Beginning with spending, we know transaction accounts form the foundation of financial health. Over 95% of households rely on checking accounts, making them central to everyday financial decisions. Yet our initial assessments reveal major gaps across the industry. Many institutions still lack critical product features designed to encourage responsible spending habits and financial resilience.

According to the FinHealth Spend Report 2024, increasing debt balances and higher borrowing costs drove the 17% year-over-year increase in spending on interest and fees. This underscores the urgent need for financial institutions to adopt stronger safeguards and a set of standards that support financially healthy spending.

Through close collaboration with industry leaders on our Advisory Council – including experts from major financial institutions and global payment platforms – we’ve crafted actionable and achievable standards to help financial institutions enhance their offerings and drive meaningful consumer outcomes.

The future of financial health demands a system where every financial product, service, and benefit is designed with consumer resilience at its core. We envision a financial landscape where institutions and employers actively compete to deliver solutions that empower individuals to build stable and secure financial futures.

Our ultimate goal is to ensure that financial products, benefits, and policies do more than just mitigate harm; they should proactively help consumers and employees build long-term stability and mobility.

For instance, checking accounts shouldn’t just facilitate transactions; they should help consumers manage income volatility, build credit, pay bills consistently, and build emergency savings. Savings products shouldn’t just provide a place to store money; they should help individuals build emergency funds, automate contributions, and offer incentives to encourage long-term financial security. 

As these standards gain adoption, financial health support will become a competitive differentiator, and institutions meeting these standards will show their commitment to consumer well-being, creating market pressure for continuous improvement while also strengthening their brand, customer and employee loyalty, and market position.

The framework for developing consumer products and services will serve as:

• • A blueprint for excellence: Defining what strong financial health practices look like 
  • An assessment tool for improvement: Helping organizations measure their impact and identify areas for improvement.
  • A signal of leadership: Providing stakeholders ranging from consumers and employees to investors and others with transparency into which organizations are prioritizing financial health.

We are also exploring new frontiers: setting standards for consumer data access, financial health measurement and reporting, and the ethical use of emerging technologies, such as AI-powered financial advice. Transparency and accountability will be key to ensuring that innovation in financial services leads to better outcomes for all.