Network News

In the wake of the defeat of SB 104 and the state senate’s passing of SB 613, Hoosiers from around the state have been standing up and voicing their concerns. Here are a few of the articles we’ve compiled (listed in order of publication date):

The members of the Midwest Asset Building Conference Planning Committee [The Community Economic Development Association of Michigan (CEDAM), Illinois Asset Building Group, Prosperity Indiana/the Indiana Assets & Opportunity Network, Ohio CDC Association and Minnesota Asset Building Coalition] are currently seeking innovative and engaging speakers and presenters focused on asset building and financial empowerment in the Midwest.

The Indiana Senate is poised to vote on a measure Tuesday that would allow payday and subprime lenders to charge interest rates on small loans at levels currently classified as felony loan sharking. 

The payday loan industry has pushed for similar legislation for the past three years, only to be rebuffed amid concerns from social service organizations and others who see such high-interest rates as predatory.

In the wake of the SB 104 committee hearing on January 23, 2019, the Indianapolis Star wrote an article discussing both sides of the payday loan argument, featuring interviews with A&O Steering Committee member Erin Macey, Senior Policy Analyst at the Indiana Institute for Working Families, and other friends of the Network.

Combining robust data at the national and state levels, an interactive map and relevant policy information, the 2019 Prosperity Now Scorecard is a powerful tool for revealing the financial lives of Americans beyond the headlines.

During the Indiana Assets & Opportunity Network Breakfast on January 30, attendees will be the first to learn of new changes that are coming to the Network. They will also have a chance to hear from multiple A&O Steering Committee members. Meet the breakfast presenters by reading their bios below:

Welcome to the start of a new semester…one ripe with opportunity, learning, social awkwardness - if you’re anything like I was in college – and, of course, all of the costs associated with it.

If you’re like a lot of people in the United States, you’ve probably thought a lot about having to pay for you, your child, your grandchild, and/or anyone else close to you, to go to school.  I’ll admit that it’s a pretty daunting thing to deal with, especially when you look at how it will affect your financial life.  While I’m not going to attempt to write something that will make all of your worries go away, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about various ways you can pay for school and mention a few things you should not do.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is expected to gut the existing payday rule by removing the Ability-to-Repay provision, which required short term, small dollar lenders to take a borrower’s ability to repay a loan into account before issuing it. According to Prosperity Now, this revision would be a huge blow to advocacy efforts to stop the debt trap.

According to a new brief from the Asset Funders Network, women age 45 - 65 represent the first generation to benefit from expanded access to higher education, credit, and other asset building opportunities. The opportunities stem from policy changes that came about as part of the civil rights and women’s movements in the 1960s and 1970s.

However, although record-breaking numbers of women are graduating from college and starting businesses, 15 million single women - namely Black and Latin women - have experienced substantial wealth loss in the past 20 years.

With a projected million middle skills jobs opening up in Indiana by 2024, skills-based/work-based learning is changing the way educators and employers are training, recruiting, and retaining talent to fill future workforce needs.

Work-based learning (WBL) offers a unique opportunity for individuals from diverse backgrounds to develop first-hand knowledge and skills beyond the classroom environment through industry exposure and on the job training. It provides employers with a platform to align their training needs with the actual skills necessary to be successful on the job.

Here are a few guidelines to use when building successful work based learning experiences:

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) – ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs – released ‘Pushing the Envelope: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Under the Trump Administration’ report to Congress.

According to a joint report from the Asset Funders Network (AFN) and the University of Wisconsin Center for Financial Security, more than half of all employees in the United States say they are financially stressed, with nearly one-in-three employees admitting to being distracted in the office due to personal finance issues.

Since 2012, the CFPB has been responsible for supervisory examinations of banks, lenders, and other financial institutions to ensure MLA compliance. However, the CFPB has chosen to relinquish its role as supervisor of MLA provisions.

Consumers in states where predatory lenders are expelled report being relieved and many adapt by employing a variety of safer financial strategies, including budgeting and borrowing from family. However, even once predatory lenders are driven out, payday lenders are finding legal loopholes – such as overdraft loans, installment loans, and auto title loans – that enable them to prey upon the most vulnerable in the community again.

We are counting on you to lift your voice to push back against potentially harmful changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). CRA is a landmark civil rights law to end discrimination that was once common in America’s banking and housing markets.

While some strides have been made, the lack of investment in low-income areas and communities of color remains a persistent concern. Even still, regulators have proposed ideas that may substantially weaken the law via an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR).  We need you to speak up to ensure CRA is strengthened, not weakened. 

We only have until Nov. 19 to comment on these ideas and urge regulators to consider CRA reforms that more effectively hold banks accountable for equitable investments and help them more flexibly respond to community needs.

The United States Census Bureau recently unveiled its eighth Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) report, detailing the prevalence of poverty in our society and estimating the differences between the official measure of poverty and the poverty measures that take account of non-cash benefits and nondiscretionary expenses. 

ALICE is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These households have incomes above the Federal Poverty Level but struggle to afford basic household necessities. In the words of Indiana United Ways Board Chair, Ron Turpin, “ALICE gets up each day to go to work, but still faces financial barriers – working jobs that offer no healthcare, vacation, or paid sick leave. These workers hold jobs that are critical to the success and vitality of our communities, yet they often struggle to afford food, rent, child care, and transportation, and have little left over for saving and investing.”

For the past decade, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national community development organization with an office in Indianapolis, has cultivated an asset-building model called the Financial Opportunity Center (FOC) that bundles one-on-one financial coaching and employment services to help low-wealth families move closer to financial independence.  FOC services are delivered by highly trained coaches in familiar settings – typically organizations with deep roots in the neighborhoods they serve.  Despite good results from this one-on-one approach and people’s stated desired to continue working with a coach, it is often difficult to retain them in a long-term coaching relationship.  To that end, LISC has worked with the Common Cents Lab at Duke’s University’s Center for Advanced Hindsight to test an approach to improved coaching retention based on the principles of behavioral economics.