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.

This paper takes an in-depth look at new consumer research on secured credit cards. In it, we explore how innovation in secured credit cards can help consumers build credit and savings at the same time.

This paper takes a closer look at the eight indicators we’ve identified and ways that providers can help.

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.

With millions depending on prepaid cards to help manage their financial lives and forthcoming CFPB regulations, it is important to gauge the quality of products in the marketplace and to encourage prepaid card issuers to develop offerings that actively improve consumers’ financial health.

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.

This report reveals that financially underserved American consumers spent $138 billion in fees and interest revenue in 2014, generated from a volume of $1.6 trillion in financial activity.

Millions of Americans are raising children in households with poor family financial health and limited financial resources.

Millions of Americans lack access to high-quality, affordable credit. While innovating in the small-dollar credit industry poses challenges, the opportunity to serve borrowers in need of high-quality, small-dollar loans is significant.

Millions of Americans lack access to high-quality, affordable credit. Many of the small-dollar loans available to consumers are high-cost, low-quality products that often lead borrowers into a cycle of repeat usage and mounting debt.

The Financial Solutions Lab at the Financial Health Network with founding partner, JPMorgan Chase, announced the nine winners of its $3 million competition for technology innovators.

Standard financial literacy curricula recommends that households should have at least three months of income set aside in emergency savings.

This research takes a look at an important component of consumer financial health: the credit score. The Financial Health Network appended two objective measures of credit-worthiness to the Consumer Financial Health Study.

This research explores the state of financial health in America in a groundbreaking examination of consumer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences.

This paper examines four key trends and explores how real-life companies are leveraging Big Data in financial services.

This report reveals that American consumers spent $103 billion in fees and interest revenue in 2013, generated from a volume of $1.3 trillion in financial activity.

The Compass Principles are guidelines for the U.S. financial services industry. They affirm standards of excellence in the design and delivery of basic tools that people use to manage their daily financial lives.

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

How financial institutions can build long-term relationships with immigrants before and after immigration reform.

Despite their gradual decline in use, checks remain prevalent, accounting for 33% of non-cash payments in the United States by face value.

Over the past decade, millions of American households have turned to prepaid cards to spend, save, and manage their money.

An increasing number of Americans are turning to nontraditional credit sources for quick access to cash.

The United States financially underserved market generated $89 billion in fees and interest in 2012, representing growth of 8% from $82 billion in 2011.

As developing technology and new regulations continue to spark competition and transform the marketplace, deep consumer knowledge remains the key to success for businesses across the sector.

This report examines the significant volume of recent investment activity in the FinTech market for financially underserved consumers. This consumer finance segment is a dynamic and growing space.

For eight years, the Financial Health Network has championed innovative strategies for meeting the needs of underbanked consumers

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

Driven to help households better manage their finances and attain financial stability, a number of nonprofits, financial services providers, and government agencies have turned to the concept of financial capability in the search for effective solutions.

Electronic payments are growing by leaps and bounds,overtaking paper as preferred payment mechanisms.

Banks and credit unions can and should be doing much more to support consumer credit building – and, importantly, they can do so in ways that align their own success with the success of their customers.

Every year, millions of American consumers use small-dollar credit (SDC) products for quick access to cash.

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

The products and services that cater to the needs of financially underserved consumers are big business.

More than 600 participants gathered at the Sixth Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum to discuss the future of the marketplace for the underbanked.

Millions of underbanked Americans have found prepaid cards an effective way to meet their basic financial services needs.

The financial crisis and economic downturn have reshaped the financial services landscape.

The need for new ideas to improve Americans’ financial capability has been evident throughout the recent recession.

In 2010, the Financial Health Network launched its largest effort yet to catalog all existing financial products and services aimed at the underbanked population: the Underbanked Industry Scan.

Young adults entering the work force and managing wages for the first time today face a financial services marketplace that is markedly more complex than the one their parents first encountered as young adults.

As this year’s Forum made clear, the underbanked financial services industry is in a period of progress.

Almost one-third of the 30 million U.S. households who are unbanked or underbanked borrow to pay for small-dollar, short-term needs.

The recent financial crisis has revealed that Americans at all income levels exhibit difficulty in managing their finances and are ill-prepared to weather economic stresses.

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.

The Financial Health Network has conducted an investigation into the amounts that prepaid cardholders spend each month to conduct essential financial transactions, and compared that to the amounts that they would spend if they remained underbanked or used checking accounts for the majority of their transactions instead.

Millions of lower-income consumers lack access to high-quality financial products and services that simultaneously meet their short-term needs and prepare them for long-term financial success.

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

This resource identifies market size data and preferences among eight unique segments of the underbanked market, including "The Strivers," "Middle of the Road," and "Almost There."

Learn how the increased scrutiny recently placed on the payday loan industry has underscored the need for innovation and motivated financial services providers to develop solutions.

Discover how three nonprofit organizations are marketing and distributing prepaid debit cards to provide their community members with economical and convenient financial services.