To be truly groundbreaking, financial services companies must go further than delighting their customers with convenient, beautifully designed products and services.

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.

U.S. Financial Diaries Case study: Elena Navarro is a single, 27-year-old woman living outside of San Jose, CA.

The U.S. Financial Diaries (USFD) is a research study collecting detailed financial data from more than 200 low- and moderate-income households over the course of a year.

When asked whether “financial stability” or “moving up the income ladder” is more important, 77% of the participants in the U.S. Financial Diaries (USFD) research study chose “financial stability.”

U.S. Financial Diaries Case study: Lauren Walker, 29, is a single mother living with her four-year-old son Riley in a rented townhome in a small town in eastern Mississippi.

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.

This one-page document has examples of applying each of the four Compass Principles to savings products.

Although underbanked consumers in the U.S. often have insufficient access to financial services, their access to mobile phones is fairly widespread.

Underbanked consumers need minute-to-minute information about their finances, and mobile financial services (MFS) are well suited to deliver it.