 Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I'm a former high school history teacher, so I make sure that I was paying attention and So good. My name is Anand Mari and I Very pleased to welcome you all to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York For the leveraging tax time to build financial capability Expert symposium. I want to begin by thanking the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis cities for Financial Empowerment Fund into a tax and financial center J.P. Morgan Chase and the new America Foundation for working with us to present this event and Before I continue I have to state my comments here or reflect my own views and not the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System I Want to take a minute to explain How the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Conducts community outreach in order to give you a better sense on how to engage with us in the future The bank's outreach and education function is responsible for engaging with the communities across the New York of the New York feds district which includes New York State the 12 northern counties in New Jersey Fairfield County, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands And our efforts aim to make relevant objective information available to a broad Group of consciousness as possible Through our collective outreach efforts the bank impacts the communities we serve Strengthens public trust in the organization and leverages the skills and the talents of my very talented colleagues here across the bank Specifically in connection to today's event We focus our efforts in low and moderate income communities on topics aligned With the bank's mission and expertise including household credit communicators small business Education workforce development and financial inclusion and that's the direct tie into why we're talking about financial inclusion and our financial inclusion initiative advances financial stability and sustainability of low and moderate income communities in the second district by Collaborating with community organizations Financial institutions government agency and other stakeholders as reflected by the attendees here and exploring how research and other bank assets can assist them in with making informed decisions and Developing effective interventions, and I'm going to highlight three specifically for actually first We have launched a community of interest project to discuss emerging trends and key developments with leading nonprofit organizations Some of the members who are here today second as members of the committee on payments and market infrastructure at the bank of International settlements. That's a handful mouthful We worked on a consultive report on payment aspects of financial inclusion and the report highlights Is that central banks the role that central banks could play in influencing? Payments-based financial inclusion strategy and we care about it for two reasons one because the Federal Reserve Bank and the New York And the Federal Reserve system is responsible for maintaining a safe and reliable payment system and two we care about Promoting household financial stability Third I want to third initiative I want to highlight for you is that we are visiting cities across the second district To discuss with regional stakeholders Including community-based organizations the local needs regarding financial inclusion and and present one of our tools Which is unavailable on our website called community credit that informs the public about the levels of credit inclusion and Credits us by county. We are trying to for those of you that the data walks out there We're trying to get down to the zip code level to talk about credit stress and so forth We'll get there, but right now we have it at the county-wide level Lastly, we're partnering with the Department of Labor to explore strategies to incorporate financial capabilities Into workforce development programs given the work given of the requirements of the work innovation and opportunity act of 2014 Those are you familiar with it simply put We are co-hosting this meeting because we believe that the topics discussed today are timely and essential for our constituents in the second district and in the United States as You as you enjoy the rich and informative discussions today We asked you that you follow the following rules first You we're gonna abide by the Chatham house rules for all discussions with New York Fed staff members and presenters That means first you're free of course to discuss users information shared during the session But we asked that you'd not attribute a comment to the New York Fed staff or about or your fellow Participants in addition we asked that you as a courtesy refrain from tweeting or Otherwise publishing in real time during the sessions Okay, so that's that and I have a couple more rules for you that I would like to and then my colleagues will be emphasizing to art Several times today, please. There's no photography or filming with camera cell phone or other mobile device Many high school kids try to play with that rule and they get their cell phones taken away So please don't fall in that rule Please silence your mobile device the women's restrooms Are right outside the auditorium on the right and the men's is through the first set of elevator doors on the right-hand side And if you do need to make a phone call Please go up to the 13th floor one of our one of our staff members will be happy to help you to go up to the 13th floor There are specific call rooms for you to make phone calls with And then during the Q&A session, there's gonna be some mics They're gonna be a set up for you. So please make sure you wait for the mic so we can get this recorded And also to let you know that the the whole event will be photograph Photographed and filmed so thank you again from the New York from the New York Fed for coming And I want to introduce to you the next speaker who's gonna be Sally Darden from she's an executive vice president from JP Morgan Chase Now I give you Sally. Thank you and good morning everyone. It's a pleasure to be here I work on the chase side of JP Morgan Chase and a head of strategy for all of the chase branded consumer and small business facing businesses so financial empowerment and The needs of our low and moderate income consumers are very much a part of my day-to-day role Partnering closely with the JP Morgan Chase Foundation. So it's a pleasure to be here and tell you about some of the activities We have underway As you probably know JP Morgan Chase is deeply committed to building products and supporting community partners Who are creating affordable technology driven solutions to meet the needs of our low and moderate income customers? Examples of products are our prepaid card liquid and tools like the chase mobile app Which have helped millions of people to enter the banking system and build better financial habits But we all know that consumers still face very significant challenges Recently the JP Morgan Chase Institute, which is led by my colleague Deanna Farrell and Fiona Greg had a research who's here with us today Have done research looking at actual transaction data from our customers and to found that households across the income spectrum Struggle with a surprising level of cashflow volatility month-to-month They've also seen that the typical family Doesn't not surprisingly have the liquid assets on hand that they need to weather that cashflow volatility In the Institute's recently released port It was identified that oops, and I apologize. I I've accidentally hit the screen here. It's not relevant to my remarks Tax refunds account for fully 16 percent of the observed volatility in monthly income And for many low-income families the tax time refund is the single largest sum of money they receive throughout the year This provides a unique opportunity for these families to begin saving creating financial plans and setting financial goals our Report highlights the importance of using these types of predictable spikes in income as Important opportunities to help people begin to save Tax time is unique in that it allows our to our consumers Where they are to and Provides us an opportunity to interact with Consumers with products and services that are immediately relevant to their financial lives Which as you all know is incredibly important to beginning to help people exercise that savings muscle For this reason JP Morgan Chase has committed almost seven million dollars in the last two years To supporting financial capability programs at tax time Including programs managed by a number of partners here today This is part of our larger forty five million dollar Two-year commitment to support nonprofit partners working to improve the broader financial health of our underserved communities We support tax preparation assistance financial coaching and products encouraging savings at tax time In addition in the last two years 300 JP Morgan Chase employees Have volunteered more than four thousand hours to provide free tax preparation services at Vita sites across the country But despite the recent increase in funding for Vita programs We know that many of our nonprofit partners are being forced to do far more with fewer resources Which is why we're interested in better understanding How to use technology to increase our partners reach and their effectiveness in the delivery of services For example, we just announced a five hundred thousand dollar grant to the food bank of New York City who's represented here today To test virtual Vita and the integration of financial coaching Into to help improve the delivery and convenience of tax preparation services and to expand the food banks great work to additional communities We're also excited to announce a $600,000 grant to support the work of Washington University That shows that low-touch simple changes to the tax filing process can have a significant impact on consumer savings In addition to creating to increasing awareness and maximizing tax refunds Free tax preparation services offer a great entry point for broader one-on-one financial coaching services We're supporting programs across the country to better understand how tax time can be leveraged As an on-ramp to provide ongoing support for consumers in improving their financial health finally, we support partners that apply lessons from behavioral economics and behavioral design to test and evaluate new models to promote savings at tax time We're working with these partners to capture and share relevant insights with other practitioners to help improve programs across the country For example, we supported the toolkit by Washington University to help Vita sites apply the great insights from Washington University's refund to savings program To help more clients save at tax time The toolkit is available Actually, it was available at the entrance today where you checked in I'm sure it'll be available after the meeting as well So we encourage you to take a copy of that and help us in promoting that in your local communities Improving financial health not only helps individuals thrive, but also supports more resilient Inclusive communities and local economies. It helps individuals start and expand businesses and invest in education To access better economic opportunities and improve their lives This helps our customers clients communities in the broader economy We're very excited to be here today to explore what is working and how we can continue to partner to promote financial health at Tax time and throughout the year. Thank you for your partnership and your continued participation Good afternoon everyone We are very delighted to be here today and to host this event And I just will take a minute to acknowledge all of the partners that work so hard to make this event happen And you know, of course, it's big big team And so the Center for social development of course with the leadership of Jenny running this event and a lot of the other team members here today Dana and Meredith and Sam We're missing everyone who joined Who joined us and city of financial empowerment found the Federal Reserve Into it, of course who couldn't have all this work made happen without him and JP Morgan of Chase that we are so fortunate To have us funding us and your America Foundation. So it was really a big team effort that Goes credit goes to everyone Jonathan and I were supposed to do the housekeeping for the event and By the Fed and they heard us a little bit doing some practice about saying the housekeeping But they took the side that we are not eligible to do this role anymore So I'll just invite Jonathan to do some more welcoming and introduce our keynote. So thanks so much I mean everything is going well, but honestly the house rules through interpretive dance, you know You just get it more. I mean it sort of Makes more sense. I want to thank me call on her team. It's a real pleasure to be a partner with them. They are Full of great ideas and enthusiasm to put together What we're going to be able to enjoy today and I'm particularly excited today because I think that we've assembled this incredibly smart and accomplished group of people under one under one roof and As Sally mentioned, we can really talk about what works and I we don't always get to take our aspirations and our learning and really translated into Real proof points about what can work what that means and how that translates Into programming and policy into really making a genuine literal difference in people's lives So we're really excited that that's so clearly the theme and the and the focus of this work