In the spring of 2012, CFSI launched a new initiative to "tell our story" to stakeholders, members of the media, and the financial services industry at large. Driving this effort is a desire to showcase innovation in financial services focusing on the underserved. We are doing this by highlighting who is serving these consumers, why it's beneficial to both business and the marketplace, and what the real impact is on the consumers that our partners, grantees and investees serve.
Through this series of consumer and innovation-focused stories, CFSI is ensuring that the exceptional work happening in this space does not go unnoticed. We believe that high-quality, consumer-centric financial innovation can be a force for good in people’s lives, and this is our way of celebrating the successes that are happening around us every day. Browse below to read inspiring stories about financial services providers, nonprofits and technology companies that are making a positive impact in the lives of underserved consumers. div>
H&R Block–From Tax Prep to Tax Plus
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on June 2013Since 1955, H&R Block has been known as the go-to company for income taxadvice and tax return preparation. What many consumers don’t know—but word is spreading fast—is that the company has been expanding its services significantly to become a “tax plus” company—preparing tax returns, plus offering year-round financial products and services.
See the Impact Brief below for more.
Bridging the Gap with Social Loans
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on June 2013Mission Asset Fund (MAF) is dedicated to helping low-income, financially excluded consumers enter the mainstream financial system. One of MAF’s most successful initiatives is their Lending Circles program, a social loan program modeled after the lending practices often found in low-income and immigrant communities. Lending Circles has achieved such success that the program is being replicated nationwide. To learn more, see the Impact Brief below.
Piggymojo: The Thrill of Impulse Savings
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on April 2013
Armed with a Financial Capability Innovation Fund grant from the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), Piggymojo is transforming the way people think about savings.
The goal of the technology startup is to help underserved consumers increase their savings, combining goal visualization, social commitments, and mobile and online technology to enable them to make “impulse saves.” The web-based savings tool helps users to instantly put money they would otherwise spend impulsively during the normal course of their day toward savings goals. When a user decides not to spend, he or she texts the amount to Piggymojo, which facilitates the transfer of funds from the person’s transactional account to a savings account.
Learn more about Piggymojo by downloading the PDF below.
Redstone Federal Credit Union- Thinking Outside the Branch
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on January 2013
In 2009, Peter Alvarez of Redstone Federal Credit Union attended his first Underbanked Financial Services Forum, an annual conference held by the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) and SourceMedia, to learn more about the underserved market. He sat in on a session led by Self-Help Federal Credit Union, in which the credit union discussed its efforts to provide customers with check cashing services. Alvarez, Redstone’s Manager of Emerging Markets, was taken aback. “It blew my mind,” he said. “I was not ready to hear that.” Redstone would never offer check cashing, he thought.
But the idea stuck with him. Alvarez learned even more about the underserved market after Redstone joined CFSI’s Underbanked Solutions Exchange, an industry network for smaller financial institutions looking to develop profitable, high-quality products for the underserved. He soon realized there was no way to serve these consumers without offering check cashing, as well as other products and services that were outside of the credit union’s bailiwick.
The business case of reaching out to underserved consumers was not difficult for the Huntsville, Ala.-based credit union to make. Indeed, FDIC data shows that nearly 193,000 Alabama households lacked a checking or savings account in 2011 and that nearly 40% of all households in the state use non-bank financial services like check cashers. If the credit union focused on how to best reach and serve these consumers, such an effort was likely to result in new member growth, an increase in non-interest income, and a sufficient return on investment.
Download the Impact piece below to learn more.
Centris: Using Technology to Build Relationships
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on January 2013
In June 2012, the credit union launched Centris Express as its solution to the problem of how to reach and better serve underserved consumers. Centris
Express offers users a complete suite of products and services through a bank-in-a-box kiosk powered by Nexxo Financial Corp. Set up in eight locations around Omaha, in both Centris branches and grocery stores, as well as in a specially designed Express Money Center adjacent to a branch, Centris Express enables customers to cash checks, buy money orders, transfer money, pay bills, buy cellphone minutes, and reload prepaid cards, all with the touch of a few buttons.
The kiosks integrate with the credit union’s backend processes, so users can make deposits and withdrawals from their Centris checking and savings accounts.
See below to download the Impact piece.
Centris: Using Technology to Build Relationships
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on January 2013
In June 2012, the credit union launched Centris Express as its solution to the problem of how to reach and better serve underserved consumers. Centris
Express offers users a complete suite of products and services through a bank-in-a-box kiosk powered by Nexxo Financial Corp. Set up in eight locations around Omaha, in both Centris branches and grocery stores, as well as in a specially designed Express Money Center adjacent to a branch, Centris Express enables customers to cash checks, buy money orders, transfer money, pay bills, buy cellphone minutes, and reload prepaid cards, all with the touch of a few buttons.
The kiosks integrate with the credit union’s backend processes, so users can make deposits and withdrawals from their Centris checking and savings accounts.
See below to download the Impact piece.
Sunrise Community Banks: Navigating the Learning Curve
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on January 2013If there is one lesson David Reiling takes away from all the ups and downs he has faced over the last eight years at the helm of Sunrise Community Banks, it is the need to offer consumers “quality through and through.” For Reiling, the general purpose reloadable prepaid card is an excellent avenue to provide such quality service to customers.
The prepaid card “is the only model that I’ve been able to find that can facilitate a sustainable method to provide [financial] access to low-balance, high transaction consumers and do it in a convenient and transparent way with fair pricing,” said the chief executive of the Minneapolis-St. Paul-based bank. “The fact is there are a lot of different uses and flexibilities that can happen. In and of itself, a prepaid platform can be a very convenient access point for underserved consumers.”
See the case study below for more information on how Sunrise Bank has served consumers with new prepaid offerings.
D2D Fund: Save to Win- The Success of Prize-Linked Savings
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on December 2012
Many families are faced with critical choices when it comes to managing household income. General expenses and entertaining or ‘fun’ purchases often overshadow important financial priorities. Thus, the long term benefits of saving are cast aside in favor of immediate rewards. Preliminary data indicates that incentives are powerful and can encourage everyday consumers to develop good saving habits for the future. In an effort to make saving fun, organizations have started to look at prize-linked savings (PLS) game structures that can generate excitement about an otherwise mundane activity and create win-win situations where consumers save, have chances to win prizes, and earn interest on deposits.
In 2009, the Doorways to Dreams Fund (D2D Fund), with support from CFSI’s Nonprofit Opportunities Fund, launched an innovative savings product called STW. The Michigan Credit Union League (MCUL) and eight Michigan credit unions implemented the PLS concept by offering specific accounts, which linked deposit activity to monetary prizes.
See the Case Study on D2D Fund below.
Regions: Designing with a Fresh Eye: A Case Study in Meeting More Customers' Needs
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on December 2012
Regions Financial Corp. is the biggest bank to offer a comprehensive suite of products and services for the underserved. Regions—a $122 billion asset bank that operates in 16 states primarily in the South and the Midwest—designed the Now Banking product suite to meet more consumers’ financial needs—from check cashing, to money transfer and bill payment services. Now Banking also includes a general purpose reloadable Visa-branded prepaid card. Launched in 2011, Now Banking is a direct response to the bank’s increased effort to get to know its customers, as well as prospective customers. When clients told the bank they were going elsewhere for certain services, like check cashing, Regions listened and responded with a complete set of financial tools that serve their needs.
See the case study below.
Core Innovation Capital: Capitalizing on Innovation
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on December 2012
Core Innovation Capital has set out to serve more than 10 million people, and save them at least $50 a month, for a total annual savings of $6 billion, in addition to helping them become more upwardly mobile. In just two years since its inception, the venture capital fund is well on its way. Through its investments in SavvyMoney, Plastyc, L2C, and Progreso Financiero, the fund is indirectly helping well over 5 million low- to moderate-income consumers pay down their debt and gain access to the financial services they need.
See the Impact Piece below.
Meta: Promoting Better Understanding of Prepaid Card Use
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on December 2012
Though prepaid card use is gaining in prevalence—there were 6 billion prepaid card transactions valued at more than $140 billion in 2009—few studies have examined how consumers really use prepaid cards. In an effort to help the industry improve its prepaid business model and assist policy makers in understanding the marketplace to better protect consumers, the Payment Cards Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and CFSI set out to conduct research analyzing consumers’ transaction behavior, as well as the issuer revenue and cardholder costs generated by those transactions.
Nexxo Provides Next-Generation Bank-in-a-Box
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on December 2012Financially underserved consumers now have more options to manage their lives easily, thanks to Nexxo Financial Corporation. The financial technology provider has recently joined forces with Centris Federal Credit Union and Carver Federal Savings Bank to supply transaction kiosks to provide consumers more convenient access to the financial services they need.
AARP Foundation Equips Older Consumers With Financial Know-How
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on November 2012Recently, AARP Foundation developed a brochure, part of a series of educational materials on prepaid card accounts and their best use, to help consumers understand what prepaid cards are and how to choose one that will work for them. In compiling the brochure, AARP Foundation referenced CFSI’s “Compass Guide to Prepaid,” among other materials, to outline appropriate product features. The brochure highlights such benefits of prepaid card accounts as the inability to spend more than the consumer has, and offers advice on how to reduce card account costs and risks.
Plastyc: Good Banking for All
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on November 2012Plastyc was one of the first companies to commit to CFSI's Compass Principles. Plastyc’s solutions come in the form of online-only products, Upside cards and iBankUP, which are intended to be full replacements for checking accounts. Plastyc addresses the desires of people who would otherwise live in a cash economy. Plastyc started with a model to serve the “too young to be banked,” but now delivers most of its services to the traditionally underserved, as well as to the growing number of “strivers” who prefer to manage their money online and by phone with the lowest possible fees.
Download the full Impact Story below.
National Community Tax Coalition (NCTC) Case Study
Submitted by Jessica_Kumar on November 2012The National Community Tax Coalition (NCTC) is a national network dedicated to strengthening economies, building communities, and improving lives through tax assistance and asset building. NCTC illustrates how nonprofits can incorporate financial product distribution into existing service delivery to provide more holistic solutions for underserved communities.
Download the full case study below.
