The Sixth Annual Underbanked Financial Services Forum held on June 8-10, 2011 provided an occasion to discuss the ideas, technology, partnerships and policies that are transforming the market. The conference, held in New Orleans, Louisiana, brought together leaders from diverse institutions and ...

Underbanked consumers need minute-to-minute information about their finances, and mobile financial services (MFS) are well suited to deliver it. Although these consumers often have insufficient access to financial services, their access to mobile phones is fairly widespread. This disparity suggests a large ...

Recommendations for Asset Building

The financial crisis and economic downturn have reshaped the financial services landscape. While these events have by no means run their course, it’s critical to start looking ahead. Over the past year, the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) ...

All kinds of organizations and institutions play influential roles in the lives of young people. This presents these organizations with an opportunity to promote the development of young peoples' financial capability. Click below to download the research paper and accompanying inBrief. Depending ...

The Nonprofit’s Guide to Prepaid Cards is designed for nonprofits focused on consumer finance issues to build general awareness around prepaid cards and provide the tools and resources needed by nonprofits to start to incorporate prepaid into their programming. This guide was made possible ...

Presented at the Harvard Joint Center on Housing Symposium

Almost one-third of the 30 million U.S. households who are unbanked or underbanked borrow to pay for small-dollar, short-term needs. Though loans are typically obtained through payday lenders, rent-to-own centers, refund anticipation lenders, or ...

The Financially Fit Minnesota (FFM) program is a model in which employers offer a set of strategies for increasing financial services participation in the workplace. Specifically, the program concentrates on increasing participation in direct deposit and retirement savings programs, with participating employers ...

The Underbanked Financial Services Forum has become a bellwether for the industry serving the underbanked. Judging by this year’s Fourth Annual Forum, presented by SourceMedia with the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), the industry is strong. Despite challenging times for the ...

The Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) has conducted an investigation into the amounts that prepaid cardholders spend each month to conduct essential financial transactions, and compared that to the amounts that they would spend if they remained underbanked or used checking ...

Corey Stone, CFSI Fellow, will be heading the special research project, "Time to Focus on First Encounters." This research effort will take an in-depth look at first interactions between financial institutions and young people and will spotlight innovative institutions providing products/solutions for ...