 All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging in there with us. I'm Adrienne Harris. I'm a Towsley policymaker in residence here at the University of Michigan and former special assistant to President Obama at the National Economic Council. I'm going to moderate our distinguished panel here today. And I know each presenter has a bit of a presentation, and then we'll move into discussion. But why don't we go down the line quickly and do introductions and then move through each of the presentations? Sure. Good morning, good afternoon. I'm Melissa Coyde. I run Finrag Lab, which you'll hear about in just a moment. I'm Lisa Survahn. I'm a professor and chair of the city and regional planning department at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm Willie Elliott, and I'm at the University of Michigan. I'm a professor here. Thank you. We're going to mix it up. I'm going to stand up. Wake everybody up. Hold on, though. Let me get myself organized. So I'm sad Nick Smith is not here because I'm going to also claim Michael Barr gave me my first job too. Kind of sort of. You don't count the yogurt shop and the hospital x-ray department in college. Anyway, now you get to guess how old is Michael in light of the fact that Nick Smith, you gave him his first job and you've given me my first job. Like you heard, I'm Melissa Coyde. I'm probably the only startup in the room. But we are somewhat of a different type of startup. We are a nonprofit research organization. And I mentioned Michael Barr because I worked for the US Treasury Department twice. I was a staffer in Michael's office in the Clinton administration. And more recently, I was the deputy assistant secretary for consumer policy in the Obama administration. And a lot of what you're going to hear me talk about really hearkens back to what we wanted to understand, but we were insufficiently able to understand when it comes to, and I use this with intention, when it comes to the role of data and technology in the financial system and in particular in the retail financial services sector. And I use the words data and technology as opposed to fintech because fintech is a very nebulous term and it also raises lots of other questions, bank versus non-bank. And I think really, in part, what we all desperately need is more fact-based insights about very foundational issues when it comes to data use in financial services and also new technologies being deployed in the financial system and in financial services. And so that is what has led me to stand up, Finrag Lab, which is this, as I said, nonprofit organization. So let me use my slides to be my guide and let me figure out how to use this and put glasses on. I feel like I'm putting on my helmet here. So our purpose at Finrag Lab, and we're about a year and a half old now, is really to think about and assess what are the potential ways that data and technology can be harnessed for good, and in particular, how data and technology can be utilized to expand financial access and inclusion. We've been very focused in the US, but we are thinking about these issues in a global context. How can we help to generate fact-based insights that will ultimately inform public policy? Because again, given the four and a half years I was, most recently at Treasury, and even to some extent in the prior period, without having a deep empirical assessment and understanding about what the trade-offs are, both what the benefits may be, but also what the potential risks and major considerations are, it's really hard. I'm just being very candid. It's really hard for regulators to have a level of confidence, and frankly at some level, even to take on a level of responsibility to then think about how do we evolve our guidances, our regulations, and even our laws? We really need to understand, as policy makers, implications better as we do think about the need to evolve public policy. And hopefully with the insights that we are generating directly at Fenwick Lab, but also that we are trying to foster and bring in from other researchers and academic institutions to policy makers, especially at the federal level, this will ultimately help to inform not only public policy, but also the broader financial marketplace. Because frankly, the marketplace too is looking for some sense of what may be the rules of the road, where are the risky areas, and how does it take advantage of the technology and data to extend products and services and advice and new channels to consumers and small businesses and communities. So what's the state that we are in right now? You heard a little bit of this earlier, and it really is a really set of critical anchor points that we have to think about. This is somewhat of an outdated method of assessing access to financial products and services. Won't go into it in too much detail. But it still gives us, it calibrates our understanding of who really is struggling and who is not connected to safe and secure financial products and services. We have 33.5 million households who are by FDIC definition defined as un and underbanked. You heard some of these statistics earlier. We have a lot of people in this country who are living in poverty. It's just almost hard to believe. 40 million household Americans are living in a state of poverty. 60% of Americans who struggle with an annual financial emergency covering those expenses, and 34% of Americans who experience annual income volatility, which frankly, all of us in the room get that and know that and have those experiences ourselves. So that's actually a relatively low percentage. And then we think about globally those who are disconnected from safe products and services. 1.7 billion people are underserved annually, or sorry, are not connected to a formal financial system across the globe. Now, a lot of this is, and frankly, four of the five of these statistics, or at least three of the five, are based on things that fall outside the financial system. These are matters of income. These are matters of wealth. These are matters of inequality of income and wealth. And those things have to be thought about in many different ways by societies and by policymakers. But a lot of these data points are really important. And they do come back to how important being tied to good financial products and services are. And that's where I think many of us both realize this tidal wave of technology and the potential of data and what it may mean for helping to drive lower cost access, lower cost associated with actually providing products to especially low and moderate income consumers may offer a real potential benefit. It may help to improve and open up channels, mobile devices, online access, lower cost, personalized, timely financial information that really is about what that individual or what that household really personally needs, both in their immediate financial needs, but also in their mid and longer term financial goals and aspirations for themselves and their families. And I think that's why a lot of us get quite excited about trying to understand what does tech and data mean in the financial system and how are we thinking about evolving policy so that it really is financial services that are supporting financial independence and dignity and not taking that away. But we also know the risk. The big risks that many of us are very afraid of are the realities that this technology and this data may actually exacerbate, especially in this country, the generations of racial and income and economic inequality that exist. And really pressing for all of us is to understand how does that technology work? What do those data do when they're used in the financial system? And how do we make sure that we don't exacerbate redlining instances that have happened for generations? So lots of pressing questions. And to be clear, we at Fenregg Lab are not going to answer all of these. But just to put them out there, because I don't think we've quite talked about them in a tangible way yet, but what are some of these issues and what are some of these opportunities? Clearly anxiety and concern about redlining and discrimination being perpetuated with data and technology is top of all of our lists. Not understanding how these new algorithms, these machine learning algorithms actually spit out outputs that some may want to then rely upon as factors for or actual ultimately what decides a credit decision is a, for instance, is another concern that a lot of us have. But then there are also positives and potentials, and I alluded to this a minute ago. Consumer financial data. Is there a way that we, consumers, could be accessing our financial information and taking advantage of a technology tool that is really helping us individualize what our goals are and what our needs are? And of course this raises important questions around then, well, what are the business models underneath those personal financial management tools? And are, as we've talked about a lot today, are the incentives aligned or not aligned with that individual's needs and aspirations? One of the questions, and this is the one that we have taken on at Finrag Lab right now, is this really important question of, could we bring in data into credit underwriting methods, traditional credit underwriting methods, and would new data actually help a lender better credit risk assess a consumer or a small business? Would the inclusion of new data potentially help a lender do this in a way that is accurate, more accurate than what they would see with a traditional FICO score or based on traditional credit history data? And would it enable both the lender to be doing something that is a more prudent decision and frankly importantly, is it also more prudent for the consumer then, in terms of what the credit is that they might get? And so I'll talk about that in just a few more minutes. And lots of other topics, right? New techniques around privacy, sort of allowing conditioning about who you share your data with, are there ways that that could be used to get after some of the needs that we have around knowing who is in our financial system or know your customer types of requirements. And the list goes on, I mean, we could all sit and come up with many, many more. So we step back and try to think about where does this potential for big change really sit? These are the sort of master categories that we have identified and where we want to be spending more of our time. Right now we are digging deep into these issues around data and underwriting. But there are clearly other applications too. And I just talked about a few of them, so I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this page. But really lots of potential uses for data and technology from solving is somebody who they say they are under know your customer obligations. Are there more efficient ways of knowing who are the bad guys in our financial system and rooting them out? How is technology helping to lower the cost of products that have been delivered through a mobile device? And is the information that's generated through that mobile device potentially a way of helping that consumer better manage their finances? And the list goes on and on. But in order for those big opportunities to really be sorted and for guide rails to be written, we have to come back to the policies and the laws that we have in place right now. And I've just listed a few, but many of these are laws that we are quite focused on in this work that we're doing looking at underwriting. But I think what's important to realize here, all of these laws, many of them date back to the 1970s. In fact, 1970 when I was born. Even more recently, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, which Michael and I worked on, 1999 when that was passed, none of these have been written in the past 10 years and none of them contemplated the world that we're living in right now with the ubiquitous amount of data used or not used for lots of decisions in our lives. And so how then are these laws and regulations going to be updated? So that's where we like to think we can offer a little bit of help. What do we do? First and foremost, we talk to policy makers and we talk to regulators and we really try to hone in on what are the top of mind issues where we as an independent organization can go out and build a timely research project or even ideally an experiment where we can assess some of these very topical and timely matters that regulators are seeking information on. We then collaborate with others. We leverage external partners, academic institutions, also even financial modeling shops that do the analysis as vendors to Finreg Lab and also leveraging other partnerships with even consultancies where we have deep breath of legal experts, lawyers and others who are coming on board and helping as we are probing both the experiment side of the research that we build but also the policy and the legal analysis work that we're doing. And then we share the facts and the insights. And let me hop to the next one because this reflects it a little more. Part of the ambition and part of what we've been doing alongside of actually building an experiment, you've heard this and you've picked this up from the room, policy does not happen in a vacuum and there are a lot of different stakeholders who ultimately have to be engaged in the consideration and in the process. And in light of that, we run policy working groups based on the particular area of research that we are undertaking. We then build 30 to 60 people working groups. Actually, those are three different working groups but to deep dive assess what do the current laws say about that particular technology or data use? What would be potential ways that the laws or the policies of the regulations could be evolved, mindful of all the considerations, the trade-offs, the risk to consumers, the benefits to the industry. And in the end, we produce reports that reflect the input that came through those working group processes along with the experiment insights. Zanelle talked very concretely about our examination of cash flow data in underwriting. So here in the US, we know that there are about 45 million individuals who lack a sufficient credit history to score them under traditional underwriting means. This is credit histories that generate the FICO score. We also have 23 million sole proprietors in the US who seek credit, who are oftentimes paying high cost for access to credit as a sole proprietor. And so one of the theories going in one of the areas of strong interest among regulators is this question of, are there other types of data that feel frankly safe because they are financial in nature but that actually could help lenders prudently credit risk assess these 45 million individuals and 23 million sole proprietors. And that interest has ultimately landed on this focus of looking at cash flow data. And that means looking at what is the information in an individual or in a small business's bank account? What are those transaction activities? Importantly, it could mean a lot of other things too. There is a lot of information, any of us who pulled up our bank accounts know, you can see who are the merchants, where's the money going? What are the dates that it was sent? Sometimes it's time stamps. So there's a lot of non-financial data in that bank account picture. But what regulators and we and others in the broader financial stakeholder sector want to know is does the information, that very timely information about what's coming in and flowing out of a bank account, that transaction data information, is that potentially a way to better assess these individuals and these businesses for access to credit. And so what we've done is we have sought to build an experiment over the past year that actually seeks to answer that question. We've been able to get loan-level data from one, two, three, four, five lenders. We have an additional lender who's sharing more aggregated information with us. But these are small-dollar lenders, these are not. They are credit card provider, an installment loan, and also a provider of an overdraft alternative product, but they are all using cash flow information in order to credit risk assess and extend their credit, some would say certain types of non-credit products to consumers and small businesses. And with that information, we are setting out to answer three questions. One, first and foremost, does that data allow the lender to extend credit to those borrowers? And we have performance data, and so we can then assess how effective, how accurate was the prediction according to the cash flow data. And we're comparing that then to similarly situated consumers who are not assessed with cash flow. The second question is, does that, do the borrowers actually perform better with the cash flow underwriting? And then the third really important question from a policy standpoint is, do we see differences between protected and non-protected classes? Do we see indications of disparate impact risk? I don't wanna get out ahead of my skis. I will use this to, frankly, wet your appetite to come to the Finreg Lab website, where we will actually be releasing the findings from this research in May. But it really, it's come and learn what we learn, I would say. And so then, a part of this process, in addition to the experiment, is doing this deep dive around these policy issues. And what we did is we convened 60 people around the table last June and said, and these are the policy makers, the regulators who are sitting at the table with us, the large banks, the FinTech lenders, the non-bank lenders is what we used to refer to them as, what are those specific policy and legal issues that we need to deep dive, think about, assess, and consider what may be the options in terms of evolving those laws and those policies. And not surprising the credit information ecosystem. We're now talking about a very different flow of a very different type of data for underwriting. We're talking about cash flow data from a bank account, flowing to what we call an end user, which are these lenders, but flowing through these intermediaries, which are known as data aggregators. This is not something some would argue that was contemplated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. So these are the ecosystem questions that we are digging deep into. Fair and inclusive access to credit, this digs deep into the issues around fair lending. And really it's been, it was a very engaged and engaging conversation with banks, with academics, as we were thinking about, how is fairness defined? What are the expectations? If you do see differences between protected class and non-protected class. One of the topics that we spent a fair bit of time talking about is what if we see results where Hispanic females had been assessed at say 50% under FICO, but yet with the cash flow data, we're now seeing more Hispanic females being assessed at a greater rate up to 70%, but in comparison to white men where it's 70% Hispanic female, but 100% on white men. What do we think about that? That's a societal policy, important question that we all really need to push ourselves and consider. And so those were the type of topics that we were digging into with a fair and inclusive group. And then the third working group was rarely focused on important issues around, and we heard a bit of this too, informed consent and disclosures and how in the world does that happen when we're talking about a non-credit reporting agency system and consumers are having data pulled from their bank account moving through a third party to an end user and of course issues around who's then got responsibility when that data is flowing. More on that one too. So I am happy to share this deck. It's got some of the pointed questions that we're digging into. In each of these working groups. But I think the real sort of note for you all is we will be releasing this report in May. We're looking for feedback. We're looking for a conversation that this generates, but we really do hope that the research findings combined with the deep dive evaluation of these policy issues is going to help to further the conversation as we think about how we're making sure is the policy or is the state of technology and data in financial services evolves that we are really thoughtfully considering how we're balancing the trade-offs. All right, and then here is the team. I wanna point out because many of you know some of the people in this team, but it is quite exciting. We have Kelly Cochran who has joined us as our deputy about a month ago and Wayne Foll who comes with a background from DARPA and Lincoln Labs and Steven Stolzenberg who was actually working for FS card, which is a credit card product that was specifically aimed at low and moderate income households. So it's a great team and a great board and I look forward to hearing your questions. We'll go through each of the presentations and then come back for Q and A. Thank you. Present over here. Good over here. There's a presenter over here. Oh, we know we had that. Hi everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Lisa Serban. I teach at the University of Pennsylvania and I've been doing work on consumer financial services for about seven years. And when I thought about coming today, I really was thinking about the title of the conference which is consumer protection in the age of uncertainty. And I think a lot of the panelists today and the speakers have really been talking about the protection piece of consumer protection, the laws, the regulations, the ways in which we protect consumers. And so I really wanna focus on the consumer piece, put a little bit of a personal face on some of the people that we're talking about and also the uncertainty piece. And when I was thinking about this, I really thought, well, you know, there are really two kinds of uncertainty that are important in the conversations that we're having. One is this uncertainty in the political environment that's really changed the context in which consumers are being protected and the way that we're thinking about consumer protection. And the second, which is the one that I wanna spend a little bit more time talking about is financial uncertainty. So in terms of financial uncertainty, I wanna talk a little bit about how it's become increasingly widespread so that we have more and more families who are feeling as though they're living in financially precarious situations. And that is changing. So we know from research that 40% of Americans could not come up with $400 in the event of an emergency. That doesn't mean that it's not just that they have, they don't have $400 in their bank accounts, but there's no one even that they could ask for it. They don't have a credit card that they could charge $400 on. So imagine the kinds of things that happen to us on a regular basis, an appliance breaks down, classic example, a car breaks down, there's a medical emergency. 75% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. So when we think about, as Melissa was just talking about some of these laws not having changed since the 1970s, the world in which people are working and earning an income and trying to make ends meet has really changed a lot. But the financial situation, the financial tools that they have to manage that and the policy situation haven't really changed to accommodate this change. There are really three key trends that are driving this widespread financial uncertainty. The first is declining wages. So since the 1970s, wages have been going down for people. The second is increased income volatility. And income volatility is defined as a shift of more than 25% in someone's income over from one year to the next, right? So because of that, people are much less able than they used to be to be able to figure out how much money is coming into the household from week to week or month to month. A lot of this is because there's less attachment between employers and employees because people have shifted from full-time to part-time jobs and that many of these jobs are scheduled in a kind of on-demand way so that people don't even know from one week to the next if they're working at an hourly job, whether they'll be scheduled for 10 hours a week or 40 hours a week. Income volatility has doubled over the last 30 years. That's created a huge change. And the third change is the retraction of the public and private safety nets. So we know that the social welfare situation, the social welfare safety net is much more frayed than it used to be. And even if you do have a good stable job, it's very likely that your costs of health insurance have gone up, that your retirement plan is much less secure. It's much more defined by what you contribute than what you'll get back from that employer. So all of these things have combined to create a situation in which people have a very hard time spending, planning, saving, figuring out how they're gonna manage their financial lives. I wanted to really understand how those situations were affecting consumers on the ground. And I really also wanted to know, along with those three trends and this increasing financial instability, I saw the data that showed that many more people were using alternative financial services like check cashers, payday lenders, pawn brokers, et cetera. And in order to understand that in a different way, I got a job as a teller. I worked for four months at a check cashier in the South Bronx in New York in one of the poorest zip codes in the country. And I also worked as a payday lender and loan collector in Oakland, California. I also staffed a hotline run by the predatory loan help, it's called the predatory loan help hotline run by the Virginia Poverty Law Center to talk with people about how they were having difficulty paying back those payday loans and loans that were made to them even that were illegal. And one of the things coming out of that research that was most surprising to me, and this was particularly true for the people who had taken out small dollar credit, was how many of those people had the attributes of middle class Americans. So I think when we think of the group that we are protecting from the practices, whether they're mainstream or alternative financial institutions, we often think of low and moderate income people, we think of people of color in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods and that's true. But the surprising thing to me was how many of these people were people who owned their homes, had college educations, and were making more than 50 or $60,000 a year. That group, those three attributes I just described, is the fastest growing group of payday loan users. And that's because of this increase in financial instability and the lack of good options for people who find themselves in those emergencies that are becoming increasingly common. I wanna tell you just two stories from the people, the hundreds of people that I've interviewed. What I did was I worked behind the counters at both of these stores. I took the calls on the hotline for a month and then I came out from behind the counter and I interviewed hundreds of people who were the customers of these businesses, both the two that I worked with and others around the country. And I'll just talk about two of these themes that relate back to those trends that I talked about. One is low-wage, low-wage is an unpredictable income and the other has to do with medical expenses, which is a huge driver of bankruptcy and of small-dollar credit usage. So for the stories that I'm gonna tell you about today, two of them, we actually interviewed people at three points in time. We first got a huge data set from a subprime credit bureau called Clarity Services, which had contracts with a lot of these small-dollar credit users. And so what happened was when you applied for a payday loan, that lender would check in with this subprime credit bureau and find out whether you were credit worthy. So I didn't know before I did this research that that second tier of credit bureaus even existed. We got the data from Clarity. We cleaned the data, we administered a survey and then we asked people on that survey if they would be willing to be interviewed. We interviewed people in three different states in California, Texas and Florida because they have very different regulatory environments and we wanted to see the difference and we interviewed them at three different points in time, kind of ground zero a year later and a year after that. And for a number of those people who agreed to be interviewed, they also agreed to give us access to their personal consumer data. So I'm not gonna show this because I don't really have enough time today but I can send you a paper if you're interested that actually created timeline and mapped that consumer data together with the kinds of events that people said were happening in their lives that were driving the use of the small dollar credit. So let me tell you about Anna first. Anna lives in Central Florida. She works for a major hotel chain that also sells timeshare properties. She's the primary breadwinner in her family. She is married, she has a couple of children. Her husband works in and out of construction but he is the primary caregiver for the family. So Anna's salary works in a way that she gets a base salary and she also gets a commission based on how many properties she sells. And for her, she had calculated that the way that they managed their finances was that the commission that she got was always enough to pay the rent and everything else that she made and her husband moving in and out of construction paid for everything else, the food, the lights, the phone bills, et cetera. What happened was on a particular day after Anna had been working there for five years, the company decided to change the commission formula and her income dropped precipitously. This is interesting, right? Because here's someone who has a stable job. A lot of her situation stays the same but her income changes dramatically. She goes from a stable situation to an income shock where her income is unstable. That drives her to start using payday loans which she has a hard time paying back because her income is never going up commensurately with the costs that she's incurring. Eventually, by the time that we interviewed her the third time, her husband had gotten a full-time job because he needed to in order to stabilize the family's income. However, when we asked Anna how she was feeling and how she had managed to get out of debt because she was no longer using these loans, she told us that she'd cashed out her retirement account in order to pay off the debt and start with a clean slate, right? So I interviewed a lot of people who were making one expensive decision to take out loans like this which they didn't really want to do and then sometimes trading that off for another decision that's also going to affect her negatively over the long run which was cashing out in her entire retirement plan. Sometimes when we look at the data on payday lending use or other small-dollar credit and we see somebody stopping using it we may think of that as a good outcome but oftentimes people are making other bad decisions at the same time, not a great story. The second story I want to talk to you about is Paula's story and it has to do with medical debt and we heard story after story after story about people who could not manage medical expenses and while we often think about healthcare in terms of who has insurance and who doesn't have insurance, many, many of the people that we talked to had insurance and still couldn't manage. So Paula has worked for the same telecommunications company for 20 years. She and her husband both work full-time and when we asked her how she felt their salaries were she said, you know, we make decent money. They chose where to live which was outside Dallas because it had a good school system. Her youngest son has a medical condition that requires ongoing medical attention. I think I just did that, there we go. Okay, ongoing treatment and medication and some providers don't take her insurance, right? So she's in this situation where he has a lot of providers. Some of them are really working, her son is stable and while some of those, she's worked for the same company but some of those providers have gone from taking her insurance to not taking her insurance but she doesn't want to switch because her son's condition is stable using the providers that she uses. She has to pay upfront, even though some of these expenses are covered she has to pay upfront for many of the costs and then it takes a long time to get reimbursed. So this is another subcategory of problem that many people experience was a mismatch between their income and their expenses or having expenses and when those expenses would get reimbursed. Meanwhile, there were budget cuts in the public school district that changed the ability of the school district to accommodate her son's condition. So her family then moves her son to a private school which adds to their expense. At the same time as all this is happening the employer provided health insurance that she and her husband get changes dramatically so that their costs are increasing but their income is not. So what used to be a very small deductible is now $2,800 that they have to cover every year before they can start to get things covered. And so what I wanna kind of pull out from those two examples is that these are two very common kinds of situations that people are finding themselves in if you think back to the income volatility issue and the retraction of the public and private safety nets. Sometimes they're invisible but they're increasingly happening to what we think of as middle-class families. So just to wrap up I would say that what we need now is a consumer financial services system that ensures access to safe and affordable financial services for all Americans. I had the honor of serving on the Consumer Advisory Board at the CFPB when Rich Cordray was director and saddened by the direction that that agency has taken in terms of its leadership. We need a regulatory environment that truly protects consumers but I also think that whenever we're having the kinds of discussions we're having here today and tomorrow we also need to think about the macro trends that enable people to attain financial health. We need to be focused on consumer protection and the regulatory environment but we also need to be thinking about living wages and a supportive safety net for when work doesn't work. Thank you. Is that okay if I sit here? Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna sit here and do more conversational piece I think. Maybe because I'm tired, I don't know. So I think this is a good fit where I'm coming in on this conversation. I'm actually rewriting my talk, my mind now. I am going to give you a copy of my original talk so you can post it if you like. It has a little more detail. But I'm kind of gonna talk about, I see my objective as two objectives really. One is just to start where you left off and to talk a little bit about why assets are important in thinking about protection. That a lot of it's not just about regulations and creating all these laws, but it's about having people in a position where they don't have to rely on predatory lending in the first place, right? So they have some assets and these kind of things. And then I'm gonna quickly talk about a basket of tools that maybe we could use to at least start a conversation around how we might build assets for people so that they have some reserves for when things come up and they can plan their lives out for their futures. So the first thing is, and I wish I had it ready for today, but we're doing a paper on white wealth and equality. I want to emphasize that oftentimes in our conversations right now, we talk a lot about the black white wealth gap. And that kind of makes us think as though wealth and equality is somehow a black problem or limited to certain segments of people or Hispanics or other groups. But really, it's an American problem, right? I mean, there are tons of white households who lack wealth and as I said, we're gonna put a paper out next week on that topic. And I was doing a book and I was looking for data on it, but there really isn't data that looks specifically at or very little data. I couldn't find any, so maybe you can. That specifically looks at within the household, white families debt, I mean not debt, but assets and wealth accumulation. So that's important for us to understand is that assets are important in that it's an American problem. And so therefore hopefully we can get some United's effort in trying to create policies around things like redistributing wealth, right? Wealth transfers, things that have become very un-American to talk about, but yet fit within our system of beliefs, I believe, around effort and ability leading to desired outcomes. If you don't have the necessary assets in your portfolio in a capitalist society, you really can't achieve the same with your effort and ability that others can. And we've seen that just recently in a newspaper with the colleges, right? That's a really unique, I say unique, flamboyant way of looking at it, but that happens all along the system. So let me jump into kind of the solution. So I understand that assets are important, and oftentimes we focus on income, even low income people focus on their income and not on their wealth, but it doesn't allow them to be able to weather storms, right? And it has helped us create a system in which we only think about people's survival. Do they have enough to make it through today? And that's not really allowing them to thrive in to take part in American dream. And so we have to do something with wealth and equality. And that becomes a bigger problem as we innovate and so much becomes automated. And so wages are stagnant and you have so much global competition that people can't totally rely on their income. So they have to have access to assets. So what I'm gonna talk about today are a package of tools. And one is a children's savings account. What is a children's savings account? I'll keep it simple. In its most basic route, it is providing a child, a family, a household with a savings account, right? Now oftentimes these children's savings accounts are administered through the 529 program. If you've heard of it, it's the state college savings plan because these have been thought of as or have more recently become focused on providing college access, right? A way for people to save for college. Though they're really meant to be for overall economic development, right? Throughout the child's lifetime. And so while we focus them very much on paying for college, we can think about them as ways of building assets, not only for college, but for buying a home, starting a business, retirement, other things throughout the lifespan. But right now, because of the policy interest is really around college, they've been focused more so on college enrollment. And not only do they get a bank account, but usually they get a one-to-one match. Sometimes it's a higher match, even a five-to-one match, but that typically is when they start later in life. And so you get a one, every dollar you put in another dollar is put in, there's incentives. These programs really were streamlined in the beginning. We're just about having an account, having the match and having an initial deposit. That initial deposit right now can range anywhere from $5 to $1,000 in those accounts. They typically start at birth, but some start at kindergarten as well, and many others start at kindergarten. And there are some that start even later in life around eighth grade or so. But the plan is really for them to be early on so that people can accumulate wealth over time. And so even when they're saving small amounts of money, if you save small amounts of money over a long period of time in an investment account, it can turn out to be quite a bit of money in the end. And I should say there's a good body of research developing around this, and when I say a good body of research, what do I mean by that? Are there questions that have not yet been answered? Certainly, there's many questions that still need to be answered, but there are a number of randomized control trials, several, I shouldn't say a number, but several randomized control trials now in existence. One is CEDO-K's in Oklahoma, and the Center for Social Development runs it, and it's been going on. The kids are just starting to hit teenage years. It started from birth. And so the third wave is coming up and we'll start getting some data more around the education outcomes and stuff like that. Previous analysis, I'm not gonna go into, but it's important to understand that when we think about these savings accounts, we initially think about how do we accumulate assets, and that's what I started talking about, but we found that they also have a lot of indirect effects and what do I mean by that? So for instance, in a randomized control trial, they found that it improves kids' social-emotional development at age four, that it improves parents' expectations for their children to go to college, so increases their expectation, changes the way they think about their futures. And we think this is one of the reasons why I think in particular that CSAs might be a really good tool for wealth transfer in the future, not only because of the ability to accumulate assets in them, but also it works very well with existing systems. So our Head Start program and our objectives there and our social-emotional development programs that we create, right? It works in conjunction with all these things, and so I think that can be even more important than just giving people cash. Secondly, people can add money to that account. Why I've talked to you somewhat about in a small way about individual families being able to save in these accounts, you can also think about third parties putting money into these accounts. For instance, like with initial deposits even, a lot of times those come from foundations, sometimes they come from city funding, sometimes they come from state funding. There's a plethora of different ways that people can channel money into these accounts. And I think the really innovations in these areas will be where employers think about how they can put money in these accounts too. So we shouldn't think about it simply as in the individual saving on their own, because what your research really tells us and what we know all of us in the room is that low-income people have small amounts of money to save, right? And so in the end of the day, they're not gonna save their way out of poverty. And so I don't want to imply to you that these savings accounts are a way to, for individuals by themselves to lift themselves out of poverty, but they are a vehicle for us to figure out other ways to get money into these accounts. At the same time, they themselves have the ability to contribute to that, which is we think is important in and of itself. So one of our topics for the, and you're gonna hit me with time, I know, so I wanna make sure I watch it because I can get sidetracked, is around inclusion. And what we found with these savings accounts is that the best way to do them is have them automatically enrolled into the program, as opposed, and this is not novel in some sense, as we know this from 401Ks and other research, Trump-behavioral economics, but what we found through the, and testing it in randomized control trials and such, is that automatically enrollment is the best way, right? That way you get everybody in. You would think, and we thought in the initial days of children's savings accounts, oh, if you offer families $500, everybody would take advantage of it, but there's all kinds of reasons why people don't take advantage of it, but if you put them in it, they won't leave, right? Or very few, less than 1%, I'm gonna say less usually like one or two families because of religious reasons. I have left these programs when they've been automatic enrollment. And so a place like Maine, the state of Maine, gives every kid $500 at birth into their account. And then they have about 80,000 kids at this point in time, about $50 million they have put in and another $68 million that families have saved into these accounts. So it's actually, and it's over the last 78 years. So, but they started off as an opt-in program and about 40% of people took up the program. Then after in 2014, retroactively they added to 2013 people in but the policy was initiated in 2014. They gave everybody the accounts and now like 99.9% of the people have an account with $500 in Maine, the kids born. And so when we think about inclusion, we do have to think about how do we get everybody in because there's many reasons why low income families in particular, but many other families won't start up these types of accounts. Beyond inclusion, so typically the way these programs work now which I think is a policy thing that could be changed. I like to separate that out. Sometimes we look at things where they, well this is the way it's happening but really it's because of policy and we could change that policy. But the way it works now is that with these accounts, the families, if they want to save their own money, have to open up an additional account. So they open up an anonymous account that the foundation, the city, the state owns in different scenarios in which the $500 or whatever initial deposit is put in and then the families they wanna save, they have to open up another account. And so it's the same account but it's another account within that account. So they have their own 529 in their own name or if it's a bank account or credit union in their own name. Five minutes, I'm gonna do it. Can I add some other pieces I wanna add into this? And so what we have found is that low income people can and do save and there's been a number of randomized control trials not only within the CSA rule but within an individual development account rule that have shown that it's the case. But they save infrequently, less frequently I should say. They're not like us where we can save every month regularly on a schedule and so that savings might be sporadic. Also there's a number of them that just don't save. Now so that brings up an interesting question. You know, I think the problem with many of our asset building programs is that they rely on people's current income and their income is not good, even like tax time savings, right? That's, or EITC, a lot of these things are developed because people don't have very much money and then we ask them to take out of that money and save. And so there's problems in that. So one of the innovations that we are starting and looking at are rewards cards. What are rewards cards? I wish I had my key chain with me but if you had a key chain you probably have some loyalty card on it, right? And these loyalty cards allow families when they go to the grocery store to get a rebate in their account. And so every time they save it's a 1% to 4% based upon collective spend of the group. Every time they purchase an item at the store and that's even with food stamps or whatever else, however they purchase that doesn't matter. They get a rebate that goes into their savings account. Now I would argue with you the intent of this is not to build huge amounts of assets in a short period of time but over time they can get $600 in their account per year. And so over a number of years that can turn out to be a substantial amount of money. And we do have some randomized controlled trials that we're doing around the rewards card program and it's showing strong early results. Certainly we want to see more evidence but the early results are strong. One of the strongest that is around engagement. And so the interesting thing about thinking about when we think about low income people we have a narrative in our society that they're somehow have different sets of values. And so they might not be future oriented or they don't want to save or these kind of things but really it's not that they don't want to save they don't have money to save. They're making trade offs that most people aren't asked to make. Do I eat today or don't I eat today? Do I buy, pay put money away from my kids college education or do I get transportation to go to work? So these are very hard trade offs that most people aren't gonna make. Most of us who have money say because we have 401K plans and we have, it's very easy we're not deciding whether we go on vacation or not. We're putting the way extra money and that's not the case for them. But one of the great things we see about the rewards cards is that it really increases engagement in the accounts. And so it signals to us that these people want to save for their families and for their kids and if we provide them with the kinds of means that work for them they'll make decisions to do that. It's not that they're not making decisions for their kids or in their best interests, right? When they don't save in their savings account it's the fact that they have a little money. But if you give them avenues to do that they will do that. We've seen this in other areas too. Some programs have incentives where if you do certain things they'll put money into your account for doing those things. These low income families do these things at an equal or higher rate than high income families. Same thing with the rewards card program. The effects are strongest among the low income families. And so it's not a matter of a value system. It's really a matter of providing them with the kinds of tools that would work within their environments and their worlds, right? With their incomes. Beyond that I think we should think about, so that to me is a way of really helping families be engaged and there's even evidence to show that there's important reasons for why we want people to have the opportunity to be engaged because it produces other effects, right? We're not just trying to give them money but we want to create a whole number of other effects. And so by allowing them the opportunity to participate in saving for their kids to go to college helps improve their expectations to other kinds of things that are really viable and important more so than just handing out the money per se, right? You still gotta give them money though, right? Because in the end of the day they still gotta be able to pay for that asset, whether it be a business, a home or that emergency. And so I don't want to, sometimes we get fixated on like financial education. Well, financial education with no money, I don't know what it does for you, right? Or if you get somebody a savings account and you don't put some money or provide them ways to get money in that, it won't have the full effect. And so we have to really be conscientious of that. So some other ways quickly, and then hopefully we're gonna have questions in there so I can talk about research or whatever else you want to. But some other ways, so while these rewards cards help increase engagement, give families a way to contribute to their kids and feel like they're partaking in it which is really important to the whole value system of that individual effort and those things. They're not enough and I recognize that. And now there are the CSAs alone enough even though they can produce many effects that are really important that we spend lots of money on in other ways. Additional ways to think about it, one way is early award scholarships. And what is that? What that means is the college board, if you're familiar with us as a think tank in DC and they do a lot of work around college trends and stuff. Anyhow, they suggested taking a piece of the Pell Grant for instance, five to 10% of that, putting into the kids account when they're about fifth grade start putting it in then into a child savings account as a way of building assets in an account, right? And so what that does is I don't even think we fully understand because what it does is it empires kids. If you grew up with an asset, we can talk about free college when you get the money on the other side. I'm a high school dropout who was homeless for periods of time and I can tell you I didn't think about 18 in the same way that most of the rest of you did. Even now I still don't, I graduated my PhD program in three years, not because I was especially smart because I wasn't but I was one of the few people to do one of one other person at that time because I always felt like something was going to happen because that was my life experience. And so I felt like I gotta get out before things fall apart on me, right? And so I just want you to understand that giving people who grew up with an asset, you say what Mitt Romney says, or just borrow their money, right? And people, we criticize in some ways, but people should grow up with that sense of, and that gives you something that allows you to navigate your surroundings and your road in a different way. So it's not just about providing them assets on that far end, but it's also about providing them assets up front so they grow up with what everybody else grows up with and so they can start thinking about their futures in an extended time period in planning for it. And so this is really, and we haven't even begun to really study those types of bargaining power issues that having assets and growing up with assets creates. And so by taking a scholarship and our whole mindset right now, our challenge is to convert that mindset. Instead of giving them the money on the back end, it's partly how we perceive a people and what they'll do with the money, give them the money on the front end and in these accounts it's protected. So they can't use it for other types of things anyhow, but you allow them to grow up with that asset. So early award scholarships is one way and not only thinking about the federal scholarships, but also thinking about your foundation, right? And the local places that can do that. P cards, what are P cards? It's kind of like a rewards card for a company. You know, you have a purchasing card even here at the school or the university and I would like for the university to start thinking about how they might leverage their P card. There are fees that credit card companies charge you and that financial institutions charge you and a part of that fee is actually taken, the bank institution agrees to put, to give back a portion of that fee and put it into an account for the kids for college savings accounts. So like in Long Beach, California, they have taken a piece of their procurement and this is a pilot that starts in the fall so I don't have actual data from it yet. And they can estimate fairly accurately because they can based on last year's expenditures and if they take these expenditures, they spend them this year. How much do they have? How about $15 million a year just from using a P card and they'll put that into a children's savings account to help build assets, right? So I think these kinds of things and I don't care if you decide on rewards cards or P cards or whatever else. It's important that we just begin to think about what are ways to help low income families build money in these assets into these savings accounts and help them build for the future in no amount of time. So don't think about it as we have to do rewards cards, we have to do P cards, but think about how can we innovate? A lot of you are bright and young here, right? And you can find new ways to innovate on these programs to find ways to help low income people build assets because assets are tremendously important for them to have stable lives. I want to say more. So I know we'll probably have some audience questions. I actually wanted to kick us off with one because I think each of you touched on this theme of we see the disparate impact of wealth inequality and community equality on poor communities, communities of color, but it's obviously a much wider spread issue than that. And so I'm wondering for this room of community advocates and policymakers, how we think about this discussion, there's obviously groups of people that are disproportionately impacted by the wealth gap, by the income gap, and there's other structural inequities that contribute to that, right? We think about people with ethnic names on the same resume on a white name, right? And who's more likely to get that job? You think about a formerly incarcerated person who's white having a better chance of getting a job than a black person who's never been incarcerated. So there's these other structural inequities, but I'd be curious to get each of your takes on as you're framing the conversation with regulators and policymakers, as you're thinking about your research, how do you sort of navigate this tension between focus on those that we know are disproportionately affected, not just for financial reasons, but other structural reasons, and making these set of issues more broadly appealing and more broadly important to a group of stakeholders. The first thing that comes to my mind is when you say more broadly appealing, I'm assuming you're mean to the broader public, the public, the people who, right? Because it's really hard to, unfortunately, it's really hard to pass laws that target a particular disadvantaged group, right? We see a lot of pushback against affirmative action, Congress won't even audience a conversation about reparations, we know that. And so one of the things I think of an answer to that question is, there's a political theorist named Theta Scotchball who talks about targeting within universalism, which is the idea that if you make good policy that will protect everyone, like the CFPB does, for example, just in terms of this conversation, it will disproportionately help those people who are suffering disproportionately, which isn't to say that we shouldn't have conversation about targeting or focusing on particular groups, I think, you know, recognizing that Black and Latino families lost much more in terms of their assets and the financial crisis, like we keep needing to tell that story. But I think strategically, I often think that we might get farther if we push forward those kind of universal policies that will help everyone. But like child savings accounts, right? They're gonna help lots of people, some people would say like, well, why are you gonna start that savings account for someone who's already wealthy? Cause that's what you need to do to get the legislation passed, right? But those accounts are gonna disproportionately affect the kids who wouldn't have any savings when they graduated from high school. Yeah, I would jump in on that. So, and so this is maybe, so Michael Sherrad, you know Michael Sherrad, he would talk about, and I think it's relevant and important, it's universalism, getting everybody to count. And I also think it's important to get everybody to count because once you get the infrastructure in place, his argument is, then you can pump resources. So once everybody has an account, you can pump resources and do it in a variety of ways. But I also do think that, A, we live in a moment that's different, thank God. And even though it's very scary in some ways, politically, we see now the opportunity to talk about free college and other things and that this, we do need to change our frame of thought because we're not gonna ever solve wealth and equality by giving everybody the same thing. And so even, I don't wanna use names, but anyhow, talk about reparations. If everybody has an account, we can pump money in, but we do have to think about, here's the best example I can give. If we're all sick and have the flu, right? Now, something worse than the flu, we're gonna die if we don't get the vaccination. I have it and you have it. I have it worse, but in either case, we're both gonna die. So I need a bigger dose of it than you do, but we both need that vaccine. And so we have a common interest in that vaccine being made either way, because we're both gonna die without it, even if I need more. And really that's the kind of the case with wealth. And that's kind of the reason why we get this white wealth paper coming up, is really to say that, you know what, this affects us all, that we all need this. Even if someone else needs a bigger dose, you need a dose too. And so we have a collective interest in developing policies like that. And I do think that's the biggest challenge, right? Is how do we begin to have convers, it's not just taking a position of, well, we can't get this passed. What do we need to do to get it done? And how do we have to change the narrative in order to make it happen? How does it work with effort and ability? How's it still, you can't just tell people to forget their values, but how does a wealth transfer fit within American values so that you and I, all of us can grab ahold of it and take it and move it forward, right? So I don't want, that's it too much, but I'll start. I'll try to read it brief. I think that part of the challenge probably is a systems issue still. And this is where data may actually help to overcome it. So we think about, I mean, the 45 million people who don't have a credit history, they may not have a credit history because there wasn't a co-signer, there wasn't the ability to get credit when they were younger. I mean, lots of factors in that massive number of people, but yet the ability to get credit is predicated on having a history at some level. And so I think about access to the financial system and the way that people are identified to get into the financial system. And in a very simple way, that is your bank that you may be approaching to open up an account with is going to pin one of the credit bureaus. Well, are you in the credit bureau or maybe you're in the credit bureau but your address has changed a lot because you happen to move a lot more and that happens to be something that is actually more common among lower income individuals and families. And so then your red flagged. So I tend to think about that part of what we're trying to sort out is where can more nuanced information in these different applications potentially overcome what are processes and systems that have tended to exacerbate sort of the differences in the divide that exists by income or by ethnicity, race. Do you audience questions? I don't wanna. Wake up everybody, come on. There we go, that side of arms up. Hi everybody, thanks for being here. My name's Jessica Kaplan. Okay, several of you alluded to behavioral economics and decision making. Can you all elaborate a little bit on that? You talked about the opt-in versus opt-out and that huge differential in percentage. I would be curious to hear your thoughts and your work on that. Do you wanna go first or? Go ahead. I can. Sure, I think one of the ways that I see that playing out in terms of the behavior that I saw in terms of people making their decisions, I think when people are using expensive alternative financial services, there's a perception that they don't understand that the costs, how high the costs are and that if they knew better, they would make other choices. In many cases, oh, I would use a bank instead of a check cashier. And so when I was really trying to think about the theoretical underpinnings, like how to explain what people did, in many cases it was actually rational behavior. So that's not behavioral economics, it was sort of like it's actually cheaper to do what they were doing than to do what I would do. But in other cases, I felt like the scarcity theory that's been put forth by Elder Shafir and Sudhir Malanathan actually helped to explain. And that idea is really that people, when they're in a scarcity mindset, when they have a problem which is kind of like what you were talking about in terms of making a choice between buying groceries or saving or paying the rent or doing something else, that that creates a pressure on that decision-making moment in which they're deciding what will relieve the pressure in the very short term without necessarily thinking as much. Because they don't have the, it's actually something psychological that's happening that makes the decision to leave the pressure in that moment make more sense. I'll try to be quick because that wasn't the last time. So I do think, I think it's an interesting question and one that I grapple with, really with the respects of institutional theory of saving in a way and in behavioral approaches. And I would say this with regard to that two things. One is that I think most of our mainstream institutions work. We see them work every day for upper income families. And so I think even sometimes when we talk about getting everybody included, that's an incomplete question because it's not just about getting them included but then giving them the means to be able to use those institutions effectively. So Nolke's giving me a bank account but then give me some money so that I can leverage that bank account and use it in ways that are productive. So the tension in my mind with behavioral economics is, and though I respect and appreciate it, is are these things about one changing their behavior on some level they are? Or are they about institutions? Chicken or the egg, right? I tend to believe that it's about giving them access to the institutions and not about the behavior. But at the same time, so one more quick example and I'll be quiet, is Michael Sheridan would talk about like savings accounts being an institutional solution. However, the reality is we can't make people say by their checks. And so there's still a certain amount of behavior that has to take place. So I think that behavioral economics has a lot to offer even within these kinds of models because at some level there's behavior that we'll have to take place and they can inform that but they shouldn't be, but they're kind of, for me they're on the second tier instead of on the frontier. Oftentimes we're gonna say just do the behavioral thing. Hey, teach them financial education or whatever else, right? And that in of itself is not sufficient but it really isn't an either-or argument. It's about both and things like mental accounting and stuff around behavioral economics and thinking about those things. It's really enlightening on how people structure and use their money. But we still have this problem of people don't have money and we still have this problem they don't have access institutions and we have to solve those two problems and then the behavior can come along with that. I don't know if that's very helpful but it's a real tension. Hi, I'm Dan Mellott, I'm a retiree but I have 30 years of corporate finance experience and worked extensively in the capital markets. Thank you very much for your talk here but Professor Elliott I have to say I'm somewhat disappointed but I thank you for your talk but I have disappointed and we don't seem to be addressing what the real issue is here and this is coming from my own experience. Is that modern finance is parasitic? Okay, this savings plan that you talked about what would prevent an earnest young person now he has to save his account so he's gonna go to some for-profit school get some sort of crappy degree suck all his savings away and he's got nothing. I mean I think what we've seen is since the late 70s with the advent of deregulation and advances in micro-economics and finance like black shoals and efficient market and with the advent of PCs, finance took off and what happened? Well global economic growth went down. The BIS, the IMF, bastions of neoliberal finance recognized finance is too big, right? Even the chief economist of the Bank of England Andy Haldane would recognize and he's written extensively that finance provides no value. So maybe what we need is financial repression. Now I know this is quicksought because the powers out there are pretty powerful but maybe we need a change in the bankruptcy law. The bankruptcy law has changed in 2005 completely in favor of the creditors. Maybe that needs to change. Maybe we need a financial transaction tax. Maybe we need massive increase in capital requirements for banks. And that's what needs to be addressed here and I think you're around at this. Sorry, that's my thoughts. I appreciate that and I would say that I would call that tinkering around to some degree. I would rather not go into bankruptcy. So I think you need to have bankruptcy laws, right? So I think it's- Like the 2005? No, I think you need to change. You need, well, even something around college debt. All that stuff around bankruptcy needs to be changed. I agree. So I'm not arguing that. But there is, it would be nice, and I'm someone who has gone bankrupt before, to not go bankrupt regardless of the laws and have to be in a position of growing up in a family with wealth. And I don't think we should think about these accounts exclusively for college. And they should be not spent at the beginning as a platform for additional assets to be in there. But that doesn't mean that we also don't need to address financial regulations and other things and make a good system so that once they get the money, it's not all taken from them through corrupt laws, right? And so it's like behaviorism and institutionalism. You don't want to argue the two. They both are needed. In this case, these both are needed. Thank you, everybody. My name is Emilio Rocoans. I'm with America Saves. And Professor Elliott, I have a very specific question for you and then I have a broader question for the whole panel. I am interested in hearing some of the nuts and bolts of the loyalty card. You know, it doesn't sound like it's a credit card, but if it wasn't, how did you get different businesses to agree to engage in this and how did you build that infrastructure? And then kind of taking that more broadly to the panel, a lot of what we're talking about on this financial inclusion panel is how people are being excluded or are not benefiting equally from other people from the institutions that do exist. And I'm curious to hear y'all's thoughts on using different institutions and programs and partnerships, as I'm wondering if you did with the loyalty card to try to capture different segments of the population to pull them in to these systems that do exist and how can we be using these partnerships and engagements to be ultimately building more inclusion? I'll take it up a bit of time. I won't take too much on this. I'll simply say that the nuts and bolts that we can discuss afterwards. There's a group called CommunityLink that created the rewards card. It is not a credit card and that's what makes it a little bit distinct. So let's talk about that afterwards. I'll just talk about one example from my own research in terms of thinking about other institutions and how to pull people in. So everything that we've talked about today has been either mainstream or alternative financial services and there's a whole other segment of the consumer financial services system which is informal financial services that were used broadly and widely in the communities where I worked. One of them, some of you, one of the mechanisms, some of you probably know which is rotating savings and credit associations. Anybody not know what those are? Okay, a couple of you. Okay, I'll be very quick. So let's say a group of 10 people decide to save together. Melissa is the banker. 10 of us give Melissa $100 this week. Which fee? No fee. That's the beauty of it. You're messing up my example. I'm making a point. Melissa is the banker. She's gonna keep the $1,000 that she collected that first. She's put in $100 too. The next week, I get the pot of $1,000 and the next week, Billy gets the pot and so it goes. So there's kind of a free, no-cost short-term small dollar loan for Melissa and me, the people at the front of the line and it's for savings at the people at the end of the line. Those work incredibly well in a lot of communities. There are people who are upper middle class who've been doing them for generations and they continue to participate in them because for lots of reasons. There are problems, right? One problem is Melissa could run away with the money. I could run away with the money and disappear and then there's hard to hold me to account because there's no paper, right? Also, my credit score is not getting built by paying into that even though I've been doing it for 20 years. There's a program in the Bay Area called the Mission Asset Fund. Maybe you've heard of them, right? Okay, so Mission Asset Fund kind of took this idea that's happening informally and formalized it. Jose Kinyonas who started it and won one of them MacArthur Genius grants and what they're doing is creating these lending circles, making sure that if somebody doesn't pay back, there's some insurance and they're reporting to credit bureaus and trying to move people into banks once they're stable enough to do that. So I think there are lots of examples like that. The reason I like that one is that instead of trying to change people's behavior, it was building on something people were already doing and saying how can we make this more robust and really work for people. And the one that I'll add is it's thinking about, especially for lower income people in households who are receiving federal benefits or state benefits. And then of course there's the annual tax refund moment where some of us in government at the federal level have really sought to try to leverage those money transfer payments as an opportunity to drive savings activity as well as my RA product I was talking about earlier. I haven't kept up with this as much and there were challenges with these things which I think we actually probably need to push ourselves to think about why didn't some of these efforts work well. How much of it was on the realities of the household and what they're dealing with? Cause I don't think we had the level of research of Lisa's and others, Rachel Schneider for instance. And so I'm not sure who's thinking about how we calibrate the learnings we've had over the past half decade into then thinking about those significant institutions who are on a very routine even bi-weekly basis distributing money, distributing benefits and trying to think about then how to leverage those money moments, either if it's around trying to facilitate even emergency savings accumulations or financial management types of tools. But I do know that there's been more effort recently at the state level thinking about state benefits. There's some interesting dare I say at FinTech companies who are trying to build products and offerings in that way. So probably more to sort of think about and sort through. But partnership especially with foundational institutions that are credible and that are trusted to feel like an important potential lever to do things at scale. You have time for one more? So my question would be the structure of all that. We've started to get to that in some of these questions. Is something like postal banking or partnerships with bank. How do you get these accounts, get someone to even manage these accounts if one of the goals is to make sure more and more people have access to some sort of financial account. And I come from technology law where all these people are promising so many different things outside of FinTech even. But automated vehicles is what I work on day to day and it's like oh it's gonna change mobility but you have to have a credit card to use Uber and these systems are all based off of Uber. And that's just one area where people developing a lot of this advanced technology that's supposed to improve everyone's lives and even when they say they're gonna improve low income people's lives, they forget that when you don't have access to banking you don't have access to a credit card or a debit card, you're not. The unbanked seem to be at a huge disadvantage. So I'm just wondering, you know, politicians throw out postal banking as an option but is it easier to just incentivize local banks or credit unions to already work with these people? Take postal banking. Actually the panelist who's missing is an expert. We had somebody who couldn't come today. We actually have an expert in the audience too, Terry Friedline here, Dr. Terry Friedline, she does a lot of postal banking, but. Terry? You weren't talking specifically about postal banking, you were just saying, what could we use? In someone like CSD, Michael Schrad, really look at the five, two, nine as a platform because every state has one now. So it's already in place. There needs to be some policy tweaks to them. Right now they really favor higher income families and stuff, but if you tack the CSA portion onto it it can be used more widely. But there are other systems we could think about and then once you do automatic enrollment and you put everybody in the account, then they're banked, right? And then you might change the flexibility it's not only used for college but for other assets and things like that. But the system is kind of in place now it's a matter of getting everybody hooked up to it, right? I think too, one other thing I would say is just as I said something at the beginning of my remarks just about how we haven't really altered the banking or the kind of the financial services system to meet the kind of realities of work. And I think one of the things that was really important to the people that I waited on was that they could get their cash as quickly as possible. So the fact that you have people who are living, many more people who are living really close to the edge and they would, many of them had bank accounts actually. Half of the people who came to the check cashing store also had a bank account. But if they deposited their check in the bank account they wouldn't get it for three or four days. And in the meantime, they had to buy food, pay the rent. They risked actually having late fees on a lot of things if they couldn't pay those things. So it was actually worth it to pay the almost 2% of the face value of the check to cash it in order to do those other things. Now there's some really interesting technology ripple in San Francisco is using blockchain technology to try to create a distributed ledger system that would allow payments, any kind of value to be transferred immediately and without cost. And so I do think that there are some of those things and frankly banks, banks can take up to a day to put cash into your account and make it available. You show up to your bank with a pile of cash and it won't be immediately available. To me that's crazy, right? So here's a role for policy I think where there's, you can require banks to shorten that window and we haven't done that. So I don't know that it needs to be an entirely different kind of institution but I think there are ways that we could implement to make the institutions that we have work work better and create and reduce some of those barriers.