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FEDERAL DEPOSIT INSURANCE CORPORATION

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ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC INCLUSION

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PUBLIC MEETING

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2021

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The Committee met at 1:00 p.m. EDT via Video 

Teleconference, Jelena McWilliams, Chairman, 

presiding.

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT:

JELENA MCWILLIAMS, Chairman

MARTIN J. GRUENBERG, Director, Federal

Deposit Insurance Corporation

MICHAEL HSU, Acting Comptroller of the Currency

COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:

RAPHAEL BOSTIC, President and CEO, Federal 

Reserve Bank of Atlanta

NAOMI CAMPER, Chief Policy Officer, American 

Bankers Association

MARGARET LIBBY, President, MyPath

LISA MENSAH, President and CEO, Opportunity

Finance Network

JONATHAN MINTZ, President and CEO, Cities 

for Financial Empowerment Fund

JENNIFER TESCHER, President and CEO, 

Financial Health Network

CHRISTINA TETREAULT, Deputy Commissioner, 

Office of Financial Technology 

Innovation, California Department of 

Financial Protection and Innovation
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FDIC STAFF PRESENT:

JUSTIN COLE, Presidential Innovation Fellow, 

Office of Innovation

CHELSEA CRUZ, Senior Community Affairs 

Specialist

KEITH ERNST, Associate Director, Division of 

Depositor and Consumer Protection 

VICTOR GALLOWAY, Community Affairs Specialist

RYAN GOODSTEIN, Senior Economist, Center for

 Financial Research

SULTAN MEGHJI, Chief Innovation Officer

ELIZABETH ORTIZ, Deputy Director, Consumer 

and Community Affairs

MARK PEARCE, Director, Division of Depositor 

and Consumer Protection

NICK PODSIADLY, General Counsel

MIA SOWELL, Senior Community Affairs 

Specialist, Division of Depositor and 

Consumer Protection

ALSO PRESENT:

FAITH BAUTISTA, CEO, National Asian American 

Coalition - Team NAAC-Talino Finance

WINSTON DAMARILLO, CEO, Talino Venture Labs

DANIEL DODD-RAMIREZ, Associate Director, 

Office of Community Affairs, CFPB

FONTA GILLIAM, CEO, Wellthi - Team Discover

/Wellthi

KATE GOLDMAN, FinTech Program Lead, Milken 

Institute - Team iLluMInate

SONIA JOYNER, Director of Home Ownership 

Programs, NCATS Housing Finance Agency

PRASANT SAR, Supervisory Policy Analyst, 

Federal Housing Finance Agency

TONYA TYLER, Vice President, National Operations,

NeighborWorks America

TANYA VAN COURT, CEO, Goalsetter - Team 

Goalsetter

JENNY VONGXAY, VITA Program Coordinator, 

Connecticut Association of Human Services
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A-G-E-N-D-A 

Opening Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

4 

Members Roundtable

Raphael Bostic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Naomi Camper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Margaret Libby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lisa Mensah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Jonathan Mintz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

FDIC Inclusion Tech Sprint 'Breaking Down

Barriers: Reaching the Last Mile of the Unbanked'

Justin Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Chelsea Cruz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Fonta Gilliam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Tanya Van Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Winston Damarillo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Faith Bautista . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112

Housing Assistance Programs and Market Update

Ryan Goodstein . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Tonya Tyler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Victor Galloway . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Tax Time Opportunity to Expand Account Access

Jenny Vongxay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Daniel Dodd-Ramirez . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Closing Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 

1:05 p.m.

MS. ORTIZ: Good afternoon and good 

morning and welcome to the October meeting of the 

FDIC's Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion, 

better known as the ComE-IN. My name is Elizabeth 

Ortiz and I am the deputy director for consumer 

and community affairs, and I am going to kick off 

today's meeting with a brief statement, and then 

turn the meeting over to our chairman Jelena 

McWilliams.

Under the Government in the Sunshine 

Act whenever a quorum of the FDIC's board of 

directors deliberates on agency business such as 

a regulation or a matter of policy the board's 

meeting generally is required to be open to the 

public and is subject to certain notice 

requirements.

This meeting is not a board meeting 

called for such purposes. Accordingly, general 

discussions which may occur among board members 

at this meeting on subjects relevant to the FDIC's 
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responsibilities but which do not pose specific 

issues for official board resolution either now 

or reasonably anticipated in the future do not 

constitute a meeting that is required to be open 

to the public and subject to the notification 

requirements in accordance with Sunshine Act.

Similarly, informal or exploratory 

discussions among board members do not constitute 

a meeting that is required to be open to the public 

and subject to the notification requirements 

provided that any such discussions are preliminary 

in nature, that there are no relevant proposals 

for action pending before the FDIC, and that the 

merits of any proposed agency action would be open 

to full consideration by the board at a later time.

If during the course of this meeting 

staff identify matters that should be discussed 

by board members at a subsequent board meeting in 

order to comply with the Sunshine Act staff will 

advise the board members that those matters should 

be deferred and presented to the board in a meeting 

at a later date at which time board members can 
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engage in full deliberation on the proposals. 

And now it is my pleasure and my honor 

to introduce the chairman of the FDIC Jelena 

McWilliams.

CHAIRMAN MCWILLIAMS: Thank you so 

much, Liz, and everybody welcome to this fall's 

meeting of the Advisory Committee on Economic 

Inclusion. This is actually our third advisory 

committee meeting that we're holding virtually. 

Personally and professionally we have been working 

through the unique challenges presented to us by 

the unprecedented global pandemic for over 550 days 

now. And we actually had somebody on staff count.

And of course the pandemic has 

exacerbated the challenges facing families living 

in low and moderate income communities across the 

country and highlighted the importance of our work 

to advance financial inclusion. And from that 

perspective I have to tell you that these meetings 

in particular provide such a wonderful platform 

for us to expand our views, to hear from you and 

to understand what's going on in the communities 
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that you're all working with that I cannot tell 

you enough what a value we gain from these meetings.

The issue of financial inclusion in

particular is broader than the rate of unbanked 

households. And so I have tasked the FDIC to think 

of financial inclusion not solely through the lens 

of whether a person has a checking account or a 

credit card, but whether the financial system is 

working for them. And that's a much more 

comprehensive view of what does it mean is the 

financial system working for you.

This is why we're taking a multifaceted 

approach to the issue. As you know we all do our 

biennial survey on how America banks, but in 

addition to that we're engaged in several campaigns 

to promote banking relationship creation. One of 

them is our hashtag #GetBanked public awareness 

campaign that we have launched in Houston and 

Atlanta this past year to we believe create success. 

We're now considering platforms in other cities 

as well.

We're also making our website a 
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resource for consumers looking for safe ways to 

receive their economic impact payments and advance 

child tax credits. 

Our Office of Innovation FDITECH also 

conducted a tech sprint aimed at helping community 

banks identify data, tools, and other resources 

to help meet the needs of unbanked Americans in 

a cost effective manner.

Teams from around the country gathered 

in September to demonstrate their solutions and 

we're excited to unveil our findings from that.

And after more than two years of intense 

planning and development, and this goes to how slow 

everything in government moves, we were thrilled 

to announce in September the launch of a new 

investment fund, the so-called Mission-Driven Bank 

Fund to support minority depository institutions 

and community development financial institutions.

Mission-driven banks as many of you 

know serve predominantly lower income inner city 

neighborhoods, tribal areas, or rural income where 

mainstream banking and financial services are often 
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lacking.

Collectively our initial investors in 

the fund are pledging $120 million and we would 

love to see other companies and philanthropic 

organizations investing in the fund. One of the 

things that I am mostly excited about the fund is 

that the leverage is going to be up to 1 to 10, 

so for every dollar of the investment in the fund 

we can get up to $10 of lending in the communities 

that require the most. So $120 million could

easily translate in over $1 billion worth of lending 

in communities that need it.

Now, we remain vigilant as ever for 

other ways the agency can help our banks and our 

communities support financial inclusion. And 

before I turn to the substance of the meeting I 

would like to pause and say thank you to the FDIC 

staff and the ComE-IN Advisory Committee. 

You have been diligent in your efforts 

to continue inclusion opportunities, especially 

through the challenges of the pandemic, and you 

have heavily informed our thinking in this area. 
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So again as I mentioned at the very beginning I 

look very forward to our discussion today.

Now, some housekeeping. We're going 

to turn to our meeting this afternoon and we will 

start with a member roundtable as Liz mentioned. 

I think, Liz, we usually give five minutes, but 

we're going to be generous this time. I think you 

said eight minutes per person. And frankly I love 

the roundtable discussion because it really informs 

our thinking and helps us streamline a lot of issues 

that we are working on.

I look forward to hearing from each of 

you about not just the successes you have had in 

these areas, but also the challenges and how the 

FDIC can help solve and address these challenges, 

or how can we work together. If you have any 

questions we will be glad to answer them. I'm not 

as kind as Liz. If you have technical issues don't 

email me. And before I turn this to Mark Pearce 

to moderate the first panel I would like to 

recognize my fellow board members for any remarks 

they may have. So Director Gruenberg, do you have 
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any remarks you'd like to share?

DIRECTOR GRUENBERG: Yes, thank you, 

Jelena. First let me welcome all the members of 

the committee who are sharing their time with us 

today. We really value your engagement and very 

much look forward to the roundtable discussion.

It seems to me we have a lot to talk 

about today. The extraordinary uncertainty of the 

moment really raises questions for what the next 

few months are going to look like, and particularly 

the impact on low and moderate income communities, 

communities of color across the country. So 

getting your feedback on what you're seeing and 

your take on the situation I think would be 

extraordinarily helpful to us.

I will say I think this whole episode 

with the pandemic has if anything underscored the 

importance of access to the banking system for 

everybody who lives in the United States. And 

having an account on responsible and affordable 

terms has really become a necessity for functioning 

in our economy. So the basic mission of this 
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committee if anything is as or more relevant than 

it's ever been.

And I guess I would just as a final 

point, it does seem to me that the issue of housing 

affordability in the United States is really 

reaching a point of extraordinary severity and 

would really welcome any feedback from any of you. 

And I think this applies to both the rental market 

and home ownership. So any feedback from the 

committee members in regard to that would be of 

interest. So thanks again for taking the time and 

very much look forward to the discussion today.

CHAIRMAN MCWILLIAMS: Thank you, 

Marty. And we're so excited to have both of our 

outside directors with us here today. So you 

really actually get the full board right here for 

this committee meeting today. So I would like to 

ask if Acting Comptroller Hsu has any comments he 

would like to share with the group.

MR. HSU: Thank you, Chairman 

McWilliams. I'm probably going to echo some things 

that both you and Marty have highlighted. I want 
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to welcome the members of the committee and thank 

everyone for taking the time today. I'm really 

looking forward to today's discussion.

As Acting Comptroller for the Currency 

I've made reducing inequality one of my top 

priorities. And it's really kind of following on 

some of the things that Director Gruenberg and 

Chairman McWilliams have highlighted, that the 

disparate impacts of the pandemic have really just 

brought into sharp relief how important this topic 

is.

Banking -- we've heard this phrase 

before, it's expensive to be poor. Banking has 

a role in that in various ways, in both exacerbating 

that and alleviating that. And I think that now 

we're in a period where there's some opportunities 

to really tackle those things on head first. I 

think the more we have forums like this to discuss 

the ideas, the innovations of movement in that 

direction is really, really positive.

I've spoken recently about 

safeguarding trust in banking. Banking rests on 
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trust, we all know that. Trust rests on our values 

and how we manifest that through our actions. And 

I think this focus on the unbanked, the underbanked 

is really important.

I really like what Chairman McWilliams 

said earlier. It's not just about getting the 

account, it's about making things work for them 

and that folks know that the banking system has 

their back. I think that that's an important 

element both of serving them and of building that 

trust which I think we're all headed towards.

In addition to the things that Director 

Gruenberg raised to talk about affordable housing 

and access I would be interested in hearing folks' 

thought on cryptocurrencies because I think what 

I'm hearing is that there are some underserved 

populations which are very interested in that space 

and have actually moved into that space in a higher 

proportion than some other populations. And I 

think that reflects a lot of different things.

I know in some quarters it's being 

billed as a way to increase inclusion. And I think 
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the jury's still out on whether that actually is 

the case or not, but it would be interesting to 

hear members' thoughts on that, if that's something 

that folks can talk about. 

So with that I'm excited about the 

agenda and look forward to the discussion.

CHAIRMAN MCWILLIAMS: Thank you so 

much, Mike, and thank you for being here. And we 

also have the acting CFPB Director Dave Uejio. 

Director Uejio, do you have any comments or remarks 

you would like to share with us today? Maybe he 

can't dial in. All right, I'll say this. He 

probably shares all of our prior remarks and 

sentiments. 

So let's get this started, Mark. I 

will turn it over to you, Mark Pearce, our head 

of Division of Consumer Protection. We're all 

excited to see what we can learn today. Thank you 

all.

MR. PEARCE: Great. Thank you, 

Chairman McWilliams. It's good to be with members 

of the committee today. I just wanted to make sure 
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the camera was actually on. It seems to be.

So I'm excited to have the opportunity 

to moderate this part of the program. This is 

really where we get to hear from members of the 

committee and the key challenges and opportunities 

for inclusion from your perspective. And this is 

often one of my personal favorite parts of the 

meetings because it's an opportunity for us as an 

agency, for me personally to step back a little 

bit and hear what's top of mind for this talented, 

dedicated and expert group of members.

And I always find something new, some 

new insight, or new dimension, or something that's 

just said in a way that makes me think a little 

bit differently about opportunities to enhance 

inclusion in the banking system.

So, no pressure on you for these remarks 

because I know they're always great. So to gain 

your insights what we'll do is we'll just go around 

the room, the virtual room that we have, and hear 

from each member. And to manage the conversation 

we'll be going in alphabetical order, and after 
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each member concludes we'll just turn it over to 

the next member on the list. Hopefully at the end 

we'll have a few minutes for open discussion or 

follow-up questions on some of the items that 

members raise, or items that members of the FDIC 

board have already raised this morning, or this 

afternoon depending on where you live.

And so with that I will turn it over 

to Raphael Bostic to start us off. It looks like 

he's managed to get the technology pieces working 

so let's keep our fingers crossed. Raphael.

MR. BOSTIC: Hey Mark, thank you very 

much and good afternoon everyone, or good morning 

for those of you on the west coast. It's really 

good to be here, it's a pleasure. Technology 

usually doesn't work for me so I've become more 

skilled in finding workarounds. I was confident 

I'd eventually be able to get on so it's good to 

actually see you.

I'm going to start with some reactions 

to some of the opening comments. First, I do want 

to echo exactly what Marty said in that the pandemic 
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has exacerbated every weak spot in our economy and 

in our society. It has exposed just how important 

it is that we acknowledge those and address them 

because those cracks got bigger, not smaller over 

the last year and a half, and precariousness has 

gone up in a significant way.

For Acting Comptroller Hsu I actually 

really like the way you said the banking system 

has their back. At our bank we have a tagline an 

economy works for all. And if an economy is going 

to work for everyone banking has got to work for 

everyone. So I may steal that line and that 

approach moving forward because I think it really 

does speak to a philosophy and a strategy that 

people have got to trust in our system, and trust 

that the system is going to help them do good things 

and not take advantage of them. That's really 

important.

Which then pivots to the cryptocurrency 

issue. Now, I'll just say I'm a Luddite in general, 

but this issue I think particularly for people that 

don't have a lot of resources is particularly 
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important.

In short I think cryptocurrency is a 

high-risk proposition. And because there's so 

much volatility in valuation it's very hard to have 

any certainty that the wealth of the amount of money 

you have now will be the same amount two days from 

now, or five days from now, or a week from now.

And because of that if you need those 

funds and it is very important you're playing a 

much riskier game than I think many people might 

appreciate. Or maybe they do appreciate it and 

they're just sort of desperate because they don't 

think they have any options that they're going to 

do that anyway. But however you put it there is 

some precariousness that is introduced and adding 

risk on top of that makes me nervous. So that's 

my view on the crypto space.

For my update I just wanted to highlight 

three things. Actually it's four. One is I just 

wanted to acknowledge that the work that we are 

doing with the OCC, with the FDIC, and with the 

NCUA and others on CRA, I think this is incredibly 
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important. This is a regulation that can really 

shape how capital is deployed into communities and 

into families. And I'm really excited by that. 

I'm hopeful that we can come together and really 

have this be a muscular regulation that drives a 

lot of change in this space.

I've mentioned before that my bank has 

convened a special committee on payments inclusion 

which is really designed to make sure that as 

innovation happens in payments it doesn't exclude 

those that are most precarious. So it needs to 

embrace everyone. 

That committee continues to meet. We 

are focusing on three areas. One is really to be 

much clearer on why people use cash and what they 

see as the barriers to using some of the more modern 

and digital tools. 

What bank actions might be available 

to advance progress on this, and then just research 

to better, more deeply understand what barriers 

there are. And I do want to acknowledge Mark 

Pearce. Mark, thank you for agreeing to serve on 
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this committee. You've been very helpful to us 

and look forward to continued engagement on that.

The second -- the third thing I wanted 

to mention is just some updates on work that we've 

been doing regarding our bank strategic priority 

of increasing mobility and resilience. Our folks 

call that IMAR, so that's an easy acronym. I don't 

really like to use acronyms so I'm not going to 

say that anymore, but you'll hear us talk about 

that on staff so that's what that is.

And I wanted to in particular talk about 

one initiative that we're doing called Advancing 

Careers for Low-income Families. And this isn't 

about financial inclusion per se, but it's about 

financial stability and the trajectory of a 

family's finances which has a direct implication 

for the use of tools and the like.

One of the things that we've identified 

through this is we really focus on something called 

the benefits cliff. We know that in many means 

tested programs as you get more income if you're 

above a threshold you lose dollar for dollar in 
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terms of your benefits. 

If you're a multiple social programs 

you can lose -- for every dollar you earn you may 

lose three or four dollars depending on what 

programs you're in. And that's a disincentive for 

people trying to better themselves and get to a 

higher trajectory on their career ladder.

So we've actually built a tool called 

the Career Ladder Identifier and Financial 

Forecaster, or the CLIFF tool, which is used to 

help people map out income trajectories if you make 

certain choices in your careers. And it also 

incorporates these benefits cliffs explicitly so 

you can see exactly what it means to make some 

choices in terms of self-sufficiency. And our hope 

is that this will help families and workers develop 

plans that can get them more clearly to 

self-sufficiency.

I will say that this has been wildly 

popular, far beyond my imagination. We've got 

partnerships with Buffalo, New York City, Utah, 

Wisconsin, Connecticut, Missouri, Kansas, Arizona, 
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and states throughout my district. All of them 

where people are really excited because they're 

understanding that by mapping this out it makes 

the choices clearer, and it also makes the 

dysfunction of the incentive structure clearer.

We're getting a lot of policymakers who 

are coming to us and saying this is making it easier 

for us to have conversations about ways we might 

rethink the incentive structure around these 

benefits programs and really try to address the 

longstanding and intergenerational dependence that 

we've seen.

One of the things I try to emphasize 

in this is that this is an us problem. This is 

not the people who are on these programs. They're 

responding to the incentives that we've set up. 

We've got to do better.

I know I'm running short on time, Mark, 

so I'm going to just quickly just say I would 

encourage you to all go to the website and look, 

to our website. We have a lot of information on 

this.
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Three initiatives I would just ask you 

to look at. One is in the state of Alabama which 

is not typically seen as a leader in workforce and 

these sort of issues. They have an interesting 

tool called DAVID. DAVID is their acronym. And 

they're working with their workforce development 

to help Alabamians plan and make plans.

In south Florida we're working in 

Broward County with Broward College on a program 

they have called Broward Up which is designed to 

help students who are on assistance programs plan 

for their education and their career ladder.

Then a third one is also in Florida, 

in Martin and St. Lucie Counties with the Florida 

Children's Council. And there we're helping to 

run a pilot that's exploring whether integrating 

workforce development and childcare support 

programs can mitigate some of the benefits 

(inaudible) program effects that we see in those 

areas.

The last thing I'll just say is I 

mentioned in a previous one of our meetings that 
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we are running a Racism and the Economy series, 

we the Federal Reserve System. The next one is 

on October 20, it's actually the ninth in our series 

and it's on wealth and the wealth divide. And then 

the next one after that is on November 16 and our 

tenth one is on access to credit. So both of those 

are of considerable relevance for this committee. 

 

And I would just say those have been 

really tremendous webinars. I hope all of you have 

had the chance to see them. They've been extremely 

solutions oriented which I think is particularly 

important and it really shares the spirit of this 

committee. 

So I'll just close there and just say 

it's a pleasure to see you guys. It's really nice 

to come back together and I'm looking forward to 

when we can do this in person. And I guess we'll 

go to Naomi Camper. So Naomi, you're C.

MS. CAMPER: Thank you very much. I 

don't know if I'm on yet. 

MR. PEARCE: You're on, Naomi.
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MS. CAMPER: Okay, great, thank you. 

So good afternoon to everyone and thanks so much 

for convening this committee. It's really, really 

important work and I'm honored to be a part of it.

Let me start with a couple of responses 

to the questions that were posed at the beginning 

and then I'll see how much time I have left for 

other items.

So first of all let me echo the remarks 

about the importance of the unified rulemaking on 

CRA. And on behalf of -- I represent the American 

Bankers Association and banks really value 

predictability and clear rules of the road. So 

we are very much looking forward to getting clear 

guidance so that we can make sure that we are 

fulfilling our obligations to the communities we 

serve.

To Acting Comptroller Hsu's questions 

on crypto and the promise of crypto in terms of 

economic inclusion I guess I would echo President 

Bostic's caution about whether it's a magic bullet. 

A couple of other -- this would be a whole 
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roundtable on its own, but a couple of just things 

that we tend to think about.

Crypto, while it was originally 

contemplated maybe as a peer to peer exchange, to 

the extent that someone might be thinking of using 

it as a way to pay the world more generally that 

does involve a lot of transactions cost. So that's 

something that we would want to keep an eye on.

But even more important would be 

questions that we would have about consumer 

protections, consumer expectations about the 

protections, and then this will be a theme that 

I now launch into about the importance of a full 

banking relationship. And as I talk about the 

progress that we've seen with our Bank On initiative 

in collaboration with the CFE Fund we are keenly 

aware that a basic transaction account is the 

beginning and not the full end of our initiative.

So on Bank On, as we mentioned I guess 

at the May meeting ABA last October launched a 

really aggressive campaign to encourage all of our 

members to offer Bank On accounts. And again, hats 
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off to the FDIC for all the work that they did in

creating the rubric for it.

We've seen incredible momentum that I 

know that Jonathan Mintz will also touch on. We 

are up to I believe more than 150 certified 

accounts. We're seeing a lot of progress both from 

large and midsize banks offering them, but 

incredible momentum from the community banking 

sector.

This is all the result of really 

intentional engagement. We've had a steady stream 

of webinars, big main stage pushes from all of our 

events, lots of communication, and we think one 

of the really secret sauces is peer to peer 

discussions. We are really excited later this 

month for the ABA convention which is our first 

live event in a very long time. We not only have 

a main stage discussion about Bank On but we also 

have a lot of peer engagement lined up to try to 

get FOMO going and get even more sense of 

excitement.

We also continue our work with the core 
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service providers to help to get their assistance 

in really encouraging banks to start their 

accounts. 

We are also looking at what we'll call 

for our own efforts 2.0 and that involves increased 

marketing around the Bank On brand, participation 

in coalitions, and also making sure that banks are 

aware of the benefits (telephonic interference) 

all of us from data reporting.

I will say we're still very focused on 

the Child Tax Credit moment as a way of encouraging 

people to get banked, and looking forward to the 

tax time opportunity discussion later today.

I do want to reiterate that we continue 

to have really escalated concern about policy 

proposals that would essentially de-link deposit 

taking and lending, and in some sense encourage 

people who are outside the system not to come in, 

but to find alternatives. So that's not our 

favorite direction for policymaking. So that 

would include credit accounts, postal banking, 

public banks, special purpose charters. 
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We believe that those alternative 

proposals are based on a premise that affordable 

banking services are not universally available, 

and we will continue our push to make sure that 

they are.

We also do worry about uneven 

regulation and consumer protection with some of 

these alternatives and so really would encourage 

a consumer oriented discussion around what is the 

best way to make sure that people really feel 

included in the banking system, and back to the 

other point that you mentioned, to make sure that 

the banking system has customers' backs even once 

they come into the system.

And then just a quick note that we are 

aware that transaction banking is just a first step. 

We are really encouraged flowing from some of the 

recent regulatory changes to see some member banks 

offering small dollar lending. We know that's an 

area of real need in low/moderate income 

communities, and we look forward to seeing more 

products being offered in a responsible way.
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Really excited about the fintech 

discussion later today. Fintech partnerships, 

especially where the technologies can help banks 

reach LMI communities is a big priority and we thank 

FDIC and others for their innovations and 

leadership in that area.

A couple of things. I know I'm coming 

to the end of my time also. We remain very 

concerned about an increase in fraud that we've 

seen throughout the pandemic. We are re-launching 

our Banks Never Ask That campaign to raise awareness 

among consumers about really horrible schemes that 

are there trying to steal their money.

Our ABA Foundation has a couple of areas 

just to alert you to. We plan to re-launch our 

Older Americans Benchmarking Survey that really 

shines a spotlight on the terrible scourge of elder 

financial fraud. 

And we also have some new work to be 

released in about a month about financial inclusion 

for justice involved (inaudible) populations. 

I am again really interested in the 
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housing discussion later today. We continue to 

work really hard on forbearance and offering our 

customers solutions to problems. But on the issue 

of affordability banks come at it from a couple 

of angles, both in terms of providing financing, 

but also as employers. And just the other day we 

got some incoming email from a bank CEO raising 

the concern that they have a real problem with 

affordability in the area where they are, and it's 

exacerbating their staffing situations as they seek 

to hire and retain staff.

So, there's so much else I could talk 

about but I don't want to go beyond my time so with 

that I will turn it over to the next speaker. 

Thanks so much.

MR. PEARCE: I think Margaret, it's 

your turn.

MS. LIBBY: Great. Thank you, Mark. 

So good morning to my fellow west coasters and 

good afternoon to those of you in other places 

around the country. It's great to be here. I'm 

always invigorated by hearing the reports this part 
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of the meeting, and just wanted to touch on -- I 

had some things that I wanted to share, but I wanted 

to touch on some of the questions that were raised. 

But maybe first I'll say I'm with MyPath 

and we're based out here on the west coast but 

focused nationally on supporting low-income BIPOC 

youth and young adults to bank, and save, and build 

credit, really position them to be on a path to 

wealth-building. 

And so sort of in that context we have 

been hearing questions and interest on the part 

of young people from in our partner organizations 

around cryptocurrency. And I think without going 

too much into detail I would just echo the concerns 

that I think Raphael and Naomi already mentioned. 

And I think the other thing that I 

wanted to touch on is just we've been really 

encouraged by the interest on the part of the OCC, 

the NCUA, and the FDIC around this issue that we've 

been focused on for a number of years, non-custodial 

accounts for minors who are old enough to work which 

in many cases means support their families through 
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the income they're earning, but also begin to have 

some money to start saving for their own life goals, 

but who are not old enough to bank on their own, 

and that that's a real missed opportunity from a 

banking perspective and from a youth development 

perspective. And certainly for youth who don't 

have parents it positions them to really be at risk 

to getting on a path where they're using check 

cashers, moving to payday lenders, rent to own, 

and that.

So we've been encouraged by 

conversations and opportunities to share this work 

and some of the data that we've gathered over the 

years in partnership with financial institutions 

that have adopted our banking standards and 

provided these kinds of accounts, and seen them 

really work, seen young people continue as members 

and customers. So that's one thing, I just wanted 

to acknowledge that that has been happening and 

we're really encouraged by that.

I think the other thing that has been 

happening that I wanted to share with the group 
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is that we're seeing a lot of interest in this idea 

of youth access to banking, so financial inclusion 

for young people, and financial capability in 

general on the part of larger sort of networks that 

support different subpopulations of BIPOC youth. 

So we're seeing a new initiative with 

opportunity youth, so youth who are disconnected 

from school and from work. Large network of 

organizations supporting opportunity youth around 

the country who are launching an initiative around 

how to think about financial capability and its 

integration into a variety of kinds of programs 

that support opportunity youth.

So systems involved youth, foster 

youth, young parents and so forth. And so I think 

that's an opportunity for connecting some of the 

Get Banked lessons and that strategy in that kind 

of work.

There's also an initiative really 

looking at -- it's a handful of foster youth support 

organizations really looking at how do you 

integrate financial capability but with a racial 
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equity lens to support emancipating foster youth. 

So I think it's been encouraging to see 

this kind of interest just in the last couple of 

years, and even stretching back I think with groups 

like Jonathan's taking on the Summer Jobs Connect 

and making sure that youth who are working in the 

summer are getting connected to banking.

I'll touch on I think one of the lessons 

that we've learned and seen through our partners 

in other parts of the country is that it's powerful, 

and I think this has been mentioned by others. 

It's powerful to get the bank account, but there's 

so much more that needs to happen to really activate 

that and to really start to position young people 

to get an economic footing that will make a 

difference in their lives.

And so one of the things we've been 

really looking at and seeing others across the 

country look at and start to stand up pilots around 

is guaranteed income. And we see a particular 

promise with that approach with young people as 

they're moving through this inflection point of 
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a transition into adulthood and seeing the power 

of boosting their income during that period, in 

particular with vulnerable youth populations.

So there's a pilot that's publicly 

funded in Santa Clara County in California that 

was so -- and that was focused on emancipating 

foster youth. The outcomes were so strong that 

the state has now -- there's new legislation to 

do this, to establish a pot of money for a number 

of counties to apply to replicate what's happened 

in Santa Clara County.

MyPath has been providing with a 

partner, with a credit union partner a financial 

mentoring, sort of financial coaching layer to the 

program. And one of the things that I'll say is 

that the connections around banking first and then 

supporting folks to file taxes, and then seeing 

the foster youth not only be seeing this $1,000 

monthly payment, but the Child Tax Credit, the 

Golden State Stimulus. I think there's so much 

potential when you're combining multiple 

interventions like that. The coaching, the 
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guaranteed income sort of leverages a number of 

other benefits for youth.

So I think I've got about maybe a 

minute. So I'll say that, so that's happening in 

the state. We're hoping that more of these kinds 

of pilots will surface, and it seems like with some 

of the interest we're seeing they may.

Focusing in on a couple of the things 

that we're focused on organizationally in addition 

to that guaranteed income and coaching is building 

out the next iteration of our technology platform 

to really support this idea that banking isn't 

enough. You need the information, you need the 

relationships, the trusted relationships for youth 

to really get on that path.

We've also supported a team of youth 

to build a youth economic bill of rights which we've 

shared with a number of groups and also the CFPB 

and are moving on some of those initiatives.

The final thing that I will say that 

we're seeing a lot of is scams. And so that's 

something -- I'll just touch on that briefly because 
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I think I'm at time. But just a number of scams 

that are targeting young people. And so we're 

looking at ways to combat that and would love to 

talk to others who are interested in those kinds 

of efforts. 

So thank you so much and looking forward 

to the remainder of the meeting and conversation. 

MR. PEARCE: Great. Thanks, 

Margaret. I think, Lisa, you're up next. Looks 

like, Lisa, you may still be on mute. Maybe while 

we work through --

MS. MENSAH: Can you hear me now?

MR. PEARCE: Oh, there you are. 

Great.

MS. MENSAH: All right. Thank you. 

I think this is my third meeting. I only know the 

group in the pandemic, and I appreciate deeply this 

deep dive on economic inclusion at Federal Deposit 

Insurance.

I think our members, we have 350 of the 

1,200 CDFIs in the country. And I think that the 

issues that are most in front of us right now come 
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out of this time of pandemic. 

And one of the issues is an important 

one. There have been new resources. I feel like 

this has been a field of institutions committed 

to economic inclusion, whether they are financing 

small businesses, financing housing, financing 

facilities, providing essential financial services 

whether those are mortgages, or consumer accounts 

in a credit union or a CDFI bank. 

All these CDFIs wake up on economic 

inclusion. What's been missing in recent years 

are resources, is critical (inaudible), is 

partnerships. And frankly, the silver lining of 

this pandemic has been that we can begin to see 

some partners. 

So I'm -- am I getting a message that 

I'm not on camera? I'll keep going. At least I'm 

talking. But I would say a couple of things.

First of all, we have seen the first 

movement of $12 billion toward the CDFI industry. 

Eight hundred and sixty-three rapid response 

grants were made in June to CDFIs, banks, credit 
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unions, and loan funds. And those have been 

essential funds. And every dollar of that will 

be leveraged. And so I can speak to a little good 

news, that the resources have reached our CDFIs 

and are starting to be deployed.

I think that's also clear there was a 

second round, something called ECIP, the Emergency 

Community Investment Program. We just learned 

this week that the $9 billion of availability, that 

there was over $13 billion of interest. So well 

over subscribed. So I'm very pleased that some 

of those resources have come.

I think if you asked most CDFIs what 

this moment has felt like, what is sitting in front 

of them there is a sense of opportunity, but feels 

like a chase to move fast. And I think this is 

where resources are so critical, and we are watching 

very carefully the bills that are now in Congress, 

both infrastructure and reconciliation. And so 

many critical pieces of those vehicles will have 

big impacts on how economic inclusion is financed 

through our members and through this field.
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So, I would say that is heavy on the 

minds. There are just huge portions of housing 

resources and the way we have thought about 

expanding our work, making permanent some of the 

work that's been done in small business. So this 

is really critical. We're really watching this 

and it becomes extremely important.

I will echo that for most of the last 

few years CRA was a big worry for our field. It's 

been called the jet fuel of why banks have partnered 

with CDFIs. And without CRA resources or imagining 

a big constriction in those caused great 

consternation in our field. So we are glad that 

there's been a step back and an attempt to pull 

all three regulators together. That is a sigh of 

relief. That's all I need to say about that.

I would say, I'm going to be a little 

brief, but I want to talk about where we see 

opportunities. The country is talking now about 

economic inclusion in a way that embraces the wealth 

gap, and that embraces historical challenges of 

inequality and racial inequality. And this 
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national conversation gives space for the work of 

CDFIs to lean in on economic inclusion. So this 

to us is a huge opportunity to make clear that what 

we do every day, whether it's in housing, or 

financing small businesses, or providing critical 

facilities, or financing healthcare, daycare, is 

very, very vital.

And I think this is a new opportunity 

for us to frame economic inclusion as the work that 

has been left out and left behind, and gives us 

a new way to advance resources.

Finally, I would also say that we 

started to have some conversations with FDIC on 

things like the Mission-driven Bank Fund. New 

partnerships with the private sector are very, very 

important, but we call it the money inside is vital, 

but the money outside. How do we underwrite and 

make sure those funds reach very deep to do the 

work that needs to be done, all the assets that 

need to be financed.

This is a bumpier side, it's harder. 

It's harder to go deep. Our members are on Native 
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reservations, and in deep rural areas, and serving 

deeply in urban areas. And those kind of loan 

demand may not recover as quickly as other hot 

markets. So the timing of those funds, very, very 

important. So I just look forward to other 

opportunities to work on questions like -- and 

issues like the Mission-driven Bank Fund.

I would just say this remains -- it is 

always better to have the attention than not. So 

very thankful for this time and I will move to the 

next person.

MR. PEARCE: Great. Thank you, Lisa. 

Jonathan, you're up.

MR. MINTZ: Great. Hello, everyone. 

I'm happy to be with you all, and I've been looking 

forward to this conversation and like everyone else 

has said it's been so nice to be able to hear where 

everybody is thinking.

I could talk for a long time about many 

of the wonderful issues that have been brought up 

here. I do just want to quickly echo everybody's 

excitement about CRA clarity. It is as Lisa said 
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real jet fuel for such important work. So the 

clearer and the more inspiring the better.

And I would also share absolutely 

concerns about cryptocurrency and other approaches 

to sort of luring people out of the mainstream 

banking system. I don't think that's the right 

direction, but maybe we can talk a little bit about 

that later.

This is an exciting time for us to be 

stepping back and taking stock. Not only was I 

thinking in preparation of today's meeting, but 

we have our Bank On biennial national conference 

coming November 15 and 16. And so I've been really 

thinking in particular around advances in banking 

access.

As a Bloomberg administration alum I 

always start with the data. The FDIC has always 

laid out the scope and the direction of the 

challenge plus other experiential research. And 

then for us there's the Bank On equation which is 

that we increase supply, we stoke demand, and then 

we invest in the connectors of the two.
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So let's start with the scope of the 

challenge and where we are. We are happily making 

progress but there are still some $36 million people 

outside of the system to one degree or another. 

And that's not just a data point, it matters. We've 

all heard forever that it can cost up to $40,000 

over the course of a worker's lifetime. We know 

at the CFE Fund through some of our other programs 

like the financial empowerment centers that our 

city partners have across the country that being 

unbanked also has a significant handicapping effect 

on other efforts to advance stability.

Being unbanked, even working directly 

repeatedly with a professional financial counselor 

makes a person half as likely to be able to increase 

his or her savings, and one-third less likely to 

be able to increase their credit score. But if 

they get banked those numbers turn around at an 

astonishing rate.

There's also the pandemic safety factor 

that we've all sadly witnessed. And what it means 

to not have been able to transact at home, both 
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in terms of receiving critical dollars and paying 

bills.

And then there's the racial overlay, 

as if this isn't important enough in comparison 

to 13 percent of the White population being outside 

of the system I think the numbers are 44 percent 

for the Black population, 37 percent for the 

Hispanic population. That kind of overlay says 

everything. The only good news is that those 

numbers really matter these days and I think have 

gone a long way to advance all of our collective 

efforts.

So as I say we think about the supply 

at Bank On. We have our national account 

standards. Purely coincidentally I happen to have 

some previous swag. Those of you who don't have 

a Bank On pen and can't pull out this very handy, 

impossibly small font demonstration of the national 

account standards please give me a call after this 

meeting and I will have a drone drop one at your 

house immediately.

But when we -- let's see, back in 
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January of this year we had 60 financial 

institutions who were offering accounts that we 

certified as meeting Bank On standards. There are 

now between 145 and 150 with dozens still in the 

works working with us. That is hugely thanks to 

the work of the FDIC and also you heard from Naomi 

at the American Bankers Association. These 

partnerships have been extraordinary and another 

plug to CRA makes a big difference.

The number 145 as exciting as it is, 

and as much blood, sweat and tears as has gone into 

that number, the number 145 doesn't really tell 

the story anymore. What I think is more 

interesting is at this point about half of every 

bank branch in this country now offers a Bank On 

certified account. Over 55 percent of the national 

deposit market share providers, banks in this 

country have accounts that are certified. So I 

think that this is no longer a boutique idea. I 

think it is increasingly becoming a mainstream 

approach to what safe banking looks like. 

Naomi talked earlier about how useful 
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it is for large organizations to have clarity. 

I think that one of the real advantages of the 

standard is not just that it is a good account that 

addresses people's needs and concerns, but that 

it's an account that works for financial 

institutions as well.

About a minute ago I got an email from 

one of our banking partners that said we don't 

charge off anything on this account. This account 

works on its own for us. And I think that that's 

really important and the standards offer that kind 

of clarity.

So the supply side of the equation for 

banking access from our perspective is 

turbocharged, and we expect that pace to continue. 

Then I think about demand. As many of

you know we have a partnership with Federal Reserve 

System in St. Louis. They have opened for us the 

Bank On National Data Hub or the BOND Hub and banks 

that offer certified accounts can submit 

confidential data that the Federal Reserve Bank 

then aggregates and reports on.
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In 2019 alone, and I wish I had more 

up to date data but I don't, but in 2019 alone 1.9 

million certified accounts were opened, and of 

those accounts 85 percent of the people who opened 

those accounts were new to that financial 

institution which is the best proxy we have for 

whether or not they are coming in from outside of 

the system. 

Overall some 5.8 million accounts have 

been opened that are Bank On certified and that's 

just back to 2019 data so that's pretty exciting.

The other thing that's really important 

to us and I really want to thank the Bank Policy 

Institute for doing some real crunching of some 

of the numbers from the Federal Reserve's BOND Hub. 

We know that 60 percent of the accounts that were 

opened were opened in communities that were over 

50 percent minority residents. That also 

represents double the percentage of bank branches 

in those communities. So these accounts are not 

only speaking to financial institutions, and not 

only speaking to the public in general, they are 
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in particular speaking to minority communities and 

that's very gratifying and encouraging.

So I talked about supply, talked about 

demand, and I think at the end of the day where 

we really work hardest is on the question of the 

connectors between the two. We support -- at this 

point there are about 90 coalitions around the 

country, most of them local. Increasingly there 

are some regional coalitions. We have an oncoming 

slew of state coalitions that are starting, and 

those coalitions each within their own communities 

are working on identifying payment streams, 

particularly large payment streams in order to 

integrate banking access into the receipt of those 

payment streams.

Our friend Margaret mentioned one of 

our programs that we've had for several years called 

Summer Jobs Connect where we've been doing that 

work. I think we're in a couple of dozen cities 

now connecting Safe Accounts for young adults that 

are getting their first pay. So just in time.

There are two connectors that we are 
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over the moon about that have developed since we 

last saw each other here at the ComE-IN group. 

The first I want to say and thanks to our partners 

in Maryland and the Maryland area Bank On coalition 

is an incredible program with the Maryland 

Department of Labor. The Maryland Department of 

Labor was pushing out unfortunately more and more 

payments to people who are on unemployment. Those 

payments were in the form of checks or pay cards.

Thanks to their dedication to this 

issue and some real hard work on the Bank On side 

of the equation, particularly in Maryland and our 

friends at Maryland CASH for those of you who know 

them that has changed. The Maryland Department 

of Labor now is not using checks and pay cards but 

in fact has set up a way for people to submit account 

data to be able to get their unemployment checks 

quickly, freely, safely, directly deposited. And 

of course what's most exciting from our perspective 

is that the Maryland Department of Labor is 

encouraging people who don't yet have a bank account 

to specifically open up an account that is certified 
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as meeting national Bank On standards and that's 

very exciting.

One state down, 49 to go, but we're 

thrilled about what's happening in Maryland and 

really grateful for that kind of proof of concept 

that if we all gather around a single standard and 

certify against it that not only does that provide 

clarity to potential customers and potential 

providers, but it also gives government bodies the 

comfort level to be able to encourage people in 

a specific rather than a generic way about where 

to open an account.

That leads me to the thing I am most 

excited about, and something we started talking 

about at our last meeting which is the advanced 

child care tax credit payments. At our last 

meeting we said I think by my count 37 times that 

that payment represented the single greatest 

opportunity as far as I could tell ever to integrate 

banking access into recurring large-scale payment 

streams.

Thanks in particular to the FDIC's 
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efforts the IRS agreed. They opened a portal into 

which people could put account information so that 

they could get this money directly deposited. And 

again, super excitingly encouraged people who 

needed an account to open a Bank On certified 

account, and then to give them that account number 

in order to get the direct deposit.

We are talking about 36 to 39 million 

people. I think they estimated maybe one-third 

of them they had no banking information for so we 

are talking about a huge number of people. In just 

our landing site alone the traffic that has been 

generated by these efforts, we've had over 200,000 

visits and nearly half of those visits have led 

people to click through to one or more of our 

certified account providers.

One more quick thing if I've got a 

minute left. Mark can wave his hand furiously if 

I'm not. Mark, stop. I will just say also that 

Bank On has been experimenting as the FDIC has with 

their incredible Get Banked campaign. 

We've really been experimenting with 
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something we've never done before at the CAB Fund 

which is reaching out directly to consumers, not 

just supporting our partners. We have had ads that 

have generated over 8 million views with a pretty 

small investment in just a few months.

The engagement rate with those ads has 

been 25 percent higher than industry averages which 

tells us that people are hungry for this information 

and will act upon it. Seventy-seven percent of 

the people who come to our site click through from 

these ads to a site where they can open a certified 

account from one of our provider partners which 

is really just thrilling.

So I'll just say in conclusion 

obviously a lot is going on. The focus on the 

unbanked is a golden opportunity for us to really 

drive forward. The kinds of successes that we are 

seeing through these partnerships are incredibly 

encouraging. 

And when I think about some of the 

efforts that you see out there to lure people away 

from banking with other approaches to transacting, 
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my takeaway is why would we lure people away from 

a system when the system can meet those needs with 

all of the protections that among other things the 

FDIC and others brings to the table. So with that 

I'll say thank you for listening. I'm excited to 

hear the rest of the afternoon and I'll turn it 

over to Pamela.

MR. PEARCE: So Pamela is unavailable 

today. She was unable to join us due to a minute 

issue that came up and so fortunately we can now 

turn it over to Jennifer.

MS. TESCHER: Hi, everybody. Can you 

hear me okay? Yes, okay. I was waiting for the 

thumbs up. I really hate following Jonathan. He 

is a tough act to follow and as I say at every meeting 

I am just absolutely blown away at the success that 

they are having, and the difference that they are 

making. So kudos to everyone who's been involved.

I want to take the conversation in a 

slightly different direction. Actually, I'm going 

to take it back to the beginning to the opening 

remarks by Chairman McWilliams. I'll come back 
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to crypto at the end. I agree that I think it could 

be a whole session in and of itself and I would 

welcome that opportunity. I probably have a 

slightly different perspective than the others on 

the phone, but I ultimately probably land in the 

same place. But I'll come back to that at the end.

At the beginning the chairman said that 

financial inclusion is really not just about having 

an account, but it's about the financial system 

working for people. And the acting comptroller

agreed with that. Raphael talked a little bit 

about that. I think everyone really likes that 

idea.

And particularly given the information 

and the data that Jonathan shared it's right to 

be thinking that way because we keep whittling away 

at the number of people who are truly outside the 

banking system. And I want to submit that as we 

think about what else, or what more beyond account 

ownership, that what we really are talking about 

is financial health. Maybe you want to call it 

financial wellness. Maybe you want to call it 
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well-being. I'm a little less concerned about the 

semantics, but I think it's really important that 

we not only recognize as the Chairman did the need 

for a holistic approach and an approach that focuses 

on the outcome we actually want which is not just 

an account. Having an account is the beginning. 

And we actually then need to start using 

frameworks that help us define and measure 

financial health. Because if we don't we will find 

ourselves stuck on the same hamster wheel. And 

so I want to just spend a minute talking about some 

really exciting work that's been going on globally. 

Queen Maxima of the Netherlands as many of you 

know is the United Nations Secretary-General's 

Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for 

Development. That is a huge mouthful. But 

essentially she has used her platform for the last 

many years in working with the UN to really 

represent financial inclusion globally.

And late last year she convened a 

working group on the topic of financial health 

because in the same way that I just said that we're 
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nearing the point of everyone being included as 

financial inclusion globally has made strides 

thanks in large part to technology. I mean there 

are still 1.7 billion people who don't have an 

account, but that's a dramatic reduction from years 

passed. 

And so the financial inclusion 

community globally has for the last five or more 

years really been wrestling with okay, well what 

does that mean for us. What's next for us. And 

we, because of our focus on financial health even 

though we work in the United States have done some 

work with other organizations that are focused 

globally, and in particular in developing countries 

to understand how financial health as a framework, 

as a methodology, as a measurement system would 

apply in other places around the world.

And so the queen really took this on 

and they just put out three different work products 

as a result of these working groups. One is aimed 

at policymakers, financial sector policymakers 

around the world, making the case for why financial 
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health matters and what the implications are on 

the well-being of the population.

They also put out a similar document 

really focused on the business case for financial 

services providers. 

And then the third publication they put 

out was really about measuring financial health, 

concepts, considerations, how to think about doing 

that. And the work is done. The queen and her 

staff are really looking now to take the next step 

in each of those three areas, right, public sector, 

private sector, and measurement.

And in a funny way the United States 

which I think has been far ahead on this issue. 

I mean, both we and the CFPB over the last five 

to seven years have done significant research and 

work on this concept. We are at risk of falling 

behind.

I just learned yesterday that over the 

next two years something like 30 countries around 

the world will have engaged in regular and ongoing 

financial health measurement of their populations. 
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That's astounding to me actually as someone who's 

been working in this space for a long time and has 

been following along closely.

And so I think what I'm raising today 

is the need for the FDIC and frankly for all of 

our other financial regulators, for our friends 

and colleagues in Congress to really start to dig 

in on financial health.

So for instance, this Fantastic 

research that the FDIC does every couple of years 

on people who don't have accounts, or for whom the 

system isn't fully working for them. What else 

could we be doing with that survey to start to 

explore not just account ownership, or patterns 

of transactions, or different usage of products, 

but about what outcome are we seeing as a result 

of their engagement with those products and 

services.

This is something that we spend a lot 

of time on with providers themselves, and we're 

working with dozens and dozens of financial 

institutions who are themselves measuring the 
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financial health of their customers and in some 

places their own employees. In fact, earlier this 

year we launched an entirely new software platform 

that enables firms to do that extremely easily 

without the need for integration with their core, 

and to enable them to not only measure but to 

benchmark against national and regional averages, 

to get guidance and advice about what the data is 

telling them about what steps as an institution 

they might want to take, and we're really excited 

about enabling firms to do more. And now we think 

there's really a need for government to do more, 

whether that's gathering the data and analyzing 

it, whether that's thinking about policymaking and 

rule-writing in the context of the outcomes that 

are happening as a result of product usage. I think 

there's many opportunities and I look forward to 

talking about those more in the future.

To that end I want to put in a little 

plug. We have been measuring financial health in 

this country longitudinally now for a large sample 

for the last four years. On October 19 we'll be 
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releasing our latest Financial Health Pulse.

Since this is not an open conversation 

and there are no reporters on the call I'll just 

read you the headline of the press release that 

will go out. Financial Health Pulse shows 

government aid improves financial health, but gains 

are at risk as relief programs subside and pandemic 

lingers. 

We actually saw overall financial 

health improve over the last year which is in a 

way shocking, but in a way not given the incredible 

response of government. It's the -- we're seeing 

financial health at the highest level since we 

started measuring in 2018 which is super 

interesting. But as you would expect we still have 

two-thirds of Americans who are not financially 

healthy, and there are stark racial inequalities. 

So I'll let you wait for the full results to come 

out, but if you're interested in learning more our 

financial health insights event which is a free 

and virtual event is scheduled for November 3 from 

11 to 1 Central. 
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You'll have an opportunity to learn 

more about the results, to hear conversation about 

the role of government, and government data in 

driving action in financial health, the importance 

of community-based research, and other subjects 

like that.

I want to just end with a slightly 

different topic here. And it's an oldie but a 

goodie. And it's probably not one that anyone is 

expecting me to raise, but I think we've got to 

talk about overdraft. Again, not a new subject 

but I think the pandemic and the relief that many 

banks provided during this time really helped to 

underscore just what a drag overdraft can be, and 

the cost that it continues to exact, and the fact 

that it is -- has such a huge racially disparate 

effect.

We're also seeing lots of banks make 

changes. And so we just put out some research 

earlier this year around overdraft and overdraft's 

usage. And none of it will be surprising to you 

except the one statistic that I think has been hard 
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to pin down. It's been very hard to identify the 

racial dynamics in overdraft usage and our work 

demonstrated that Black and LatinX households with 

accounts were far more likely to report having 

overdrafted, 1.9 times as likely for Blacks and 

1.4 times as likely for LatinX households compared 

to their White counterparts.

And whether an individual overdrafts 

once a year or 20 times a year the inequity of who's 

bearing the brunt of that remains. And ultimately 

overdrafters are really subsidizing the cost of 

delivering banking services to more financially 

secure customers. In fact, we found that -- if 

I could find the statistic -- nearly three times 

-- people who overdraft are nearly three times as 

likely to report being charged a maintenance fee 

for their checking accounts versus 

non-overdrafters which underscores the point of 

who's paying for whom.

We also put out a guide just a few weeks 

ago, a guide for financial institutions about what 

they can do, how they can be thinking about 
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reexamining their overdraft programs. And we 

talked about things like evaluating their existing 

policies and practices, helping customers manage 

their monthly expenses, positioning customers to 

avoid overdraft. So I would put PNC's low cash 

mode in this category. Or offering alternative 

forms of credit. Naomi mentioned more small dollar 

products being offered by banks. So Huntington's 

Standby Cash, Bank of America's Balance Assist, 

there are many others. And then of course we talked 

about providing safe checking accounts that comply 

with national Bank On standards including no 

overdraft fees.

So I think my ask here is while there 

is positive momentum a lot of that positive momentum 

is coming from statements that some people on this 

call and others have made publicly about overdraft. 

And whether or not any rulemaking might ensue, 

just the idea that regulators are paying attention 

and think it's a priority I think can't be 

overstated right now to continue this momentum, 

and to really to the degree possible to call out 
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good practice when we are able to do so.

So with that I -- oh and Raphael, I just 

wanted to say we can talk offline, but on the 

benefits cliff side of things (telephonic 

interference) financial solutions lab we actually 

are funding an organization called the Leap Fund 

in New York. And they also have a calculator and 

have been working with employers on an interesting 

model to enable employers to kind of hold in escrow 

the additional money from a raise that might take 

them over the benefits cliff. So we should connect 

offline. I'm happy to make that connection if 

you're not already connected with them.

MR. PEARCE: Great, Jennifer, thank 

you. And then I'll turn it over to the last member 

of the committee, Christina.

MS. TETREAULT: Great to be here. I 

had a little technical difficulty so apologies for 

not joining the video part, but I've been listening 

in. And it's always such a thrill to be here 

because I always learn so much and I appreciate 

everyone for sharing their insights.
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One of the benefits of going last is 

I can throughout the other remarks of folks cross 

things off my list for sharing. So there are a 

handful of things I want to talk about.

The first is the last time we were 

together I mentioned that I was going to a new 

organization and I have landed. I am the deputy 

commissioner for the Office of Financial Technology 

Innovation for the California Department of 

Financial Protection and Innovation.

And why am I talking about that here? 

Well first of all, we've got the other session, 

but as the chair said in her opening remarks we 

take a very broad view of what financial inclusion 

means. And really the mission of my office is to 

support responsible innovation and job creation 

in California. 

And we know so many innovations are 

really focused on folks who may not currently or 

may not traditionally have been well served in the 

financial services marketplace. So very 

interested in that. And so I want to spend just 
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a few more seconds talking about the functions of 

my office.

So the first is engagement. We meet 

with a broad range of stakeholders. The second 

is research. And then the third is what I like 

to call synthesis. So putting the insights learned 

from engagement and from research to work to improve 

the financial services ecosystem.

So we are doing that. I am here. I've 

got a small but mighty staff and we're building 

that, and more to come on that.

I want to echo something that Jennifer 

just talked about. The department put out a report 

fairly recently that showed a sharp dropoff in 

consumer lending. And so it was interesting to 

have the little piece that Jennifer highlighted 

there about the relationship with relief that folks 

have received. Our report by the way did not talk 

about that. It really just documented the dropoff 

that we've seen.

On the housing front because this is 

obviously critical especially given the current 
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circumstances and the pandemic impacts the state 

is making a full court press to keep everyone in 

their homes. There's more information at housing 

is key. And I'd be happy to connect folks to the 

experts here who are working on those initiatives.

Last but not least is the 

cryptocurrency question. So I would echo that the 

research shows but not our department's research, 

but insights gleaned that consumer interest has 

risen and it has risen a great deal among folks 

who maybe weren't the traditional crypto investor 

at first. 

So for example, Jim and I did some 

research earlier this year that showed that it was 

men, predominantly White men, predominantly White 

men with incomes over $100,000, and predominantly 

middle aged or not quite middle aged White men.

And recently Robin Hood has revealed 

about their users that they tend to be younger, 

they tend to be people of color. So it does seem 

like there is a great deal of interest in younger 

consumers, lower and moderate income consumers 
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although that is merely a guess on my part. It's 

based on anec data from tracking all of this stuff 

because I am extremely interested.

What I can say from the department is 

that we have also seen with a corresponding rise 

in consumer complaints as consumer interest in 

cryptocurrency has increased and I sat down and 

did a review of all of those complaints. And I 

will say that most -- the thing that stood out the 

most to me was something that again others on this 

call have mentioned which is the ways in which 

people were losing money and complaining to the 

department about it had to do with falling victim 

to scams.

So actions that are already illegal 

under any approach to cryptocurrency are the ways 

that people were reporting to us most often that 

they are losing money. So very interested in 

developments in this area as well as others. And 

that's kind of where I want to end off.

I mentioned that there is the research 

function of the office that I'm working with others 
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to stand up. And am very interested in continuing 

conversations with folks in this ecosystem because 

we think that there's a lot of great insights for 

us to glean working with others. So I will end 

there and say thank you very much. 

MR. PEARCE: Great. Thank you, 

Christina. So, we're running a few minutes over 

time, but as expected I'm a terrible moderator for 

the panel with this much talent and expertise. 

I could keep going for like another hour and just 

do a second round through everyone but I do think 

that would get me in hot water eventually.

So I'll just say a couple of words and 

then if there are any questions see if I have time, 

or if people start waving at me to cut it off.

One of the things that was really 

interesting, sort of the themes were consistent 

across so many of the different numbers. I'll 

start with trust. The notion as the acting 

comptroller raised of banks having your back really 

was thematic. I heard that from multiple members.

And the bank account is not the -- is 
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the beginning. It's the beginning, not the end 

of the relationship, and that there is a lot of 

really exciting and interesting work going on to 

integrate and to leverage not just products and 

services that banks are offering. Naomi talked 

about small dollar loans. But also trying to think 

about ways to leverage that banking relationship 

to also supercharge, I'll use that term, or activate 

as Margaret said earlier other connections with 

either government programs, or non-profit 

organizations that are supporting consumers.

We heard everything from summer jobs, 

to workforce development. Financial health and 

wellness, and guaranteed income pilots and 

coaching. So lots of richness in how do you extend 

or use that moment of a banking relationship and 

then build upon that which I thought was really, 

really interesting.

Safety was a sort of third thing that 

really resonated across different committee 

members during the presentation. Naomi talked 

about fraud. We talked about scams, both targeting 
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elderly, targeting youth and other populations. 

Crypto and things related to consumer protections 

around crypto I sort of would put into that bucket 

of just making sure people are understanding, 

especially as the market for that seems to be 

shifting as Christina pointed out at the end, and 

understanding what's going on in that space.

And then fourth, pandemic. Lots of 

discussion around how the pandemic has -- I think 

the acting comptroller talked about -- brought some 

of the inequalities or differences in stark relief. 

Raphael talked about widening the cracks which 

I thought was a really vivid metaphor.

But also the flip side of the positives 

that folks have seen, the silver linings in the 

pandemic around partnerships that have developed 

that may not otherwise have been involved in 

financial and economic inclusion, whether this be 

government agencies or others, and additional 

resources coming into the sector, and the 

recognition of this as elevating in profile and 

people's awareness and understanding as Lisa 
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pointed out.

And as part of that particular 

attention on racial equity. You heard as a lens 

or an overlay, and focusing on the challenges in 

particular people of color. So that's sort of my 

two-ish minute summary. And I will pause for a 

second to see if we have time for any burning 

questions before we take a break.

All right. Great. I don't see any 

questions and so Liz, I will turn it back over to 

you.

MS. ORTIZ: Thank you, Mark, and thank 

you, members. Now we are going to take a very short 

break so we can set up for our first panel. We'll 

be back in five minutes. So 2:35 Eastern time. 

Take a break but do come back. We'll see you soon.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

went off the record at 2:31 p.m. and resumed at 

2:36 p.m.)

MS. ORTIZ: All right, welcome back, 

everyone. Let's move to our first panel which will 

share highlights from FDITECH's very first tech 
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sprint brought to you by the FDIC's first ever chief 

innovation officer, Sultan Meghji. Sultan, over 

to you.

MR. MEGHJI: Thank you, Liz. And I 

just wanted to say hello to everyone. This has 

been a Fantastic program and Mark Pearce has done 

a good job so I feel like I've got a high bar here 

moderating my first panel for this amazing 

committee. 

And it's exciting to be back here. I 

think I was here in May last time and I talked about 

two major themes that were top of mind for me coming 

into this role.

The first was around how important 

external engagement is bidirectionally, both to 

bring great ideas into the FDIC, but also to make 

sure that the great work that we're doing here is 

available outside as well to help to make sure that 

our research is out there and share our expertise.

The second was around how we can think 

through building a more inclusive, diverse, and 

equitable banking system for all Americans. And 
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I just have to say just a few more months into this 

role I am almost on a daily basis still constantly 

amazed at the expertise and talent that we have 

here at the FDIC, and the staff that have committed 

so much of their lives to building all of these 

amazing programs. Building products that bring 

more people into the banking system including 

innovations like the Safe Account pilot in 2011 

and MoneySmart which just launched a new suite of 

online financial games all in support of our shared 

mission here.

It's this mission that has helped us 

sustain our team over the last five months, and 

a lot of great stuff has happened. But I'm very 

excited to moderate this first panel talking about 

how we built and launched our first tech sprint 

on inclusion titled Breaking Down Barriers: 

Reaching the Last Mile of the Unbanked which ran 

from the 6th of August to the 10th of September.

And we're going to be hearing from a 

few FDIC team members who were part of this tech 

sprint design and execution as well as from four 
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of the participating teams. I'll introduce the 

panel now.

So first I'm going to introduce Justin 

Cole. Justin is a Presidential Innovation Fellow 

within the tech lab here at the FDIC and has helped 

lead a number of FDIC initiatives including this 

tech sprint and our rapid phased prototyping 

program. 

Secondly is Chelsea Cruz. Chelsea is 

a senior community affairs specialist with the 

strategic partnership and program development team 

within the Division of Depositor and Consumer 

Protection here at the FDIC. 

Fonta Gilliam. Fonta is the CEO and 

founder of Wellthi, a fintech company based here 

in Washington, D.C. that partners with financial 

institutions to strengthen customer relationships 

to offer their social banking services to members.

Kate Goldman. Kate leads the FinTech 

program within the Center for Financial Markets 

at the Milken Institute. Work at the institute 

is focused on the evolving policy framework 
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surrounding fintech nationally and internationally 

with an emphasis on increasing access to capital 

and financial inclusion.

Tanya Van Court. Tanya is the founder 

and CEO of Goalsetter. Goalsetter is a family 

savings, financial literacy and smart spending app 

that makes it easier for the whole family to go 

cashless and learn how to be money smart.

Faith Bautista. Faith is the 

president and CEO of the National Asian American 

Coalition, a non-profit that provides housing 

counseling, small business lending and technical 

assistance services to minority and low-income 

populations for over 17 years.

And Winston Damarillo. Winston is the 

CEO of Talino Venture Labs, a global venture studio 

for inclusive fintech. 

And with that I'm going to turn it over 

to the panelists. And just a reminder to the 

panelists you've got five minutes. We'll be 

watching the clock. It's 2:40. And I'm going to 

turn it over to Justin first and we'll just go right 
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down the list. Each panelist please jump down to 

the next one. So Justin, over to you. 

MR. COLE: Great. Thanks so much, 

Sultan. So as Sultan mentioned we've been busy 

over the last five months or so, not only executing 

on some of the programs that you'll hear about 

today, but really thinking about establishing what 

we're calling an innovation pipeline. Really how 

to transform inputs in the form of raw ideas either 

from external facing places or internal, and really 

transforming those into outputs in the form of 

products that support FDIC's mission.

This tech sprint was really an 

opportunity for us to test this out for the first 

time, and happy to share kind of our findings today. 

You can proceed to the next slide, please.

So we began with a problem definition 

phase. And really during this problem definition 

phase we asked ourselves what are some of the 

existing approaches to the problem. That problem 

as the Chairman and Acting Comptroller Hsu had 

mentioned was really thinking more broadly than 
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just simply how do we get people bank accounts, 

or get them banked, but really thinking more broadly 

about what are the financial goals of those who 

are currently unbanked, and how can we meet those 

goals and be outcomes driven in our approach.

We ended up selecting an open 

innovation competition in the form of a tech sprint 

here as we felt there is not an ideal single solution 

or ideal single provider. So we thought that this 

kind of forum would help us really bring out the 

best ideas.

The tech sprint did exactly that. It 

brought in eight teams from the tech industry, 

non-profits, and even some financial institutions. 

They submitted promising ideas, and then they 

spent five weeks actually incubating those ideas 

to, one, ensure that they fit within the problem 

statement, two, to rapidly design a prototype of 

that solution, and then three, to test it.

And I know you might be thinking how

possibly -- what could possibly be accomplished 

in five weeks. It's a short period of time. But 
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the answer as we found out is a lot.

One is we talked to each team after the 

sprint and learned that they spent on average over 

100 hours each on their solution. That's a lot 

of time. That's a lot of person hours really 

dedicated to this topic.

We also established a number of 

connections that will last far past this tech 

sprint. And while of course additional work will 

be required to launch some of these products we 

felt that a lot of real great energy and enthusiasm 

was made. We'll be hearing about many of those 

solutions later in the panel. Next slide, please. 

So I've teased that we worked to define 

a problem statement, but what was it. So we've 

talked -- we've mentioned the How America Banks 

report today that the FDIC puts out on a biennial 

basis.

There are a number of barriers to 

households getting banked. Minimum balance 

requirements, trust in banks, and privacy are among 

the top cited reasons. As we've heard the Safe 
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Account pilot which led to Bank On has been 

instrumental in addressing that first barrier 

around minimum balance requirements. And so we 

sought to really complement those efforts and 

specifically focused on the trust and privacy with 

really the hypothesis that community banks may face 

barriers actually reaching the unbanked as I think 

Naomi and others from the advisory committee have 

mentioned today.

We did hear some feedback from the teams 

that this problem statement was well defined and 

aligned well with their mission, and offered them 

an opportunity for them to kind of come together 

in a new way which excited us. Next slide, please.

So what were the impacts and what are 

the next steps. I think that there are three major 

ones that I'd like to highlight today for the 

advisory committee. Number one we heard from 

participants. So we conducted feedback sessions 

with each of the teams.

And we heard that the FDIC subject 

matter experts and the engagements that they had 
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with those experts that Chelsea will be covering 

today were extremely helpful to them to both 

identify opportunities for new products as well 

as pivot maybe existing ideas that they had.

Also as participants roll out new 

solutions over the next 12 months or so we plan 

to keep in touch and really measure the impact that 

they have over that time period.

Second, we had over 200 FDIC employees 

attend the demo day on September 10, and since that 

time we've gotten a lot of feedback, a lot of ideas 

and opportunities for us as the FDIC to fine-tune 

our approach in terms of how we think about this 

problem.

We also learned a lot along the way on 

how to successfully execute tech sprints that we 

look forward to incorporating. 

And then finally in my last 30 seconds 

we will be making recordings of the demo day 

publicly available soon on the FDIC tech website 

so I encourage you all to check it out there. We 

hope that those recordings will spur future ideas 
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and contributions.

Now as I wrap up my time I'd like to 

introduce Chelsea Cruz to talk more about some of 

the key themes that surfaced during the course of 

the tech sprint.

MS. CRUZ: Thank you so much, Justin. 

So my name is Chelsea Amelia Cruz. I'm a senior 

community affairs specialist with the FDIC and I 

had the pleasure of working with the FDITECH team 

throughout the development of this tech sprint 

beginning with informing the problem statement and 

ultimately serving on the evaluation panel.

And from start to finish a key component 

of this tech sprint was collaboration. As 

previously mentioned an important benefit of the 

tech sprint is that it offers a safe environment 

where there can be a fluid exchange of ideas, and 

there are many different areas as we know that may 

affect a consumer's decision to be banked, or their 

access to banking. 

And therefore there's not one solution 

to this issue, thus bringing together a variety 
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of subject matter experts from across the FDIC was 

critical to ensuring that participating teams had 

access to critical resources and insights across 

different topics, whether that be existing 

research, clarification on risk assessment, or 

financial education.

And in this teams (inaudible) 

environment that we created for participating teams 

and select SMEs allowed us to bring together experts 

from the Division of Risk Management Supervision, 

Insurance and Research, Depositor and Consumer 

Protection, and the Office of Minority and Women 

Inclusion. Select subject matter experts were 

available for one on one discussions with 

participating teams and optional office hours were 

held each Friday for the five weeks of the tech 

sprint.

We also offered tech sprint teams the 

opportunity to participate in three deep dive 

sessions which provided a detailed overview of the 

FDIC's latest How America Banks report, the FDIC's 

economic inclusion strategy, the Get Banked 
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initiative, and an overview from the Division of 

Risk Management Supervision on consumer 

identification programs. Next slide, please.

And then to Justin's point creating 

that collaborative environment really allowed 

teams to have that fluid exchange not just with 

the select SMEs from the FDIC but with each other 

and identifying common themes and challenges.

The first was certainly the 

availability and utilization of data which was both 

a common theme and challenge. Tech sprint teams 

were interested in understanding more about the 

various kinds of research and data available on 

this topic. And of course the FDIC's semi-annual 

report on the unbanked was referenced. But 

participating teams were also interested in the 

availability of data on unbanked populations at 

a really granular level or down to the zip code. 

And the socioeconomic characteristics of those 

specific populations of unbanked populations 

within those local geographies.

And this of course is an acknowledgment 
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that the unbanked population is not a monolith. 

We know as Justin referenced from research that 

unbanked rates remain consistently higher for BIPOC 

populations and that issues like financial 

stability, and trust, and fees are common barriers. 

But these factors influence different market 

segments in unique ways which brings us to the 

second common theme or challenge, insights on 

specific market segments.

A fascinating component of the solution 

that many tech sprints devised were the development 

of very specific user profiles. Teams were not 

only just interested in understanding the 

challenges and needs of specific ethnic groups, 

but the challenges and needs of individuals within 

those groups.

The development of solutions that are 

hyper personalized reflect a growing trend in the 

banking industry, particularly on the retail side, 

and we'll hear next from two teams that made 

user-centric design a key component of their 

solution.
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Finally, the collaborative environment 

allowed participating teams to form a shared 

language around key concepts, and again learn from 

each other's approaches ahead of the official demo 

day.

And with that said I'd like to introduce 

Fonta Gilliam, CEO and founder of Wellthi who's 

going to bring our next segment of the discussion. 

Fonta?

MS. GILLIAM: Hi, good afternoon 

everyone. Thank you so much for having me today. 

We had such a great expertise during the tech 

sprint and I'm very eager to share some of the 

solutions that were developed from our team, the 

Discover Wellthi team. Next slide.

So one of our main goals was to look 

at how we could leverage the power of cutting edge 

fintech, hyper customization and UX/UI to really 

meet people where they are, and also really focus 

on the large subset of Americans that are using 

informal social banking traditions as an 

alternative to the formal banking system.
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And one of the things that we did was 

really looked at the power of social banking. This 

concept that's really inspired by a lot of informal 

social banking traditions, coupling that with 

fintech to provide a solution that could allow many 

people to essentially bank formally in a way that 

they'd been doing for centuries. Next slide.

So a little bit about my background. 

Before launching Wellthi I actually worked as a 

Foreign Service officer, or American diplomat for 

about 10 years. And it was during that time that 

I was really exposed to a lot of the informal social 

banking traditions that are incredibly ubiquitous 

in emerging markets like Africa, Asia and the Middle 

East, Latin America, but also within American 

immigrant communities.

And the one thing that really stood out 

to me was how people were pooling resources and 

rotating them as a way to save, build wealth, and 

do things like build wealth and essentially 

leverage the power of informal social groups and 

peer networks to keep themselves accountable to 
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their financial goals as a group when they might 

not do so as individuals. These groups had a less 

than 1 percent default rate and they were incredibly 

powerful in instilling strong financial habits 

amongst its users.

And at the time I remember thinking what 

if we could modernize these trends with cutting 

edge fintech. What if we could develop a social 

finance platform that appeals to people in a way 

that they're already using, leveraging these 

traditions, but in a safe, secure, and compliant 

way within the banking system.

And that's essentially what our 

solution focused on. We actually -- next slide, 

please. And so if you look at the approach that 

we took through the Discover Wellthi program we 

really focused on, one, developing a platform that 

allowed people to run their groups using the social 

networking that is so common among so many Americans 

that we can all relate to, coupling that with 

working with financial institutions to help them 

to address challenges that they have with 
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onboarding customers on an online-only 

environment, and conducting a lot of the customer 

identification and verification requirements that 

is so key to reaching these groups.

And so Wellthi, we basically worked 

really hard with Discover and our partners to 

essentially launch a platform that would allow us 

to connect financial institutions to verification 

vendors to overcome these hurdles, automate the 

digital onboarding process, and then as you can 

see through the demo provide a social finance 

fluidity that allows people to formalize their 

groups, open accounts with local unions as well 

as minority development institutions, and offer 

a social banking platform that they can leverage.

And so in regards to next steps we're 

incredibly excited that we'll be working in close 

partnership with Discover who's been an incredible 

partner with us to offer technology grants through 

their CRA department so that we can actually roll 

out this pilot where one low-income NDI credit union 

and one NDI. We'll be launching that next month.
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And then early next year we're also 

providing a white label solution where any 

financial institution can license, customize, and 

white label our social banking platform as a way 

to connect to the underbanked and underserved using 

these informal groups. So with that I will stop 

and I will pivot to the next speaker.

MR. MEGHJI: Thank you so much. Kate 

Goldman, this is your turn.

MS. GOLDMAN: Awesome. Thank you so 

much, and thank you to the entire staff at the FDIC 

for not only putting on the tech sprint which was 

such a pleasure to participate in, but also for 

inviting me and the other three teams to speak in 

this committee meeting today. So thank you all. 

Next slide.

So, core to the creation of 

user-centric design for technology and banking is 

a deep, principled understanding of the consumer 

base, what their specific granular pain points are, 

and what barriers or challenges they might 

experience when seeking to access our banking 
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system.

So during the tech sprint my team's 

research was guided by an explicit consensus that 

the unbanked rate in the United States is a 

multifaceted problem that requires tailored 

solutions to address specific challenges. 

This is not a one size fits all problem 

and it does not require -- or it will not be solved 

with a one size fits all solution.

So a 2013 FDIC survey revealed the 

disproportionate rate of immigrants who are 

unbanked relative to their native-born 

counterparts. This disparity is most severe among 

Mexican and Latin American immigrants who hover 

between 50 and 60 percent banked respectively.

Looking at the two maps on the right 

we can see this data illustrated by the clear 

overlap between areas with the highest 

concentration of unbanked populations and areas 

with the highest immigrant populations. 

Additionally, other factors such as 

age, English language proficiency, and residing 
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in an ethnic enclave all correlate with a higher 

likelihood of an immigrant being unbanked once they 

settle in the United States. 

So as a few people today have mentioned 

distrust of banks is cited as the second most common 

reason that people are unbanked. Distrust is a 

highly individual experience with a wide range of 

explanations and exacerbating factors.

There's a well documented fact that 

migrants' banking status upon arriving in the 

United States is largely determined by the nature 

of the banking system in their home countries. 

Oftentimes migrants will arrive from countries 

where their entire life savings might have been 

taken by the central banks, or they're coming from 

places with entirely cash economies, or where 

banking infrastructure is entirely limited. 

So understanding the experiences 

unique to migrant communities helped my team to 

craft a targeted solution to address a few of these 

hurdles.

For so many of us -- next slide -- for 
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so many of us community is a defining feature in 

our lives. It impacts who we interact with, who 

our friends are, and what resources are available 

to us. 

For migrants, many of whom are 

disenfranchised or alienated from their outside 

communities where this can be most severe creating 

a banking solution that builds on the foundation 

of community was an imperative for my team during 

this tech sprint. So partnering with (telephonic 

interference) in areas with high migrant 

populations allows consumers to overcome some of 

their distrust for banks and the banking system 

by engaging with these trusted intermediaries 

throughout the process of themselves becoming 

banked.

These trusted intermediaries can range 

from the church that you attend on the weekends 

to the YMCA that you might send your children to 

during the summertime. Oftentimes the best 

solutions are not those that focus solely on 

improving the old guard, or building something 
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brand new, but instead focus on meeting people where 

they are at in life and where they are at in their 

banking journey.

So taking this all into consideration 

my team and I created an application that can serve 

as a resource for these trusted non-profit 

intermediaries who work with migrant communities 

so the application can help educate users on the 

information that they would need to know about 

banking.

For example, what are examples of valid 

forms of photo I'D, how do banks keep our money 

safe, why is identification important in the 

process of becoming banked, and what does that 

relationship look like.

And then finally we created a tool that 

pairs users with community banks in their area that 

matches their preferences and needs in a bank. 

For example, low friction remittances, or overdraft 

protection, or even staff members who can help with 

speaking Spanish to users. 

This hyper customization of banking and 
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banking tools helps meet individuals' specific 

needs and can hopefully get more people into the 

banking system. Thank you.

MR. MEGHJI: Thank you so much, Kate. 

Now it's on to Tanya.

MS. VAN COURT: Thank you so much for 

having me here today. I'm Tanya Van Court. I'm 

the CEO and founder of Goalsetter. And the reason 

I'm so excited to be here today is because I welcome 

the fact that the FDIC is seeking out 

non-traditional voices, non-traditional voices 

like mine.

I am a fintech founder and so that 

automatically makes me a little bit non-traditional 

in the FDIC world. But I'm also a person who has 

no previous banking experience. I'm a single 

mother and African-American mother of four kids. 

I formerly led digital products at Nickelodeon. 

I formerly led marketing at Discovery Education 

as they launched digital textbooks into classrooms 

across America. 

I led the launch of ESPN3 at ESPN and 
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I'm a fan of both Jay-Z and Beyonce. I started 

Goalsetter because my 8-year-old daughter said to 

me one day, Mommy for my ninth birthday I really 

only want two things - enough money to save for 

an investment account and a bike. And I thought 

to myself if I can get every kid to say that I can 

change the world.

And that's what's critical about 

product innovation being inclusive. Inclusive 

product innovation requires that we are embracing 

people who are from backgrounds that have 

traditionally been underrepresented, and we are 

including them in the development of products and 

in the development of companies in order to target 

the populations that we all so desperately want 

to target. Next slide, please.

When my daughter said that she wanted 

to save for an investment account I decided that 

it was my time to leave corporate America and start 

to make her dream a reality. And so I launched 

Goalsetter.

What is Goalsetter? It's the best 
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money app in the industry for kids and parents too. 

And the reason we say kids and parents too is 

because one of our core insights -- and I heard 

this a little bit earlier from the panel -- is that 

lots of different people are getting excited about 

investing. And people who we never expected to 

be excited about it before. And a number of those 

people include kids.

And when we get kids excited about 

investing, when we get kids talking about 

investing, their parents start talking about it 

too. 

With Goalsetter we've launched a 

platform that includes a savings account, an 

investing platform, financial education that is 

mapped to national financial literacy standards 

but rooted in memes and gifs from hip-hop artists, 

and social media influencers, and YouTube 

personalities. 

So when Beyonce says can you pay my 

bills, can you pay my telephone bills we use that 

to explain Beyonce wouldn't need anyone to pay her 
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bills. If she would just save for an emergency 

fund of three to six months of her expenses Beyonce 

could pay for her own bills.

We have debit cards that are actually 

smart debit cards and provide financial education 

attached to the debit cards. And we have a gifting 

feature. Because while we know that every person 

in America and every kid in America doesn't have 

a savings account, the other thing we know is that 

every kid in America does have a birthday. And 

on that birthday Grandma and Auntie and Uncle all 

call and say what can I get the baby for their 

birthday. And the answer with Goalsetter can very 

well be give them money that goes into their FDIC 

insured savings account. Next slide, please.

It's this understanding of the kids and 

the families who we are talking to every day that 

has enabled us to create an inclusive platform that 

truly feels like it's a platform that they've never 

seen before in the history of America. We have 

our quizzes that are not only game-based, and 

kid-friendly, they're also culturally relevant.
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This isn't how financial education has 

typically been taught in America. Typically 

someone from your local bank volunteers at their 

local school and explains the concept of the stock 

market to a group of kids in Detroit who are woefully 

in need of financial education that's not being 

provided in classrooms.

With Goalsetter we've said hey, we 

don't just want to understand how adult financial 

processes are working and bring that into the kid's 

space which is what's traditionally been done. 

We want to understand what kids are doing and how 

do we bring that into the financial education space.

And so we looked at platforms like 

YouTube, and Instagram, and Snapchat, and TikTok, 

and brought those into the kid's space, or a nod 

from those into the kid's space to create the most 

engaging and compelling financial education 

platform that exists. Next slide, please.

So what are two of the things that we 

think are so important? The first thing that we 

think is critically important is you've got to 
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listen to diverse users in order to develop diverse 

products. That means talking to diverse 

audiences. It also means building solutions that 

meet their stated needs.

What we heard from our consumers is they 

just didn't want another teen and tween debit card 

product like everything else that was in the 

marketplace. They wanted something that actually 

prepared their kids with financial education. 

And so our teen and tween debit card 

is groundbreaking in the industry because it comes 

with a rule called learn before you burn. That 

rule when a parent activates it means that their 

kid's debit card will automatically freeze if they 

haven't taken their financial literacy for the week 

yet. And the minute they take that quiz the card 

will unfreeze again.

Secondarily, in order to create diverse 

and inclusive products you have to listen to not 

just the consumers but the data. And we have to 

understand the problems that the data illuminates, 

and the root causes behind those problems.
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We also need to innovate solutions that 

the market isn't thinking about, but that we're 

thinking about because we also have an inclusive 

team. 

And that's the third critical piece of 

developing inclusive products and leading with 

inclusive product design, having an inclusive team 

that can listen to inclusive consumers, that can 

understand what the data is saying about those 

consumers and their plight in America, and develop 

solutions that are actually meeting their needs 

instead of just meeting the needs of that CEO at 

that fintech startup who's looking for their next 

exit.

So thank you so much for having us here 

today. We're really excited to be a part of this 

FDIC tech sprint and really excited about the work 

that you're undertaking, undergirding, and 

supporting. 

MR. MEGHJI: Thank you so much, Tanya. 

Now I'll turn it over to Faith. 

MR. DAMARILLO: Hi. My name is 
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Winston Damarillo. I'm actually going to tag team 

with Faith so let me just get started here. I'm 

CEO of Talino Venture. We're a partner of NAAC 

and together we've combined technology from Silicon 

Valley as well as the community mindset that NAAC 

has really been pioneering here in the United 

States. 

We built the product called sprint. 

It's based on the NAAC's goal to provide a highly 

accessible loan to micro and small/medium size 

enterprise. And we wanted to answer your question 

how do you manage risk and ensure higher paying 

rates for small businesses. So next slide, please.

The solution that we have built is 

really built around the mindset of the Grameen Bank. 

When we started this endeavor about three years 

ago it was a mindset around partnership with the 

World Economic Forum to really accelerate financial 

inclusion in emerging markets. So we started in 

Southeast Asia and the Middle East and have learned 

quite a bit about the Grameen Bank model and have 

decided the technology will be a great leverage 
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for the Grameen Bank to really make it not just 

scalable but sustainable.

So during the tech sprint we are really 

grateful about the experience and happy about our 

opportunity to bring this product back to the United 

States. The sprint solution of NAAC starts with 

five key components to it. We injected all 

throughout a mechanism for financial literacy 

starting with content that we have extracted from 

MoneySmart at the FDIC, injected it into our mobile 

app.

Incorporated biometric eKYC and AI to 

enable our borrowers to actually be able to engage 

the solution just from their mobile phones. 

Connected them to systems that provide highly 

simplified acquisition of their digital documents 

through pictures and allowing them to do 

e-signatures.

And then finally, incorporating and 

introducing the idea of savings accounts in 

borrowing so that our borrowers can incorporate 

that into their borrowing. 
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But the heart of this solution really 

is the idea of social borrowing. So the sprint 

solution that NAAC is building really incorporated 

within it the idea that people in clusters apply 

together, work together to get started in their 

borrowing journey, get themselves educated as a 

group, collectively borrow money. So the system 

actually starts with a model by individual 

underwriting with a group guarantee, provide a 

mutually reinforcing capability so that in every 

periodic point like monthly people connect with 

each other, get themselves educated financially, 

talk about their businesses, support each other 

right around the time they're about to pay their 

loans and actually ensure that as a team or as a 

group they're able to provide capabilities to 

support and go through this. 

So we've created this platform to start 

with people that have zero credit scores and have 

been banking for the first time. We take them into 

multiple cycles starting with a small dollar loan 

and a short tenure, and we improve that cycle over 
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time so that the goal really here is on the next 

slide to provide the capability where people can 

start small in a community setting and progress 

and graduate to be individually bankable through 

a more conventional banking service like the SBA 

loan and all the other banking.

A lot of these are technologies that 

we have added into the standard Grameen model, but 

what really makes this all work and powerful is 

the community models that NAAC is pioneering and 

bringing to the market, and for that I'll have 

(telephonic interference) more about it.

MS. BAUTISTA: Thank you. We have 

been a community leader since 2004 and it's always 

like how do we make the solution inclusive. How 

do we help the 46 million credit invisible. So 

how do we get rid of the payday lenders. We've 

been fighting about getting rid of the payday 

lenders, but at the same time there is no solution 

for them. So we're really hoping that this 

technology we can give these people a chance to 

be bankable, that they can get out from the payday 
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lenders, that there's a solution for them. How 

do we help these businesses that don't pay so much 

interest on the money that they're borrowing that 

alone with this COVID labor is so, so expensive. 

The materials, the raw materials that they're 

buying are so expensive. And yet they're not 

bankable because at the end of the day they cannot 

get a loan, or if they get a little loan they cannot 

-- they're not qualified for it.

So we really want this application to 

make it inclusive. We should be able to decrease 

this 46 million invisible credit. And I really 

want to thank FDIC for doing this tech sprint 

because it actually motivated all of us. And 

Justin since he put all of this together so thank 

you so much. It gave so much energy, more 

motivation for non-profit.

And I think like the CDFI, in the world 

there's 1,100 CDFIs or MDIs who wants to help the 

community but it's not scalable. And the only way 

we can do that is a good software that we can reach 

those people that are not reachable, and also the 
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last unbanked and underbanked. Thank you so much.

MR. COLE: Thank you so much Faith, and 

thank you Winston, and thank you to all of our teams 

who presented today. I think it really represented 

a broad section of the participants that we had 

across all eight and very, very exciting to hear 

about both the work that you've come up with and 

your future work as well.

So we do have about 15 minutes for 

questions from the advisory committee. So I will 

ask if any advisory committee members have any 

questions please use the raise hand feature here 

in the chat. And let me just make a quick scan. 

I don't see any coming in yet.

Let me just seed the discussion with 

one question. And I know panels have a tendency 

to feel obligated to answer every question. Let's 

maybe focus on one or two per question just so we 

get a good healthy representation today. 

But the first question I have for any 

panelist who'd like to answer it is when developing 

your solution and delivery model how did you 
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evaluate the need to provide complementary 

education to communities and consumers in order 

to enable them to fully benefit from your product. 

And how do you consider the unique need of your 

target market when creating that educational 

component.

I think financial education is one 

theme we've heard a lot of today, and just curious 

to think about from a developer, from an actual 

solution point of view how do you all think through 

that.

MS. BAUTISTA: Justin, if I can start. 

Being Asian, you know we're all labeled as Asian, 

right. But it's actually sub-ethnic groups. We 

all speak different languages. The only thing that 

binds us together, the (inaudible), is we all eat 

rice. But otherwise we speak different languages, 

the culture. And it's not a one size fits all. 

When we conduct workshop with the young Marines. 

These are 17 years old to 21 years old, I mean 

they are 97 percent unbanked. They have no banks 

at all. When we are doing a workshop in Compton, 
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southeast L.A. 95 percent have think files, 

nothing.

So the financial literacy is so 

different, and it cannot be a one size fits all. 

It has to be culturally diverse and also it's a 

one on one. It's a change of behavior. So no 

amount of workshop, no amount of books sometimes 

can help that unless you really teach them how to 

change their behavior. Thank you.

MS. VAN COURT: I'll jump in on that 

question as well. So for us we initially had a 

product that included a whole suite of tools 

focusing on saving. Because we know that kids who 

have savings accounts are six times more likely 

to go to college, but they are also four times more 

likely to own stocks by the time they're young 

adults.

So we believed that if we could get a 

savings account into the hands of every kid in 

America then we could change their lives and change 

their outcomes in a meaningful way, and help to 

close this wealth chasm that we are all looking 
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at.

But one of the things we did in order 

to inspire them to save was we started doing 

courses. And so we would meet with non-profits. 

I did personally a class for kids called Building 

Wealth, a four-part blueprint inspired by Jay-Z. 

And I would use Jay-Z lyrics and quotes all 

throughout the presentation to explain the four 

tenets of building wealth. 

You have to have skills in order to make 

money. You have to save some of that money. You 

have to then invest that money, and ultimately you 

should be an owner. 

And so we walked through that 

presentation and what we heard from that 

presentation was oh my gosh Ms. Tanya, I have a 

finance class at school but it's really boring. 

Your class in that hour just changed my life. And 

are you giving another one. Can you give me more.

And what we realized was these kids had 

never, ever had the opportunity to have culturally 

relevant, fun, engaging financial education. And 
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everyone blames them for that lack of literacy, 

but really we as America have fallen down and not 

done a good job of creating educational content 

that anyone would want to engage in.

And so that's when we decided that my 

background with Nickelodeon, and gaming, and 

entertainment, and education could really be put 

to work in a financial context to bridge this gap 

of financial education. 

MS. GOLDMAN: I can, I'll take --

(Simultaneous speaking)

MS. VAN COURT: Make it scalable. 

Sorry. Technology is far more scalable than me 

going around and doing presentations. 

MS. GOLDMAN: I second that, Tanya, 

tech is way more scalable. So when my team and 

I were building our solution we think about 

financial education we were really thinking about 

it through the framing of bank education. So when 

you talk about distrust, and people have all 

different backgrounds and experiences. 

Like I mentioned in my presentation 
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distrust is a highly individual experience. So 

being able to provide context, not just going to 

people and being like you have to be banked, but 

here's why you could be banked, why it might be 

beneficial to you.

Especially like remittances, tons of 

migrant populations even throughout the pandemic 

send billions of dollars globally to their home 

countries. So providing it in the context of you 

can send money cheaper through a bank than you would 

through like a Western Union. So that sort of 

banking education through that context I think was 

really helpful in my own sort of conceptualization 

of this product. Building out something that makes 

sense for migrant and immigrant communities. 

MR. COLE: Great. Thank you very 

much. And I do ask if any advisory committee 

members have any questions please feel free to raise 

your hand or just interrupt at any point. Oh, I 

see we do have one raised hand. So I will ask I 

think Sonia to. Maybe not. Maybe that was a ghost 

hand there.
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So I will ask another question then. 

I love the opportunity to engage with you all. 

So I'd be interested -- we talked a lot about tech 

sprint. Obviously it's five weeks, a very short 

period of time. I think we're accustomed to 

working obviously in months and years in terms of 

some of the work obviously that goes into this. 

The advisory committee members of course have 

worked in some cases decades on these issues.

And so I'm curious how did the actual 

tech sprint influence your product, or the way in 

which you thought about kind of the service that 

you're providing. How did you utilize any FDIC 

resources and/or learn from other participants. 

Just trying to kind of reflect on the experience 

as a whole and hear about anything you might want 

to share.

MS. BAUTISTA: Can I start again?

MR. COLE: Please.

MS. BAUTISTA: You know, I thought I 

know banking, I know FDIC. But that deep dive, 

I learned so much because there's so many in our 
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team that joined. Like what Ms. Ortiz have 

described on the whole presentation. I mean, I 

think she put the whole tribe of FDIC in the tribe 

-- I mean in the panel. And it's so nice to hear 

about the SmartMoney, that it's actually you can 

-- that's why we're using it. You know, not using 

the (inaudible) anymore, we're using the SmartMoney 

because you can tweak it. 

We're going to make it more interactive 

from the RMS, DII, or DCP, the ONWI it is great. 

This is something that everyone should know what 

really FDIC is all about. We learned a lot and 

thank you guys for making all the presentations. 

I know almost everyone participated. So to me 

that means a lot of commitment from FDIC.

And so when we got this, when we won 

it, I mean our commitment is above and beyond what 

we're being expected. Because we need to help the 

people. And for the regulator to start this and 

everybody to have a buy-in, it's easier for us to 

do the work because we are being appreciated. 

Thank you.
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MS. VAN COURT: And I think for us, you 

know so many fintech companies are all about 

disrupting the system and going it alone. And for 

us we really thought about because of the FDIC's 

commitment to this mission that we clearly feel 

so passionate about, and that we are ready to 

undertake in a major way, how can we partner with 

the FDIC and FDIC institutions. 

It's crazy for us to try to solve this 

problem alone rather than partnering with the FDIC 

and all of those institutions that are already 

reaching so many customers. Because many people 

who are unbanked, guess what? They've got a family 

member who is banked. Or many people who are 

unbanked, they've got a kid that is unbanked who 

can be the next generation of banked if we get to 

them first. 

And we can bring them into the banking 

system. We can do that in partnership with so many 

of the FDIC institutions. So for us it was just 

such a tremendous opportunity for us to 

collectively solve this problem instead of going 
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it alone and having entities trying to wrangle the 

same cow, but do it in two different fields.

MS. GILLIAM: Yes, and just to add, I 

would also reiterate that the information sharing. 

We had the opportunity to meet with FDIC officials 

on a weekly basis, participate in office hours, 

really gain from a lot of the data which for 

financial technologies is huge as we think about 

how we design our products and make them very 

user-centric.

Having that type of insight data and 

reports was really incredible. And that one on 

one access to the FDIC as we fleshed out our 

solutions, I know that the Discover Wellthi team 

really, really appreciated that, and it definitely 

went into the thinking behind how we're designing 

our products and our partnerships.

MS. GOLDMAN: I completely agree with 

that, Fonta. It's one thing to read a report, or 

to scour through data, but to have someone who's 

put this data together, who knows it through and 

through speak to you about what the context is, 
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what does it mean, what are the implications for 

these numbers. That makes all of the difference.

And the whole tech sprint experience 

was incredibly positive, from working with my team 

and we all became really friendly at the end of 

this to hearing from the other teams. It felt so 

sort of inspiring almost to hear what other people 

are up to in the space. I've never met any of you 

before this tech sprint, so it was such a wonderful 

opportunity and venue to learn from the FDIC and 

their expertise, but also all of the other teams 

and sort of create a network amongst all eight of 

us, all eight teams, totally valuable experience.

MR. DAMARILLO: Yes, and to us the 

bottom line actually is that it got our go to market 

readiness accelerated at least two to three months 

because we're able to in one place get all our 

answers, questions. We had a fairly mature product 

that works in all other countries before, but trying 

to ensure that that complies to and is aligned with 

the regulatory and compliance requirements here 

in the United States, I think we got a lot of 
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information all in one place and able to collaborate 

with all other fellow travelers in this journey, 

it helped us quite a bit. So both getting our 

products to market a lot quicker as well as ensuring 

that our partners also get a sense of comfort that 

we have been going -- have gone through this process 

and that what we're doing is aligned to kind of 

the overall goals of the FDIC.

MR. COLE: Thanks, Winston. I think 

we have time for just one more question and I will 

maybe limit it to just one or two respondents only 

because I think we've got about two minutes left. 

But Jonathan Mintz from the advisory committee 

asked a question that I think is a great one which 

is, he says first, these are all so interesting. 

What has been the most successful strategy in your 

own experience for connecting the largest numbers 

of people to your work, and how do you think about 

scale as it relates to your solution?

MS. VAN COURT: So, I'll jump in. I 

think the most effective strategy for connecting 

people to our work is to truly go to where the people 
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are. It's one thing to be an independent company 

and say hey, we have this great solution, we've 

got to go out and find you on Facebook, or on 

Instagram, or all of these places where you can 

just pour money into these solutions that aren't 

-- or into this advertising and marketing that's 

not really solving the problem.

And so for us it really, we boil it down 

to partnerships. And those partnerships could be 

with organizations like NBA, the National Bankers 

Association, with non-profit organizations that 

are serving Black and Latino communities which is 

where we're focused specifically, with larger 

organizations in the financial services space like 

Fiserv who we are now partnering with to address 

some of the communities that they serve.

So -- and individual banks. So I 

really think for us it's about tapping into these 

networks of where people are and figuring out how 

to reach them with solutions that they just wouldn't 

be aware of otherwise.

MS. GILLIAM: I think that's exactly 
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right. And I would add in terms of scale, I mean 

you know you can definitely take a direct to 

consumer approach, and I think that that is so 

needed.

But there's also a need for a B2B 

approach, business to business. Developing 

solutions that can be integrated into the banking 

infrastructure that already exists so that it's 

not just one company trying to address an issue, 

but using technology to really provide the services 

at all banks and financial institutions, and 

organizations. 

We do a lot with organizations and 

non-profits as well that can actually license, and 

white label, and offer to communities. So in that 

sense it's not one company trying to push the ball 

forward, but a variety of different companies, 

banks, and organizations leveraging similar 

technologies that are compatible to their systems 

to move the ball forward. 

And so that's the approach that we're 

taking by taking this concept of social banking 
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and offering a solution that can be integrated into 

any banking platform, into any organization's CRM 

or existing mobile app. And so in that way we can 

scale much faster.

MR. COLE: And thank you so much, 

Fonta. And we are at time, unfortunately, but I 

do want to thank all of our teams. I want to thank 

Chelsea, and of course Sultan for all of their hard 

work on the tech sprint from the very beginning, 

and I will hand it off now to Liz Ortiz.

MS. ORTIZ: Thank you, Justin, and 

thank you, panel. That was great. This is now 

time for another break. So we will resume in five 

minutes. So we'll see you back here just after 

3:30. Bye bye.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 

went off the record at 3:26 p.m. and resumed at 

3:31 p.m.)

MS. ORTIZ: Welcome back, everyone. 

It's now my pleasure to introduce my colleague Keith 

Ernst. Keith will be moderating our panel on 

housing assistance programs including a housing 
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market update. Keith?

MR. ERNST: Great, thank you, Liz and 

good afternoon Chairman McWilliams, Director 

Gruenberg, Acting Comptroller Hsu, and committee 

members. It's a privilege to be back with you 

again, this time to focus on the important topic 

of housing and the housing market.

In this panel we're going to hear from 

leading organizations that have been delivering 

really critical support to homeowners and renters 

throughout the pandemic.

You have the speaker's bios but I'm 

going to introduce them and set the stage before 

handing off the baton.

Ryan Goodstein is going to start out. 

He's a senior economist in the Division of 

Insurance and Research here at the FDIC. He'll 

provide some key data points to give us a common 

frame of reference for the discussion.

Prasant Sar, supervisory policy 

analyst from the Federal Housing Finance Agency 

will then help detail some of the steps his group 
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has taken to make forbearance options and other 

supports available.

Tonya Tyler is the vice president of 

operations for NeighborWorks, and she's going to 

help us understand the important work being done 

by counselors across the nation.

Sonia Joyner is director of home 

ownership programs at the North Carolina Housing 

Finance Agency, and she brings a view from the state 

level where one of the big challenges has been to 

deliver assistance in an effective and timely 

manner.

I'll just note here this weekend I was 

reading the newspaper and actually saw that North 

Carolina was recognized as one of just three states 

to have spent a majority or have gotten a majority 

of their funds from their first allocation of the 

Federal Rental Assistance Fund deployed. So I 

think we'll be well served to hear from her.

And finally we'll hear from Victor 

Galloway, a community affairs specialist from our 

Atlanta region who will give us insights into the 
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opportunities the FDIC has to support these and 

related efforts. 

And then we're looking forward into 

your insights into how we can do more and better 

in this regard, and to what you're seeing in the 

communities and the constituencies that your 

organizations serve.

We have just 50 minute for this panel 

so I'll ask members to hold questions or comments 

until all of our guests has had a chance to share 

their presentation, but look forward to the 

engagement on the back end.

With that I'm going to pass the baton 

to Ryan and look forward to speaking with you all 

in just a little bit.

MR. GOODSTEIN: Hi. Thanks, Keith, 

and thanks to all of you on the panel today. I'm 

going to give a brief overview of current conditions 

in the housing market. A lot of what I'm going 

to share will probably be familiar to you, but 

hopefully having this information top of mind will 

be useful, give you some useful context and help 
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set the table for the other panelists. So next 

slide.

I'm going to start by touching on where 

we are in the economic recovery, highlighting that 

the recovery continues to be uneven. And then with 

that as a backdrop I'll review current conditions 

in the single-family mortgage market including 

recent trends in mortgage performance and 

forbearances.

Then I'm going to wrap up by mentioning 

a few other issues in housing markets that are 

likely relevant for our discussion today. And I'm 

going to try and do all that in the next few minutes 

so let me dive right in. Next slide.

So this chart illustrates the overall 

path of recovery in employment. As you can see, 

as you know we had massive job losses at the start 

of the pandemic. Total amount for unemployment, 

that's this chart, fell by nearly 15 percent from 

February to April 2020.

And then things recovered relatively 

quickly before slowing down a bit as among other 
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things we've gone through subsequent waves of COVID 

infections and other things.

So as of August of 2021 employment is 

down about 3.5 percent from the February 2020. 

Next slide.

But as I said the recovery has been 

uneven. So this chart is just one example of that. 

If you're on this call you're probably lucky enough 

to be in the professional services industry. 

That's this blue line. Employment dropped a bit, 

but then recovered rapidly. Total number employed 

is now about 2 percent above the pre-COVID level.

Meanwhile in food services, that's the 

red line, total employment is about 8 percent, still 

below pre-COVID. And of course this is just one 

example. I could have just as easily highlighted 

how the impacts of the pandemic and the subsequent 

recovery has differed across other dimensions, 

including by geography, income, race, and gender, 

and really has exacerbated preexisting differences 

in economic circumstances that exist across 

segments of the population. Next slide.
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It's also worth noting that personal 

spending -- in view of what we've just seen personal 

spending actually now exceeds pre-pandemic levels. 

And we can see this in official government 

statistics like the personal consumption 

expenditure data from the BEA.

I'm going to focus here on a different 

chart. This was from Opportunity Insights. And 

I like this chart because it illustrates the impact 

that government policies have had, especially on 

lower income consumers. 

So the chart shows the evolution of 

debit and credit card spending over the pandemic 

separately by income. So the blue line is all 

consumers, the red line is lower income consumers 

and the green line is higher income consumers. 

And then the vertical lines on the chart show sort 

of the milestones during the pandemic. The onset 

of the pandemic and then when government assistance 

programs went into effect.

So you can see that after the pandemic 

hit spending dropped sharply for all consumers, 
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but began to increase after the CARES Act and the 

start of the first tranche of stimulus payments. 

And increased again with the second and third round 

of payments.

If you focus on the red line and sort 

of compare that to the green line you can see just 

how much more sensitive lower income consumers are, 

or their spending was in response to these 

assistance programs. And so while it's not 

necessarily surprising to see this I think this 

chart provides a striking illustration of the role 

that public policies had in maintaining or even 

improving the financial circumstances of some lower 

income households. Next slide.

Let me turn now to the single-family 

mortgage market, and I'll start with trends in 

mortgage performance. This chart shows serious 

delinquency rates separately by loan type. And 

it's worth noting when you're looking at these lines 

that for loans in forbearance they are treated as 

delinquent in this chart for loans where the 

payments are not being made.
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So you can see that with the onset of 

the pandemic, that's on the right side of the chart 

here, delinquency rates spiked, but they've since 

been coming down pretty steadily. Improvements 

are mainly attributable to improving economic 

conditions and the households exiting forbearance, 

either by way of refinancing or by taking advantage 

of workout options.

There are some notable differences by 

loan type. In particular for FHA loans, that's 

the blue line in this chart, delinquencies remain 

substantially higher than for other types of loans, 

and higher than pre-pandemic levels.

As you're probably aware compared to 

the conventional loan market FHA loans typically 

go to borrowers who have lower income or have lower 

liquid assets. Next slide.

Turning now to loan forbearance 

activity we can see that after spiking up at the 

start of the pandemic the number of loans in 

forbearance has since been declining gradually. 

According to Black Knight's estimate about 3 
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percent of all active loans are still in 

forbearance, at least as of mid-August.

Again, differences by type are notable. 

About 6 percent of FHA loans and VA loans were 

in forbearance compared to about 2 percent of GAC 

loans. Next slide.

So in regards to loans that are in 

forbearance plans we're just now entering a 

critical period in that a lot of borrowers will 

soon see their forbearance plans expire. The chart 

on the left is one illustration of this. It shows 

Black Knight's estimates of the final expiration 

dates of loans in forbearance based on the current 

agency guidelines. 

So as you can see, hopefully you can 

read the dates there at the bottom, but basically 

hundreds of thousands are expected to exit 

forbearance at the end of this month or the end 

of next month.

So what's the outlook for these 

borrowers? Well, on the positive side we're 

definitely in a different situation than we were 
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after the financial crisis. The great majority 

of borrowers in forbearance plans have substantial 

equity in the home and are expected to be able to 

work with their servicers to enter workout 

programs. I think it's fair to say that most 

industry analysts don't foresee a huge wave of 

foreclosures or distressed sales coming down the 

pike.

That said, I should give a note of 

caution that borrowers that haven't exited 

forbearance yet, they tend to be lower credit score, 

lower income, and might be the ones that have been 

most adversely affected by the pandemic. So some 

questions remain over whether borrowers who are 

still in forbearance will be able to successfully 

meet their payment obligations even if they're in 

-- make it into workout programs. So this is 

obviously something we're going to want to keep 

an eye on in the coming months. Next slide.

I don't want to take up too much more 

time so I'll just highlight a few other issues that 

I think are of interest to this audience. First, 
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home affordability has become a major issue. I 

know Director Gruenberg flagged this in his remarks 

earlier so I'm glad to expand on it a bit here.

This chart is from Harvard's Joint 

Center for Housing Studies. The green line shows 

annual house price changes and the blue line is 

the measure of supply of existing homes for sale.

The chart shows that house prices have 

increased sharply in the last year or so, at the 

same time as the supply of homes has reached record 

lows. And this reflects the national picture, but 

of course housing markets are local. But this 

pattern sort of exists widely. So across different 

segments of the housing market, across different 

geographies, and so on.

So Joint Center estimates that house 

price to income ratios, that's one measure of 

housing affordability, they're at levels last seen 

in the mid two thousands across many of the MSAs 

in our country. So while the increase in home 

prices is beneficial for current homeowners 

including those that are in forbearance as I just 
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mentioned higher prices obviously make it more 

difficult to become a homeowner, particularly among 

lower income and lower wealth households. Next 

slide.

And of course the alternative to home 

ownership is rental housing. And I know rental 

housing isn't the main focus of this panel, but 

I think it's worth highlighting a few points that 

may be relevant to the discussion today.

First, affordability. Affordability 

in rental markets is also a major issue as well 

as in home purchases. After some pandemic related 

disruptions most indications are that rents have 

increased considerably over the past year. Again 

this seems to be a pretty wide phenomenon.

Second, I'll note that government 

assistance programs have been critical for renter 

households. As of early September estimates from 

the Census' Household First Pulse survey show that 

about 15 percent of renter households in the U.S. 

are currently behind on payments. This is about 

twice the pre-pandemic rate and almost surely would 
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be worse if not for government assistance programs.

I think I'm running out of time so I'll 

just say that this is something that CFPB emphasizes 

in a recent study looking at financial 

circumstances. This chart sort of echoes the chart 

I showed earlier, just showing just how much the 

financial circumstances of renter households have 

been influenced by government public policy 

efforts.

So going forward stakeholders will need 

to pay close attention to how renter households 

are faring and ensure that they're able to take 

advantage of housing rental assistance programs 

that may be available. 

So let me stop there and turn it over 

to the other panelists. I know that was a lot of 

material in a short period of time, but hopefully 

it provided some useful context, and of course I'm 

happy to answer any follow-up questions at the end 

of the panel. Thank you.

MR. ERNST: Great, thank you Ryan. 

We'll go to Prasant next.
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MR. SAR: All right. So, thank you for 

the opportunity to address the committee today. 

I've been looking forward to offering our 

perspectives and observations about the housing 

market and COVID-19's impact on the enterprises.

So I just want to say at the outset that 

since 2008 FHFA and the enterprises have been 

working to develop and implement uniform loss 

mitigation policies that expand borrower access 

to meaningful solutions when they become delinquent 

or are in danger of falling behind on their mortgage 

payments.

And as the pandemic took a foothold we 

did promptly set out policies, and deployed 

policies from our toolkit that we had in place based 

on our natural disaster policies at the time. And 

we've been monitoring the evolving conditions, 

looking for vulnerabilities and opportunities, and 

then carefully modifying those tools for the COVID 

population particularly.

So I think I can say without reservation 

that this rapidly changing economic outlook has 
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continued to test the resiliency of the business, 

government, and borrowers alike, and that does 

extend to the tools that FHFA and the government 

sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 

have developed to meet the needs of today's 

struggling homeowners.

So this presentation today is going to 

touch on the specific actions that we've taken since 

March 2020 and the declaration of the national 

emergency to reinforce our priority of home 

retention for hundreds and thousands of borrowers 

emerging from COVID forbearance.

In the first slide, if you could go to 

the next slide I'm going to just try and frame up 

the conversation a little bit around our loss 

mitigation solutions, and then I'll move into some 

of the actions that we've taken.

So this slide depicts the solution set 

that we have for borrowers emerging from 

forbearance. And how it works is we call it the 

loss mitigation waterfall because it is a sequence 

of events when borrowers emerging from COVID 
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forbearance and just regular forbearance in general 

exit.

And so about 30 days before a borrower 

exits forbearance servicers are required under GSE 

servicing policy to reach out to the borrowers and 

to try and understand the borrower's specific 

circumstances before they engage in conversations 

about what the exit options are.

And in principle what we're trying to 

figure out is whether the hardship is resolved, 

and if so to what degree. So if the hardship is 

resolved the conversation turns to the best option 

for the borrower which might include reinstatement, 

and that's if the borrower could pay off all their 

delinquent amounts, a possible repayment plan, and 

that involves making payments, an extra payment 

in addition to the regular payment for a short 

period.

And then there's an option if a borrower 

cannot do something of that nature to go ahead and 

defer the payments into the past due P&I payments, 

principal and insurance payments, into a 
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non-interest bearing balloon that is only due and 

payable at the maturity, sale, or refinance of the 

property.

And then finally from a retention 

perspective we have something called flex 

modification. This is really the flagship 

offering of the enterprises, and this does 

permanently modify the terms of the mortgage. It 

typically reduces the interest rate and extends 

the term out to 40 years. There is a component 

of that modification that can also forbear 

principal.

Beyond that if borrowers are unable to 

successfully resolve their hardship in one of those 

four options we do have a mechanism for the borrower 

to sell their property prior to foreclosure, or 

to give the property back to Fannie Mae and Freddie 

Mac. Next slide, please.

So in March 2020 in response to the 

emergency declaration FHFA directed Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac to suspend foreclosures. That 

moratorium ended on August 31 of this year and now 
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servicers are permitted to take further actions 

on those cases where there was a first filing prior 

to March 2020.

There's also a segment of borrowers 

that can have foreclosure filings taken against 

them if they default, and even if they were on COVID 

forbearance if they become delinquent and servicers 

followed certain rules pursuant to the CFPB 

servicing rules.

But I want to remind this group that 

these borrowers can still reach out to their 

servicers, and we really want to encourage them 

to do so. Similarly we encourage those facing 

possible eviction to contact the servicer to look 

at options that would be less disruptive to them.

There are options available to those individuals. 

In loss mitigation we have made three 

important changes in response to the COVID 

pandemic. And I referenced this earlier about 

modifying our tools. And part of that was to 

address the unique nature of the delinquencies that 

we've been experiencing as a result of the 
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forbearance.

So those changes as they were sequenced 

were we changed our standard forbearance policy 

from 12 months to 18 months for all borrowers that 

were already on an active forbearance plan. That 

was to address a possible surge of borrowers who 

were going to require additional forbearance after 

the 12 months of forbearance had been exhausted.

We also made a change that related to 

our payment deferral product. That product was 

designed to defer only up to 12 months of payment 

consistent with the forbearance plan. When we 

changed forbearance we added an additional six 

months to the payment deferral product to 

accommodate those borrowers to the extent that 

these borrowers could in fact resume their normal 

monthly mortgage payment.

And the final change that we made was 

we provided an interest rate reduction to borrowers 

who had mark to market loan values below 80. As 

was mentioned in Ryan's remarks there were a lot 

of individuals who have substantial equity in their 
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properties. The standard flex modification 

product does not provide for an interest rate 

reduction for such borrowers. It only provides 

it for people with mark to market loan values above 

80.

We looked at a lot of data to figure 

out who these borrowers were. A very, very large 

percentage, 90 percent, this was their first 

hardship ever while they had their mortgage. And 

we wanted to make sure that there were tools 

available to capture as many borrowers as possible 

coming out of this crisis due to the nature of their 

hardship.

We also made one change on the supply 

side and that was in our REO disposition process. 

In that space we extended what's called the first

look period from 20 days to 30 days nationally to 

support owner occupant purchases.

In the -- before this change it was only 

that non-profits and owner occupants had a -- they 

had a 20-day window to bid on properties. So we 

wanted to extend that time frame given to put owner 
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occupants and non-profits on a more level playing 

field with investors. Next slide, please.

Finally I wanted to share some 

important results of the enterprise's efforts in 

kind of a where are we now slide starting with the 

successes.

So as you can see in the top part of 

this slide on the green we have a large number of 

individuals who never stopped paying their mortgage 

even after they took forbearance. 

We also in combination in that number 

are those who did take a break, but then they fully 

reinstated. We also had a large number of people 

who resumed their payments after deferring missed 

payments. And that number is right around 500,000.

Finally, we had a large number of 

refinances and sales right around 32 percent. One 

concern on this slide naturally though is that we 

still have about 5 percent of the population that 

have exited forbearance that are delinquent. And 

there are still about 400,000 that are unresolved.

We think this is where housing 
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assistance professionals, housing counselors can 

help get the word out. Many of the remaining 

borrowers, they've been on loan forbearance plans 

and as I mentioned before we have a lot of people 

who have extended beyond 12 months. And it's going 

to be very critical to message that assistance is 

available and it's widely available.

So with that I just want to thank the 

FDIC for the opportunity to share these 

observations. Thank you, Keith.

MR. ERNST: Thank you, Prasant. 

You've perfectly keyed up Tonya with your reference 

to the important role that housing counselors play. 

I know she appreciates the handoff. 

MS. TYLER: Absolutely. Thank you. 

Thank you so much for inviting NeighborWorks 

America to this conversation. Today I am going 

to focus on some of the lessons that we learned 

during the last foreclosure crisis and really the 

effectiveness of housing counselors during that 

crisis.

And then I'm going to talk a little bit 
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about our most recent program that's in response 

to the current crisis, housing stability counseling 

program. And then finally I really want to 

highlight some things that we know today, lessons 

that we've learned and that we'll carry forward 

into this current process. 

If you're not familiar with 

NeighborWorks America we've been around for over 

40 years. We have about 250 network organizations 

and they're located all across the country. And 

our network organizations, they're really the 

reason that NeighborWorks exists today.

They provide everything from 

affordable housing development, financial 

counseling and coaching, resident engagement and 

employment and education in their communities. 

Next slide.

So for over 10 years, and we really 

couldn't imagine that we would be administering 

a program that long during the last crisis, 

NeighborWorks administered the national 

foreclosure mitigation counseling program. And 
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that was from 2008 through 2018 when the program 

finally wound down.

And the counselors that participated 

in that program were all across the country, and 

they served nearly 2 million households that were 

facing foreclosure.

Some of the things that we learned from 

the housing counselors and how effective they were 

during that crisis is that clients that received 

counseling through NFMC were nearly three times 

as likely to receive a loan modification cure 

compared to those who had not received counseling.

Seventy percent of NFMC clients were 

more likely to remain current on their mortgage 

so there was some sustainability. NFMC clients 

received an average payment reduction close to 

$5,000 per year if they did get a loan modification. 

And our clients overall received annual savings 

of approximately $518 million. So that clearly 

shows that housing counseling is effective, that 

they are located in their communities, that this 

is the place where consumers feel most comfortable 
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getting their information. Next slide.

So today NeighborWorks is fortunate 

enough to receive funding through the American 

Rescue Plan. This is our housing stability 

counseling program. We recently rolled out the 

grant agreements for this. And during the 

application process we received a request of over 

$348 million from all of the counseling agencies 

across the country. And what we know is that that 

amount would probably have been much higher had 

we not placed a cap on the maximum that they could 

apply for which was at $10 million.

We have 131 grantees many who 

participated in the housing crisis during 2008 

through 2018. They're made up of HUD-approved 

intermediaries, state housing finance agencies, 

and our network organizations. 

They will serve all 50 states including 

District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. We 

anticipate that we will serve over 80,000 

households in this program, and that includes 

homeowners and renters which is new.
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Based on the crisis before where we were 

just serving homeowners that were impacted by 

foreclosure today we all know that we are also --

renters are heavily impacted by the crisis of the 

pandemic. And so all of these households will 

receive no-cost housing counseling from the 

grantees that participate in this program.

The program is also targeting both 

low-income and minority people and in 

neighborhoods. And while our counselors can serve 

anywhere that they like in their communities there 

were 1,200 counties that were identified. Our 

NeighborWorks team used the CDC's vulnerability 

index and we came up with these counties that were 

considered areas of greatest need. And this was 

due to high cost burden or social vulnerability. 

Next slide.

So what we know today. At 

NeighborWorks it's really important for us to take 

a look back at all of the lessons that we learned 

during the last crisis. And there's two reports 

that I'd like to point out that were done during 
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that time, one that was done in 2008 through 2010 

by the Urban Institute that really outlines the 

effectiveness of housing counseling during that 

crisis.

And then there was a second report that 

was done which is called the NFMC Capstone Report. 

Both of those you can visit our website to get 

more information. 

But on both of those they really 

outlined some of those lessons that I'm going to 

talk about today, but that we really utilized as 

we began our process of designing this most recent 

program.

So what we know is that when someone 

is in crisis, whether that be financial, or health, 

or both, many of the families today are not only 

facing challenges with saving their homes both from 

foreclosure or eviction, but they're also facing 

disasters is that it's really unreasonable for any 

of us to believe that they could figure out all 

of the resources that are available.

And I know we've seen already some of 
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the resources that Prasant shared. And it's 

difficult when you're in a crisis to go through 

all those and identify which one is best for me. 

And this is really the role that housing counselors 

provide every day.

Clear and consistent communication is 

really critical. Again, we saw that during the 

mortgage crisis, during the foreclosure crisis that 

a lot of people were going to different services 

and trying to identify. Some didn't even know what 

their loan number was. And so having that 

consistent information, having fair websites, 

being able to have a space for housing counselors 

to connect to so that they could share that with 

the consumer is really important.

Scam activities that are present. 

NeighborWorks America during the last crisis and 

we continued that. We have a great scam campaign. 

It's a place for consumers and also for our network 

agencies to go and find out more information on 

how they can help consumers, what to do when you're 

contacted on a scam. There's a lot of valuable 
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information on our website.

But this is another piece where I'm 

already dealing with a crisis of trying to save 

my home, and now I'm being contacted by a scam.

And so finally the most important thing 

and something that NeighborWorks has worked really 

hard to do is to make sure that we're coordinating 

all of our efforts. All of the non-profits, 

servicers, and government agencies, a place where 

we can share information, all of the rich data that 

we're going to get from the American Rescue Plan 

and all of the information that we received from 

the last crisis, making sure that we all come 

together to share all of our strategies.

This is really important and it's a good 

practice in general. So with that I will stick 

around for questions, but I'll turn it back over 

to you, Keith.

MR. ERNST: Great. Thank you so much, 

Tonya. We are going to go to Sonia Joyner next 

from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency. 

Sonia, take it away.
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MS. JOYNER: Good afternoon and thank 

you all for the opportunity to share as well. I'm 

going to be quick with it, but North Carolina 

Housing Finance Agency also is -- next slide, 

please. Housing assistance programs. 

Tell you a little bit about North 

Carolina Housing Finance Agency for those who may 

not know. The North Carolina Housing Finance 

Agency is a self-supporting public agency. It has 

financed over $24 billion in affordable homes and 

apartments. It was instituted in the general 

assembly in 1973 and the agency's sole purpose of 

that which is our mission as well is to create 

affordable housing opportunity for North 

Carolinians whose needs are not met by the market. 

Next slide, please.

And with that we're going to talk a 

little bit about financing in today's economic 

climate. And we're going to start with a talk about 

two of our programs which is home ownership and 

multifamily. And I will put my disclaimer out 

there as my area of expertise is in home ownership. 
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But I know a little bit to be dangerous.

So we're going to start with the home 

ownership with some challenges that we've actually 

seen that we've talked about. Home sales prices 

are extremely high. There's little or no housing 

stock, existing housing stock that's out there, 

and the housing stock that is available, the 

existing housing stock is in need of major repairs.

And in the rural areas there's almost 

non-existent housing that's available. Now that 

moratoriums on the forbearance have been lifted 

another affordable challenge is for some of those, 

how do I make my mortgage payment.

Those challenges, some of the 

opportunities that we as the housing finance agency 

can see the needs are the down payment assistance 

programs because of those sale prices being so high. 

We try to provide that. We've always done so, 

but we try to expand it a little bit more.

And with the existing housing, and the 

needs and repairs that are out there, we have our 

rehab guides who have been (telephonic 
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interference) our program (telephonic 

interference) listening sessions with the 

non-profits and local governments throughout the 

state to find out what the needs are in their 

communities.

And what we're also trying to do is to 

reach those rural communities, is come up with 

(telephonic interference) credit unions and the 

USDA in rural areas to find out if there's some 

assistance that we can provide with down payment 

assistance.

And as it relates to the challenges for 

the actual forbearance, so people who can possibly 

go into foreclosure. You all know that we have 

273 -- we don't have it yet, but we allotted $273.3 

million through the Treasury for the ARP, but we're 

not the eligible entity. We're actually -- we'll 

administer the funds, but the eligible entity is 

North Carolina Pandemic Recovery Office is their 

lead agency.

With that we've actually submitted our 

plans to Treasury on August 19. Waiting for 
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approval on that plan. While waiting on the 

approval for that plan we've been trying to work 

in the background and put things together such as 

a call center, that type of thing to make sure that 

when the plan is approved that we've actually opened 

up a portal where we have signup on our website 

for homeowners to actually sign up so when the 

portal is up, when the plan has been approved 

they're able to actually start their applications. 

As it relates to emergency rental 

assistance the agency has no direct role with that 

as well. That statewide program is run by the North 

Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilience. And 

many of the larger counties and the actually 

(inaudible) focused organizations, they actually 

have their own programs set up.

As it relates to our rental production 

and what we're actually doing, the demand for 

housing credits far, far, far exceeds the resources 

available. We have a 5 to 1 ratio for applications 

to award -- have seen increases in bond funded 

projects in recent years with more than 30 bond 
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projects funded each year. Over the last two years 

in total we funded 75 projects at 6,700 units in 

2020, and 68 projects and 7,400 units in 2021.

Challenges during the pandemic include 

increase in the construction cost which we know 

the materials and the labor shortages and supply 

chain issues, and delays in permitting and 

approvals at all levels. We have been working with

partners to ensure that all of these deals make 

it actually to completion.

And that being said -- next slide, 

please. I am short and quick. These are our 

contact information for individuals that you'd like 

to have any questions about home buyer programs, 

rehab, multifamily or supportive housing. Thank 

you.

MR. ERNST: Great. Thank you very 

much. We're going to go now to Victor Galloway, 

community affairs specialist from our FDIC Atlanta 

region to help us understand a little bit more about 

the opportunities the FDIC has to help recover all 

the type of ground we've heard about today.
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MR. GALLOWAY: Thank you, Keith. You 

can go to the next slide. (telephonic 

interference) as a community affairs specialist 

I support the FDIC's mission to support (telephonic 

interference) in the nation's financial system 

(telephonic interference) economic inclusion and 

career development initiative that broaden access 

to safe and affordable credit, and deposit services 

from insured depository institutions.

Among the ways we accomplish this is 

being a convener. We convene stakeholders such 

as housing stakeholders and thought leaders to 

reflect on lessons learned from the past, real time 

issues and the impact in current economic 

ecosystems in order to begin, build and bridge 

future partnership opportunities and innovative, 

promising practices.

The success of the work is based on our 

availability to be connectors. Community affairs 

specialists are connectors of people, 

organizations, resources such as connecting 

housing stakeholders to FDIC affordable mortgage 
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lending center, connecting financial institutions 

to affordable housing community-based 

organizations and practitioners to address, 

achieve solutions to overcome barriers to 

affordable capital and credit, to maximize and 

empower the convening and connected impact of 

community affairs specialists in their core roles 

are champions.

We're champions of promising 

practices, but some of these can be floored as 

difficult, different approaches are being tried 

and tested as well as being a trusted ally and 

technical advisor on economic and community 

development partnership opportunities. Community 

affairs specialists serve as a compass for economic 

inclusion navigation between financial 

institutions and community-based organizations and 

other stakeholders.

As an example, over the past year in 

the Atlanta region we have convened several housing 

events that have connected over 75 banks with 140 

plus affordable housing community-based
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stakeholders to emote and enhance partnership 

opportunities.

Being champions resulted in increased 

investment in the expansion of programs and 

philanthropic dollars to assist hundreds of low 

to moderate income consumers in the areas of 

affordable housing, including rental and 

transitional housing, as well as thousands of 

dollars in mortgage and rental assistance funds 

for home ownership and renters impacted by COVID.

Community affairs' role is really to 

be the chameleon both for everything external of 

FDIC's partnerships and opportunities, provide the 

information to our internal other branches within 

our agency.

And so we really thrive on being that 

glue that helps understand all the issues that's 

relevant to economic opportunities as well as being 

the current trusted ally for those partners that 

we have so come close to partnering with. 

And with that I just wanted to say 

there's a representative like myself that 
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represents each of our states throughout this 

beautiful country of ours. With that, Keith, I'm 

excited and waiting for questions from our audience 

and also anyone else that might have them. Thank 

you.

MR. ERNST: Great. Thank you, Victor. 

At least on this side there were a couple of 

glitches in your audio but I think your essential 

message came through loud and clear, and certainly 

appreciate you helping the panelists understand 

this catalyzed and convening role that we play day 

in and day out in our community affairs program 

to connect lots of different perspectives and help 

people recognize for their shared objectives in 

support of consumers.

I see a question in the chat and I'm 

going to open the floor more generally to members 

of the committee for their initial comments or 

questions. But first let me see, Jonathan, you 

came in the chat. Do you want to ask your question 

on the floor here?

MR. MINTZ: Sure. Can you hear me 
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okay?

MR. ERNST: We hear you.

MR. MINTZ: Let me pull up the question 

so I can see how I worded it. I guess for anyone 

on the panel what I was wondering is what the best 

practices or the lessons learned were about really 

ensuring that mortgage servicers were engaging with 

homeowners who were in trouble productively this 

time around.

MR. ERNST: I will not call on 

panelists, but let's see who wants to jump in on 

this one.

MS. TYLER: This is Tonya. I'm happy 

to answer that. I did note that a bit in my 

presentation, but really it's about making sure 

that information is clear, that it's consistent, 

and that they're connecting with housing counselors 

because this is the role that they play in their 

communities by making sure that they know all of 

the information that's available for the consumer 

and that then they can connect the consumer with 

that information. 
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One of the big lessons that we learned 

during the last crisis is that we all need to 

connect, those of us who are giving money and those 

of us who are servicers. And then today coming 

in with that is the landlords, bringing them in 

the conversation. So making sure that we are all 

trying to connect with one another, and then also 

making sure that we connect with housing counselors 

because this is the work that they do.

MR. SAR: I would also add that one of 

the things we've been very focused on is clarity 

and communication. One of the things that FHFA 

along with Fannie and Freddie did early on in this 

pandemic was to draft a script essentially for 

servicers that would be a uniform way to convey 

information about what forbearance is and 

forbearance is not.

There was a message in the -- kind of 

the public about the end of forbearance and 

requiring a lump sum payment, for instance. And 

that is patently false. There are options for 

borrowers to get into repayment plan as I discussed 
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in my short segment.

And we've been very focused on making 

sure those messages are clear both to servicers 

and to borrowers. We published kind of a 

homeowner's pamphlet for loss mitigation that is 

on the CFPB's consumer finance website. We did 

the script as I mentioned.

We also communicate directly through 

the enterprises with servicers by publishing FAQs 

so that they understand how to communicate with 

borrowers, like what are the rules of the road as 

it relates to dealing with homeowners, especially 

distressed homeowners.

MS. JOYNER: And as for North Carolina 

Housing Finance Agency I can say that as it relates 

to that we've looked at lessons learned in the past 

as well. But one of the things that all of the 

state agencies are doing is we're coming together 

making sure that we're speaking the same language 

when we're actually talking to the servicers.

Because I think the hardest hit funds, 

everybody doesn't have access to the funds. So 
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now each state has access to these funds, but we 

want to make sure that the borrowers consistently 

across the country are getting the same treatment 

in that we as housing finance agencies in states 

that have the funding and the same language so all 

the servicers can be on one page.

MR. ERNST: Great. Thank you all for 

those observations. Other questions or comments 

from the panelists before I put mine on the table? 

All right. While you're thinking I'll go ahead. 

Just sort of a forward looking question. One of 

the things that came through that was sort of clear 

in the conversations leading up to this panel was 

the extent to which many of your organizations were 

drawing on lessons coming out of the last crisis, 

and building upon them and adjusting to respond 

to the particularities of the challenges posed by 

the pandemic.

I just wonder is it too early to say 

what you're taking away from this, or either for 

a going forward basis generally, or thinking about 

the consumers who may need some differential 
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assistance as some of the supports continue to sort 

of be withdrawn over time. Whether that's changes 

in unemployment compensation availability, or 

changes in foreclosure moratoriums, or eviction 

moratoriums. What are the lessons that you're 

looking to and thinking about adjustments that may 

be necessary going forward?

MR. SAR: So Keith, the way I would kind 

of generally answer that question would be starting 

with kind of some of the things that we've already 

done. I spoke about the fact that we have -- we 

made changes directly to our payment deferral 

product as we've been looking at the data and 

looking at how forbearances are kind of trending 

at this period.

And they're down. They're down quite 

significantly, but as I raised we still have concern 

around those percentage of the population that have 

stayed in forbearance for a long time. And we've 

made other adjustments in terms of our interest 

rate reduction product.

I think that is a -- it's kind of an 
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indication of we're going to continue to follow 

the data and make changes quite dynamically. Just 

because we have to. The trend of this pandemic 

has been, it's very uneven and it's like you know, 

peaks and troughs. 

And we certainly realize that this is 

not like the last crisis. The last crisis it was 

staggering unemployment. House prices declined 

quite significantly for an extended period of time. 

The hardships during that crisis were very 

different than the hardships families are 

experiencing today. And certainly we have a very 

different economy than we had back then. 

So when you look at like the 100-year 

flood and you see it happen twice you always have 

to be ready to be able to revisit the tools that 

you have, and be open to changes, and be open to 

those changes on quite an expedited basis.

And so we at FHFA, Fannie Mae and 

Freddie Mac stand ready to make those changes as 

the data evolves.

MR. ERNST: Great. Thank you. Let me 
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just go ahead and see one more time, come to the 

committee. We're nearing the end of our allotted 

time. We've just got a couple of minutes left so 

maybe I'll give the floor back to our panelists 

and ask you've heard each other speak. You've had 

an opportunity to have some of the questions here. 

Is there anything you'd like to offer to the 

committee as a closing thought?

MS. TYLER: Sure. This is Tonya. I 

would say that having these types of conversations 

is really important through any crisis. But making 

sure that we all stay connected, not just on 

committee calls, but that we're reaching across 

and sharing information, sharing strategies.

For NeighborWorks it's really 

important for us to keep our ear to the ground 

through our network. And so as long as we're doing 

that we know that we're hearing what's happening 

in real time. So making sure that we save space 

for that.

MR. ERNST: Thank you. 

MS. JOYNER: I would ditto and 
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piggyback on Tonya by saying as an agency it was 

good to see all the other panelists here, to hear 

what you're doing, especially being in siloed 

states if you will from Fannie, Freddie, those 

agencies, and NeighborWorks (telephonic 

interference). So funny that we have (inaudible) 

with the pandemic as well.

So we appreciate the opportunity and 

the FDIC, the committee putting this panel 

together. It is very, very helpful, and to help 

us get the word out that there is funding available 

for individuals who actually will be struggling 

with foreclosure and forbearance -- after coming 

out of forbearance.

MR. ERNST: Thank you.

MR. GALLOWAY: Keith, I'd just like to 

add that as I listen to the panel we have to be 

conscious that all who touch this ecosystem within 

housing, a lot of the times what we're seeing now 

is we have a good idea and a good message from the 

servicers as well as with the agencies, but we've 

got a borrower and a community that is just 
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overwhelmed with information.

I think now just a source of 

information, we've got to make sure we push us to 

be the trusted advisor so they get the correct 

information, and they don't have this phobia about 

believing something that might be a myth, not true, 

and then they are hesitant to either contact a 

servicer or their banker.

And with the impact of COVID we have 

to remember that even the servicer's families, the 

lender's families, the housing developer all are 

impacted by this pandemic that put other stressor 

points that was not relevant back to the financial 

crisis.

So we have to be mindful and sensitive 

that we have to do more to reach not only the 

borrower, but also help them through the economic 

system to get to the servicer, to the lender, and 

that as the panelist says that we communicate the 

same message so that we have credibility back in 

the marketplace.

MR. ERNST: I think that is a great 
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observation and probably the perfect place to 

conclude this discussion. So thank you to all the 

panelists for your insights and for your time and 

talent in support of this committee's mission. 

Liz, I'm going to give the floor back over to you.

MS. ORTIZ: Thank you, Keith, and thank 

you everyone for another great panel. Now we are 

going to head straight into our final panel of the 

day. Spoiler alert - it includes a call to action 

focused on this year's tax time opportunity to 

expand account access and potentially improve 

financial well-being, moderated by my community 

affairs colleague Mia Sowell. Mia?

MS. SOWELL: Thank you, Liz. So this 

panel's discussion is a continuation of the last 

conversation we had in May when some of our 

community affairs specialists in our regional 

offices and I provided an overview of the Get Banked 

initiative and a public awareness advertising 

campaign that had recently launched.

So here we are about five months later 

to discuss how there are continuous opportunities 
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to promote affordable accounts. Tax season is 

practically around the corner and our guests today 

will share some of their efforts to support low 

and moderate income households file their tax 

returns, and tax season is an opportunity to connect 

them with banking and financial services. 

First I'll provide a few highlights 

from our public awareness advertising campaign, 

and then I'll introduce our panelists. 

So our campaign ran ads in the spring 

and summer of this year to motivate consumers who 

are unbanked to join the banking system. The ads 

ran in the Atlanta and Houston metropolitan service 

areas which were our pilot cities, and the theme 

There's a Better Way was intended to break down 

misconceptions about banks and help people see how 

banks can help meet their financial needs, 

potentially for lower cost and offer other 

benefits.

We reached people primarily by radio 

or streaming audio advertising, and we used some 

digital display banners, streaming TV, and mobile 
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video advertising. The ads ran in English and 

Spanish, and encouraged people to visit the Get 

Banked web page and open a bank account.

FDIC monitored certain metrics and 

activities. You can go to the next slide, please. 

During the campaign we received over 163,000 

visits to our Get Banked web page, and digital media 

tactics succeeded in driving traffic to this web 

page from our pilot cities.

The pilot cities performed 

significantly better than all other locations in 

the country so the ads worked.

Our Get Banked video which is on the 

bottom left of your screen was used in some 

advertising and was viewed in its entirety at a 

rate significantly higher than benchmarks for 

government public advertising campaigns, and at 

a rate consistent with benchmarks for 

non-government campaigns.

There were over 350 media mentions of 

our campaign at both the local and national levels 

which complemented our advertising and led even 
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more consumers to visit the web page.

We also obtained data from our partners 

whose links we provide on our website for consumers 

interested in opening an affordable account. 

There was a significant increase in consumers 

visiting links provided to Bank On, American 

Bankers Association, and the Independent Community 

Bankers Association to learn more about how to open 

a bank account.

And during the campaign the number of 

banks offering certified Bank On accounts increased 

28 percent from 88 to 113 accounts and still growing 

as Jonathan Mintz indicated earlier. And that 

brings us closer to FDIC's vision that all Americans 

have access to secure and affordable insured 

banking services, and that every bank offers 

affordable transaction and savings accounts.

Other metrics such as the FDIC's How 

America Banks household survey and the Bank On 

account opening data that's analyzed by the St. 

Louis (inaudible) will be available in mid to late 

2022, and that will provide more detail regarding 
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the overall number of banked households in the pilot 

cities and nationally.

So based on the success and lessons 

learned of the initial public awareness campaign 

we are finalizing plans for a second pilot which 

we expect will begin before tax season is in full 

swing in 2022.

We are still finalizing some details, 

but this will position us to utilize tax season 

as a great opportunity to get more Americans banked. 

Next slide, please. 

So as we prepare for tax season we will 

continue to collaborate with several organizations 

to promote the message about getting banked. The 

IRS has been one of our greatest partners for 

encouraging the general public to visit our web 

page to open a bank account to receive their 

government payments.

IRS included links to our Get Banked 

page on its social media posts and multiple pages 

of its website, particularly its Get Your Refund 

Faster page and its child tax credit update portal.
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The IRS also offers free basic tax 

return preparation to qualified individuals 

through its voluntary income tax assistance 

program, or the VITA program. 

For years the FDIC's community affairs 

program has partnered with VITA organizations to 

assist consumers with establishing banking 

relationships. With bank accounts, households can 

receive tax refunds via direct deposit instead of 

waiting to receive a check in the mail, and then 

paying fees to cash the checks.

So our panelists today will highlight 

how they participate in VITA efforts, and how you 

and your organization may be able to support VITA 

and discuss how tax season is a great opportunity 

for more households to get banked.

Our first panelist is Jenny Vongxay. 

Jenny is the VITA program coordinator with the 

Connecticut Association for Human Services, or 

CAHS. They connect individuals and families to 

other programs within CAHS on financial literacy 

and work with participants on reaching their 
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financial goals through financial coaching.

Before transitioning into her current 

role as VITA program coordinator Jenny was a 

volunteer tax preparer through the VITA program 

for eight years.

Also joining us today is Daniel 

Dodd-Ramirez. Daniel serves as assistant director 

for the Office of Community Affairs of the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB.

The Office of Community Affairs focuses 

on the specific opportunities and challenges of 

low-income and economically vulnerable consumers 

as they engage in the financial marketplace. 

Both of the panelists' bios are in your 

committee materials so I'm going to turn it over 

to Jenny who will share more information about CAHS 

and its VITA efforts. So Jenny, you'll have about 

seven minutes. Thank you.

MS. VONGXAY: Hello, everyone. Thank 

you so much for that introduction, Mia. So yes, 

my name is Jenny Vongxay. I am the VITA program 

coordinator. VITA does stand for volunteer income 
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tax assistance here at the Connecticut Association 

for Human Services. Next slide, please.

So CAHS, also known as the Connecticut 

Association for Human Services is a division of 

Advancing Connecticut Together, also known as ACT, 

along with three other programs working together 

under the same umbrella.

CAHS is located in Hartford, 

Connecticut, but our services are statewide. We 

strive to change the lives of low-income children 

and families by advocating for policies from 

financial insecurity and poverty to financial 

capability and success.

VITA provides free tax preparation 

services to low to moderate income individuals and 

families. We are a volunteer based program and 

our volunteers are IRS certified and trained.

Another part of our volunteer duties 

is to connect taxpayers to other financial 

resources and programs that CAHS provides which 

is also the Connecticut Money School, financial 

coaching, Bank On Connecticut, and our new 
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initiative the CAHS Returning Citizens Program. 

Next slide, please.

So, as we all know the American Rescue 

Plan Act of 2021 expanded the child tax credit for 

2021. The child tax credit is normally $2,000 per 

dependent, but with the plan the credit amounts 

are now $3,600 for children ages 5 and under, and 

the credit for children ages 6 through 17 is now 

$3,000. Before it was normally age 16.

The credit is fully refundable, meaning 

taxpayers even with no income qualifies for the 

credit.

Under the act eligible taxpayers will 

receive half their credit between July through 

December, and the remaining half when they file 

their 2021 taxes in 2022. Next slide, please.

So to qualify for the advance child tax 

credit payments taxpayers must have filed a 2019 

or a 2020 tax return and have claimed the child 

tax credit on the return. Their information might 

also be when they filed through the non-filers queue 

for the economic impact payment. The children 
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would be ages 17 and under, and their main home 

for more than half of the year in the U.S. was more 

than six months, and also have a valid Social 

Security number. Next slide, please.

So some of the CAHS efforts for the 

advance child tax credit and why it's so important 

in Connecticut. So in Connecticut there's over 

25,000 children that are unaccounted for for the 

child tax credit, meaning according to the IRS they 

have not been claimed on a 2019 or a 2020 tax return. 

And that's $3,000 to $3,600 per dependent. So 

that's a lot of money being unclaimed.

One in seven children lives in poverty 

according to the Census Bureau, and the child tax 

credit will reduce that child poverty by nearly

50 percent. 

So two of the frequently asked 

questions regarding or surrounding the child tax 

credit is that receiving these payments are not 

considered income so it does not affect your federal 

benefits such as SNAP, SSI, Section 8, or public 

housing.
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The other frequently asked question was 

immigrant families who have ITINs or also known 

as the individual taxpayer identification number 

were not qualified. But they do qualify if the 

children were born in the U.S., have a valid Social 

Security number, and they are of age 17 and under. 

Next slide, please.

So some of the efforts that we are doing 

with VITA are hosting child tax credit day events. 

So pretty much my weekends for the next four weeks 

is hosting these child tax credit day events. 

Our online portal is also open through 

October 15. Our services are in person and online 

through the GetYourRefund.org portal. And we are 

also open all year round to assist taxpayers with 

IRS letters, questions they may have during the 

season, or even access to a copy of their tax 

returns. Next slide, please.

So, some ways that we try to get the 

word out there about our services. Definitely use 

our community organizations and employees are 

definitely the trusted sources to spread the word 
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to the community about our free services.

Become a VITA site. I've been 

recruiting VITA sites across Connecticut. We are 

expanding to over probably 65 VITA sites across 

the state of Connecticut. And lastly, of course 

vital to our VITA program are our volunteers. So 

we've been recruiting volunteers from banks, 

surrounding organizations, agencies, and partner 

organizations such as our churches and our schools. 

Next slide, please.

So preparing for the upcoming tax 

season, we've been recruiting of course our members 

from our banks who are thrilled about community 

service and helping the community. We've done 

early volunteer recruitment and volunteer 

training. 

So part of the volunteer training is 

connecting taxpayers to other financial programs 

such as Bank On to open their bank accounts and 

save money, or save their refunds. So our trusted 

sources there is teaching the volunteers on how 

they can go about doing that.
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And then we've also been partnering up 

with educational institutions or financial 

institutions to provide the resources for families 

on the importance of saving, and building their 

credit, and budgeting their finances.

I also want to mention a great story. 

So we have been (telephonic interference) and a 

way that we have been going and connecting our 

clients. So what happened was our Bank On 

coordinator was able to assist a client in getting 

their taxes done for free because they did not 

receive the economic impact payments. 

So we've done the intake and through 

the intake we also noticed that the client did not 

have a bank account. And of course we know that 

through a check by mail takes up to six to eight 

weeks, and this client really needed their economic 

impact payment.

So our Bank On coordinator was able to 

find the opportunity to help them through the 

affordable banks and they were able to get their 

refund much quicker. Next slide, please.
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Awesome. So before we get into Q&A I 

definitely want to thank everyone for this 

opportunity to be on the panel today. We share 

a vision to give back to the community in some way, 

and it was successful by sharing knowledge, 

educating one another, and working together.

One thing that I have always touched 

base on, or take home with me everywhere, take 

everywhere with me is wise words from my director. 

Each of the programs at CAHS works effectively 

independently, but it is the art of working in 

tandem that makes the work we do more impactful, 

important and empowering. So thank you and I will 

turn it back to Mia.

MS. SOWELL: Thank you so much, Jenny. 

That was some great information about CAHS's VITA 

efforts and definitely showing us that link from 

all of the services that CAHS provides to assist 

your clients, the residents in Connecticut to also 

partner with the Bank On coalitions.

Our community affairs team in our New 

York region looks forward to continuing its 
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partnership with CAHS and supporting the VITA 

efforts as well as the Bank On Connecticut 

coalition, so thank you.

So now I'll turn it over to Daniel 

Dodd-Ramirez who will share information with us 

regarding CFPB's continuous efforts to collaborate 

with VITA and he'll offer some suggestions 

regarding how other federal agencies can also 

engage with VITA. So Daniel, you'll also have 

about seven minutes.

MR. DODD-RAMIREZ: Great. Thank you 

so much, Mia and Liz for the opportunity to address 

the committee today, and thank you to all the 

committee members for your time and volunteering 

to serve on this committee.

And I just have to say I'm just thinking 

about -- my background was working locally in a 

community for quite some time. And thinking about 

FDIC community affairs specialists, and IRS field 

staff, partnering with organizations like CAHS is 

extremely inspiring to me. And to think about 

there's so many examples like this across the 
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country that are really working to provide really 

critical services in communities all around the 

country. It's just very inspiring so I just wanted 

to quickly say that.

Tax time does provide a unique 

opportunity for many people who are receiving 

refunds to increase their financial stability, 

security, and well-being. This is especially true 

for many people with low incomes because their tax 

refund is the biggest check, especially with the 

earned income tax credit, it's the biggest check 

that they're going to receive all year.

By this coming tax season as Jenny said 

many people are going to be receiving even a larger 

refund due to the expanded child tax credits and 

child independent care credits.

We at the CFPB have held several 

webinars and done a lot of outreach to ensure that 

families know about this important opportunity. 

And I know that's the case with a lot of 

organizations around the country and other federal 

agencies, to make sure that people are able to get 
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it safely and get it quickly.

The safest and fastest way as was 

already mentioned to receive your tax refund is 

through direct deposit. For people who don't 

already have an account we recommend opening an 

account before filing a tax return, and bring your 

account information with you so that you can provide 

it to the IRS when you file your return.

Bringing it with you would be having 

it available virtually if you can't find a sign 

in site, a site that's accepting walk-up. And we 

definitely appreciate that many VITA sites have 

had to really adapt to the virtual world, and so 

have banks. So have we all.

For people who are unbanked it's 

especially important to take advantage of safe or 

second chance accounts like Bank On. And if you 

need help filing a tax return the best way again 

really is to make the most of your refund to go 

to a volunteer income tax assistance or a tax 

counseling for the elderly site referred to as VITA 

or TCE in your community and they'll help you file 
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your return for free. And that will probably be 

virtually still at this point.

We at the CFPB know that many VITA 

programs are expecting challenges to recruit more 

volunteers this year in particular which is why 

the acting director of the CFPB recently published 

a blog encouraging our staff and staff of other 

federal agencies, and staff of financial service 

providers to volunteer at the VITA program in their 

community.

The VITA program has been the 

foundation for the asset building movement for 

communities that have high rates of poverty and 

we're proud to step up here to assist with this 

call to action.

There's a ton of information on the IRS 

web page, and there's United Ways, and there's a 

lot of different avenues for looking at how to 

volunteer with VITA. We're definitely very 

supportive and are encouraging it as our acting 

director said in his blog last Friday.

The CFPB annually works with around 75 
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VITA programs to learn from them and provide them 

with best practices on protecting their finances, 

and on how to help tax filers save a portion of 

their tax refund while filing their return.

Saving while filing a tax return is easy 

because you can have the IRS send portions of your 

refund into up to three separate accounts. So you 

can put some of your money in a checking account 

to pay the bills and catch up on debt. You can 

also have some sent directly to your savings account 

to set aside for an emergency.

Obviously having money set aside in an 

account is always a good bet because the unexpected 

happens and then you're in a better position to 

cover the cost without having to borrow the money 

at a higher cost. And of course we know that more 

and more and even lower income families are saving 

for longer term, whether it be for a children's 

savings account, or whatever that would be. 

There's increasing data around that which is 

encouraging and increasing efforts from great 

organizations around the country that are helping 
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communities to do so.

CFPB research has also shown that 

having money saved increases people's sense of 

their own financial well-being because it gives 

them greater confidence that they can deal with 

the unexpected. And that's really no surprise for 

all of us. We're lucky to be able to save funds. 

And again, there's a lot of data out there on that, 

including research that we've collected on this 

topic.

So, in conclusion we are really 

encouraging our own workforce and other agencies 

to volunteer for VITA this year. We know that 

because of the COVID situation that VITA programs 

are expecting to have -- they're already 

experiencing challenges in signing volunteers up 

for VITA. And we intend to do our part, and we 

also intend to spread the word about how easy it 

is to do and encourage other folks to do so.

I'll just stop there and give it back 

to Mia. Thank you.

MS. SOWELL: Thank you, Daniel. Thank 
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you for sharing that call to action for CFPB 

volunteers and federal agencies as well. 

So we'll now open the floor for any

questions from our committee members. You can 

either select the raise hand feature or come off 

of mute to just go ahead and ask your questions. 

And I do see Naomi Camper has her hand raised. 

Naomi.

MS. CAMPER: Hi, great. Thank you 

guys so much. This was a terrific panel and I love 

it especially because hopefully we all leave here 

with something to do, and an assignment. 

I had one comment and then a question 

actually. So first of all I love hearing 

(inaudible) Bank On accounts. I'm a one trick pony

in that regard.

One thing I would note in the data is 

I no longer, and I don't think our banks any longer 

think of them as second chance accounts. I think 

what we're seeing both anecdotally and through the 

data is that it's sort of equal, the number of people 

who don't have any other option besides a Bank On 
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account and choose that. 

The other half could choose a full 

service account and make the affirmative choice 

to get a Bank On account. So that's an exciting 

thing. It also really depends on how they're 

marketed, but they're no longer sort of I don't 

think that they have a stigma and they're a full 

service account. So that's exciting.

I would love to learn more from the 

Connecticut experience. It's fantastic to hear 

that you have a Bank On coordinator. Number one, 

I'd love to learn what you think the banking 

(inaudible) trade association to make sure that 

you have the collaboration that would be useful 

for tax season.

And the second thing is every account 

that's opened is fantastic. One sounds on the low 

side. Do you find that most of the people who come 

into your VITA site are already banked, or are there 

people who seem like even when you tell them about 

the opportunity to open an account they're somehow 

hesitant. And if so, how can we overcome those 
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barriers?

MS. SOWELL: Jenny, do you want to 

answer that?

MS. VONGXAY: Yes. So most of our 

clients do already have bank accounts, but what 

we find during the season is how can I get in contact 

with the IRS because I just changed my bank, or 

I have a different account.

So one of the big things are people are 

using those Chime accounts. So we try to convince 

them to stray away from those third party accounts 

because the way it goes is that those Chime 

accounts, or those H&R Block advanced accounts, 

they go to a different account before they hit your 

bank account. 

So for a situation just like with the 

economic impact payments it went to that third party 

account and those refunds were sent back. And then 

now they had to be refunded by a check which took 

weeks to get. 

And so to convince them about that we 

introduced them to the Bank On Connecticut account 
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with low fees, or to the no monthly fees, or whatever 

it is that they're looking for in a bank they can 

find with Bank On. 

MS. CAMPER: Great, thanks. And 

please do feel free to be in touch if there are 

ways that coordination with the industry more 

generally could assist you during tax season to 

get more people --

MS. VONGXAY: Oh, absolutely. Thank 

you.

MS. SOWELL: Thank you, Naomi. Thank 

you, Jenny. Are there any other questions from 

the committee? Otherwise I'll sort of piggyback 

a bit on some things that Daniel mentioned.

This year's tax refund could 

potentially be the largest refund ever received 

by some families that are receiving not only the 

child tax credit, but also the earned income credit. 

 

Could you describe any resources or 

services that CFPB may offer to families who are 

interested in preserving some of those funds? You 
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talked about the tax savings program. And if 

there's any financial coaching guidance that's 

available. 

MR. DODD-RAMIREZ: So we do have 

actually a -- as far as I'll start with the financial 

coaching. We do have a report that we've just put 

out around financial coaching programs operating 

in this new virtual setting that really highlights 

how organizations are successfully stepping up in 

this way.

And so -- and has a lot of tips on how 

to do that, and how to still apply coaching 

principles even though you're far away from your 

client in many cases. And so I would -- you could 

just do a search for virtual coaching guide CFPB 

and that should come up.

As far as the child tax credit we have 

put a lot of information on our COVID response page 

under CFPB. And there's a lot of information there 

that could be downloaded and used.

We've been targeting webinars 

specifically to organizations that have front line 
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staff which is really where we've mostly focused 

with our own education and consumer protection 

materials is focusing on the front line staff that 

have relationships with clients, as clients are 

coming in to certify for benefits, or re-certify 

to get housing, or to get transportation, or to 

get a job. Really training front line staff.

And so as we've held public webinars 

we've really targeted the training around the child 

tax credit and how to access the child tax credit 

through those webinars. And so we're excited to 

look for more opportunities to do that with other 

agencies.

We held one that was quite large with 

HUD about a month ago, and we're definitely open 

to holding more of those. But you should be able 

to find a lot of information by just going directly 

to our coronavirus website within CFPB.

MS. SOWELL: Great. Thank you, 

Daniel. So we have reached the conclusion of our 

time for this session so I'm going to say thank 

you to both of you for participating in this panel 
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discussion. And I'm going to turn it over to Liz.

MS. ORTIZ: Thanks, Mia. I want to add 

my thanks and appreciation to everyone who 

dedicated several hours of their valuable time to 

be with us this afternoon. 

And now let me turn the meeting back 

to Chairman McWilliams to close out today's 

meeting. Thank you again, everyone.

CHAIRMAN MCWILLIAMS: Thank you so 

much, and thank you not just Liz and our staff, 

but I would like to thank the committee members 

as well for their continued partnership, thoughtful 

comments, and everything you give us, and you give 

us all of you every time. The work that you do 

on the ground with your communities is incredible, 

and that's something that we don't take lightly, 

and we certainly benefit as I mentioned in the 

opening comments from the input that you provide 

to us and suggestions, recommendations, and just 

brainstorming some of these issues that frankly 

have persisted for too long in the United States. 

Liz, do we have the date for the next 
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committee meeting?

MS. ORTIZ: No, Madam Chairman, we do 

not.

CHAIRMAN MCWILLIAMS: All right. In 

my notes it says to be confirmed, the date to be 

confirmed, but I hope it's in person because I love 

seeing you and I love being able to interact with 

all of you in between the sessions and discussion. 

So let's just keep our fingers crossed that we 

can actually meet in person next time.

In the meantime I hope you, your 

families, and your staff, and your organizational 

staff are safe and we look forward to seeing you 

at our next meeting. Thank you so much and take 

care.

(Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went off the 

record at 4:52 p.m.)