NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown June 27, 2019 1:00 pm CT Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time I would like to inform all participants that today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. All participants will remain on a listen-only mode for the remainder of the call until the question-and-answer session. At that time if you would like to ask a question, you'll press star 1. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Dr. Heather Brown. You may begin. Heather Brown: Thank you, Operator. Welcome everybody. I'm glad to have you for the disaster preparedness and liquid savings webinar. I'm going to take a minute to introduce our panel of speakers. And we're very excited to have a nice group of experts that are going to share their knowledge and experience with us. First, I'm like to introduce Mr. Robert Ganem. And he is with FINRA Education Foundation. He's worked there since 2006 as a Senior Program Director. He's located in the Washington DC office. FINRA Foundation supports innovative research and educational projects that empower underserved Americans with the knowledge, skills, and tools to make sounds financial decisions throughout life. FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States. Mr. Ganem has also had 13 years of experience with the National Education Association Foundation. And with support from the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York and a few charitable trusts and some funders, he undertook a ten-year policy project. And it was a policy and demonstration initiative to improve the quality of teacher professional development nationwide. And Mr. Ganem holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University. So we welcome you and we're very grateful that you've come to share your experience. I'm also pleased to be able to introduce you to our second and third speakers who are going to tag team for their presentation. First, Ms. Nisah Abdul-Sabur. She is an Emergency Management Specialist at the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- FEMA. And she is with the individual and community preparedness division. And their mission is to link preparedness to individuals and families while connecting science-based research to communications, education, and resources to better prepare the nation for disaster. Ms. Abdul-Sabur has been there since January of 2018. And before working for FEMA she also worked for as an AmeriCorps volunteer and also in the Peace Corps working in South Africa. So, very interesting and a variety of things that she's done in her background. Her education is from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a BS in Political Science and Public Administration, and a Master of Social Work with a concentration in Management and Community Organization from the University of Maryland Baltimore. And then we're going to hear from Sebra Yen. He is also an Emergency Management Specialist. He's in the Strategic Partnerships and Engagement Office at FEMA and also working with individual and community preparedness. His mission is to work collaboratively with team members to identify and develop partnerships to amplify disaster preparedness efforts, including financial preparedness. In November of 2018 he was deployed to Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands with basically he was responding to a typhoon response efforts, and he also deployed for Hurricane Florence. So, front line experience he has to share with us. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and the Elliott School of International Affairs. And prior to FEMA, he was with Department of Defense National Security Education Program. Okay. And then for our next speaker will be Dave Sieminski. And Dave Sieminski is from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And he's a Senior Policy Analyst in the Office of Community Affairs. He's leading the outreach effort on our Start Small Save Up campaign, started by our director. And he's going to speak with you a few minutes about the importance of savings and being financially prepared for disasters. And then last but not least we have another speaker from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Andrew Fay. And he's just going to talk briefly a few minutes on some research that he's been doing and share some information with you related to mortgage payments and disaster recovery. So we have a great group of presenters. And I'm going to move quickly through my preliminary slides so we can get through it. This presentation is being made by Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative on behalf of the Bureau. That's me. This does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau. Any opinions or views stated by any presenter here are the presenter's own and may not represent the Bureau's views. Any links to third party sites do not necessarily reflect our endorsement of those sites or endorsement of the products our services offered on those sites. We have not necessarily vetted some of these third-party sites or products. The Bureau's mission is here. And many of you know this because many of you may be returning visitors to our webinar. But we regulate the offering and provision of consumer financial products and services under federal consumer financial laws and we educate and empower consumers to make informed decisions. This represents the FinEx program. We provide regional meetings. We have an e-newsletter once a month that announces our webinars and shares other information. If you're not already a member, the email address at the bottom is where you would email to become a member. And so if you got this email - if you found out about this from someone else and you did not get the email in your box and you may not be a member and so you might want to submit your name and contact information to us. And this is the slide that shows where we advertise our upcoming webinars. And also if you can see over to the right, there's an email address box where you can go in and just put in your email to get on our list as well. That's the quickest way to sign up. All right. And the next webinar if you want to take note is July 18, 2:00 to 3:00. We're going to have a demo of our virtual financial education tool misadventures in money management, which is targeted at military personnel JROTC. But it also is something that could be useful and a fun way to teach others once you become familiar with it. So you'll see a demo of it. And a person who is a program manager will speak on that. And that concludes my introductory presentation. I'm going to switch us over to the FINRA slides. Sorry. We we're practicing through them and I didn't reset. Okay. And I'm going to hand the ball off to Robert Ganem. Robert Ganem: Great. Thank you, Heather. Good afternoon to everybody or good morning depending on where you're calling in from. I'm very pleased to be joining you today to talk a little bit about FINRA and what we do for consumers, and in particular as this work is related to disaster response and preparedness. Much of what I have to say and share on today's call is especially relevant for the library professionals on the call. But much will also be applicable do anybody in a public service or education role. As Heather mentioned in her opening comments, FINRA or the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is a nonprofit organization. Many folks think we're part of the government, but in fact we are a nonprofit organization and one dedicated to investor protection and market integrity. This is our 80th anniversary year. The organization was established back in 1939. But prior to 2007 we were known as NASD. So many of you may know NASD as a founder of the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. That was back in 1971. And in fact we've divested ownership in NASDAQ and the year 2000-2001. FINRA has about 3,500 employees in 16 cities around the country. We regulate all brokers and brokerage firms doing business with the US public. That translates into about 3,600 firms in about 630,000 individual brokers. We are authorized by Congress to do this work and we are overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. FINRA writes and enforces rules in compliance with federal securities laws. It also provides regulatory services for US markets. And it administers a dispute resolution forum for investors and investment firms. In addition to its regulatory and supervisory functions, FINRA maintains a very robust financial and investor education program. We believe quite strongly that financial education when combined with diligent a regulation is a key component of financial protection. And in fact we see these two roles as essential and complimentary. In 2003 FINRA established a foundation, the FINRA investor education foundation, to advance financial capability in the United States. This foundation has since allocated about $150 million to financial capability and fraud prevention efforts. And the support has taken the form of programs, services, and grants. The FINRA foundation also maintains an extensive research agenda. And this includes the national financial capability study, which is a very large study with over 27,000 participants undertaken every three years. In fact, the latest data were just released last week and includes state by state comparisons. This study tracks indicators of financial capability and evaluates how those indicators vary with underlying demographic, behavioral, and other factors. It takes a look at things like making ends meet, planning ahead, managing financial products, and financial knowledge and decision making. We have got a nice, consumer friendly Web site for the study. And I'll put that URL up in just a few minutes. I would encourage all of you to explore the national findings from the study and compare them to the data for your respective states. I think it's a very useful thing and has applications for your day-to-day work. The FINRA foundation also has a military financial readiness project, a workplace financial education capability initiative, and it undertakes comprehensive efforts to help people recognize, avoid, and counter financial fraud. And in addition, the FINRA foundation has had a partnership with the American Library Association since 2007. And the focus is building library capacity to address patrons' personal finance information needs. The foundation has devoted about $15 million to this effort, which is known as smart investing at your library. And the URL is up there on the bottom right of the screen if you would like to learn more. This project has combined grants and professional development for library professionals as well as resources and very expensive public programming. From time to time in fact we've had the distinct privilege and pleasure to collaborate with CFPB on our various library initiatives, and we are very appreciative of CFPB's work in that space. And we've provided financial support to the financial literacy interest group, which is operated by ALA's Reference and User Services Association. If you are a librarian on the call and you're interested in working with likeminded colleagues across the country with an interest in that topic, please do get in touch with me to connect you with the group leaders. So about eight years ago I was doing a webinar not unlike this one with about 100 librarians working on various financial education programs. And about 15 minutes into the webinar an earthquake hit the Washington DC area. I hope very much that doesn't happen again today. It was a 5.8 on the Richter scale -- so not huge, but still substantial and certainly unexpected for Washington DC. That doesn't happen often here. Well, I can't knock off the webinar pretty much right away. But it was a point when we started to begin talking about the connections between financial capability and the often very severe shock that comes with a disaster event. This wasn't because of the disruptive webinar experience, to be sure, but rather because it was a connection recognized by many of our grantee libraries working out in the field that from time to time would find themselves helping local residents cope with the financial fallout of disasters -- weather there be tornadoes are hurricanes or what have you. In those situations, we try to help those libraries respond with programs and services to help people make informed financial decisions after the storm is over. Advance the slide here. So a couple of years ago we began providing disaster response grants to build relevant personal financial collections following a FEMA declared major disaster in various communities. We've since made about 25 such grants to libraries and it's now a standing service of the foundation. We focus on public libraries serving low- and moderate-income families in communities eligible for FEMA's individual assistance program. Again, the funding is for collection development so the people have the information and resources they need to make well informed financial decisions following a disaster. And we couple that with, excuse me, communications assistance and consumer friendly materials as well as online training for librarians. It's all very low barrier in terms of the administrative burden on public libraries because we believe that libraries and librarians need to be focusing on public service rather than things like feeling that grant applications. We are learning through this process and from our experience with our grantees out in the field that coping with the financial impact of a disaster and helping others do the same is a very long-term process. You know, I mentioned that earthquake in Washington back in 2008. And I was walking up by the national cathedral over the weekend did I looked up at that very beautiful building and notice a lot of scaffolding still on that building. And that's because eight years after that effect, the national cathedral is still dealing with that crisis -- still raising funds and still trying to put things back in order. And there was a recent study undertaken by Urban Institute, which I strongly recommend you take a look at. It is about the financial impact of natural disasters. And that study concludes that such impact is immediate certainly but also long term and the severity grows over time. The researchers on that study looked as much as four years out from the original disaster event and they found adverse effects actually snowballing -- getting worse after four years. And was harmful effects extended to credit scores, debt burden, bankruptcy, mortgage delinquency, and foreclosure. And interestingly they were more severe for people affected by what the researchers turned as medium size disasters. So these are disasters with up to but not over 20 million, I'm sorry, 200 million in assessed damage. And it seems like individuals in those circumstances, those are not like the headline events, struggle much more than people affected by the disasters that claim a place in the media headlines for an extended period of time. So they kind of fly under the radar screen for the rest of the country, but for the people experiencing them, the financial implications are profound. And then not unexpectedly of course people who are experiencing financial fragility even before disaster strikes are at particular risk financially in a disaster situation. So you know, what is the picture of financial fragility in times even when a disaster isn't happening? Well, the national financial capabilities study that I mentioned the FINRA foundation conducts provides a very good picture of that. We see for example that four in ten, actually almost no I'm sorry less than half of people in the US have an emergency fund, for example. Many -- more than three in ten -- are experiencing income volatility. About three in ten are also experiencing medical costs. And take a look in particular at those who are under the age of 35. They are unusually financially or more financially fragile than the rest of the population. And I think that that's important for us to keep in mind. We see that also extended to credit card behavior and debt. And again, these indicators of financial fragility are well documented in the study which again I encourage you to take a look at. So then I disaster hits and of course everything gets worse -- not just for those who are financially fragile but for pretty much everybody. But that there's kind of a storm after the storm. And that storm after the storm is really about to financial fraud. When a disaster hits, fraud is horribly prevalent in those communities. There something called the national center for disaster fraud, which is part of the Justice Department. They were set up in 2005 and since that time they have logged 95,000 fraud complaints following disaster events. That is a very high number, especially when one considers that financial fraud is chronically under reported. So the problem is undoubtedly quite a bit greater than that. So this fraud is perpetrated by fraud criminals of course. And they use very discreet tactics. I won't go into great detail today but there's a lot of behavioral finance research about the types of tactics that fraudsters use. They lead people to believe that services and materials are scarce, for example. And so you've got to act quickly in order to protect yourself. They're speaking language that denotes social consensus. For example, everybody is taking advantage of this service, so really you do need to take advantage of it as well. And these tactics are very persuasive. And the important thing to know is that everybody is susceptible to them. And if you don't believe that you're susceptible, think for a moment about what the AARP Washington and FINRA foundation learned the research about the characteristics of the typical fraud victim. The typical fraud victim we learned through research is self-reliant when making decisions, optimistic, has above average financial knowledge, has above average income, is college educated, and has experienced a recent life set back. And certainly a disaster event would qualify as a life setback for many people. So I think if you're listening to those characteristics, you probably heard a little bit of yourself in them. And in fact all of us have some element of those attributes. And so we are also susceptible. So what can we do to support you in your role as members of helping professions? Well, for librarians in particular the FINRA foundation and the American library Association have developed a series of 15 online courses to help librarians become more expert in financial topics and in particular helping others navigate to good financial decisions. These our courses that are created by and for librarians. They're maintained and updated on a quarterly basis. They are self-paced, again online, and they're built around reference scenarios that are actually based in real life experience at public libraries across the country. And they are all free. And certainly I would encourage you to explore them when you have the time. For our topic today, I'd like to point out couple of the courses. One is called Difficult Times, and that is helping people manage their financial situation in times of crises and that would include disasters. Also, of course I protection is about safeguarding your financial assets and avoiding financial fraud. So I would take special care to take a look at those two courses. The FINRA foundation also have a wide variety of tools for individuals who are seeking help managing their money. There are tools such as our risk meter and scam meter that focus on financial fraud and how to avoid it. But also other more basic tools -- guidance for building an emergency fund, for example, and for managing and improving one's credit. We also publish in summer alerts on a regular and timely basis, including alerts on the financial considerations before and after a disaster event as well as steps to take to be on guard the financial fraud and the circumstances. We maintain a helpline, including a dedicated helpline for senior citizens ticket help with any kind of investing question that they need. And taken together, these resources addressed both preparedness for and responses to challenging financial circumstances. Everything is strictly noncommercial, unbiased, and without cost to the consumer. And finally, I will end here before turning things over to our folks from FEMA. Many of the people that you serve might have limited access to technology or might simply prefer printed materials. So we've set up a portal for libraries and other community organizations enabling them to order consumer materials in quantities to assist with their programming and outreach. All of the education, all of the research and information resources made available by the FINRA foundation again are free of charge. And we encourage you and the people you help to explore these tools and the resources. And hopefully they can help mitigate some of the financial repercussions of major and not so major disaster events because remember, it's often the events that are not necessarily making it into the headlines that are affecting people the most. Our goal is to make sure that a natural disaster doesn't become a personal finance disaster. So I will end there and perhaps we'll have some time at the end for questions. Thank you. Heather Brown: Thank you, Robert. That was a great presentation. Lots of good information that you shared with everybody. I also forgot to mention that we are going to have all of the slides available online for download later -- probably end of next week or beginning of the following week. So you will have access to the slides. And I also forgot to mention that you can write questions in the chat as we're going through. And we'll try to answer those at the end, depending on how the time runs. If not, will try to get back to you with an email with the questions. And we have time we'll also open the line to questions. Okay. So with that I'm actually going to turn it over to Mr. Sebra Yen from FEMA and we are going to - I went in the wrong direction there. Sorry about that. We are going to hear from them next, so. Nisah Abdul-Sabur: Hi. Thank you, Heather. This is Nisah Abdul-Sabur with FEMA Individual and Community Preparedness Division. And I'm being joined with… Sebra Yen: Sebra. I am a part of the Financial Preparedness Team at FEMA and working supporting our strategic initiatives and partnerships. Nisah Abdul-Sabur: Thanks. So I'm very excited to be here today with financial educators, coaches, counselors, clergy members, and librarians that are on the line. The opportunity to present to you is great because it highlights the importance after financially preparing individuals and communities so that they are better equipped for emergencies. Today's presentation is an opportunity for you to learn more about what financial preparedness is and why it matters, some of the barriers to financial preparedness, the role of individuals, communities, and businesses in financially preparing the public, and to learn about proven strategies, tips and techniques that you can share with your clients or the community that you serve. Sebra Yen: Thank you, Nisah for the introduction. Now we're just going to provide a brief overview of FEMA's strategic plan. As you can see in the graphic, goal one of the plan is to build a culture of preparedness. At the Individual and Community Preparedness Division or ICPD we serve as the main preparedness link to individuals and families by connecting science-based research to communication, education, and tools that empower individuals and communities to prepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from a disaster. Under goal one, we as a division champion objective 1.3 of the strategic plan, which is to help people prepare for disasters. Within that objective, our agency and division have identified three major strategies to advance that goal, one of which is to build a culture of financial preparedness. When it comes to emergencies, Americans face more than just earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. We also deal with flat tires, broken water heaters, and sudden medical expenses. Disasters can lead to financial emergencies like car damage, unemployment, injuries, and medical treatment, property damage, or family emergencies. So why aren't we doing more to get prepared? In this presentation we will cover three simple, actionable steps that you can share with your customer base. Nisah Abdul-Sabur: So building a culture of preparedness start with building a culture of financial preparedness. And it starts with the individual. Preparing for disasters is something that your clients can do no matter who they are or where they come from. As Sebra mentioned, this presentation will give you simple practical actions that you can share with them today. In just three steps you can help make the communities you serve stronger and better able to react to disaster. So to prepare your clients, starting that conversation would be following three steps. And the first one is know your risk. So they should understand the hazards that they face depending on where they live throughout the nation and have an understanding of but the financial ramifications will be and how they will respond. The second step would be make a plan. So help them think about what they'll need to financially prepare and to make a plan or a strategy to save for those emergencies. They should be thinking about securing supplies and important documents that are critical to recovery. The next step is to take action. Help them put to their plan into motion. They should be ready and able to face disaster no matter where they are or when it happens. So today's agenda is here on the slide. And at the end of this presentation, when all of the presenters finished their presentation, we'll take questions and hear comments. Before we jump into the three steps, we'll start by talking about the benefits of planning. So what are the benefits of planning ahead and being financially prepared? Peace of mind. So making sure that your clients’ budget and plan more worry less. Because they should be worrying less because they are prepared for the expected and unexpected. Limited property damage. Better management of savings. So financially planning helps them to determine their short- and long-term financial goals and create a balanced plan to meet those goals. Be better prepared to navigate the recovery process. Knowing what you need in case you're able to apply for individual assistance and having the documents and information on hand. So as I mentioned, the first step is to know your risk. So a few questions you may want to ask your clients or the community that you serve are the folks are individuals that you work with is what are some of the potential hazards that may affect your community answer you have money set aside for those hazards. This next slide shows a list of disasters that we face throughout the country. To learn more please check out ready.gov/be-informed for more information on hazards and key protective actions so that your clients understand the aspects associated with each risk that will help them plan accordingly. So research by the federal reserved shows that cash is king during disaster recovery. People with cash on hand recover faster than those relying on credit. Additionally, in America we have an epidemic of liquid asset poverty or a lack of cash available for emergencies and disasters. As you can imagine, that does not bode well for recovery. Therefore we need to improve the financial wellness of Americans so that we can in turn build disaster resilience. Another survey that surveys over 5,000 individuals and is conducted by the Federal Reserve revealed that four out of ten Americans said that they would not have enough money to cover a $400 emergency expense. Result from FEMA's ICPD 2018 national household survey -- which is similar to the findings of The Federal Reserve survey -- indicates that most people do not have enough money set aside for an unexpected $500 emergency. Additionally, property risks are a global challenge. Much of the protection gap is due to uninsured global natural catastrophe risks, which have been rising steadily over the past 40 years. Risk (unintelligible) data shows that total economic losses from natural disasters have averaged around 180 billion annually in the last decade, with 70% billion of that uninsured. Earthquakes, floods, and windstorms are the main threats particularly in areas of high population and property value concentration. Needless to say, the growing insurance gap is a serious threat to us all. So FEMA has a disaster relief program. It's also known as the Individual and Household Program or IHP. And it's designed to coordinate assistance provided to individuals, households, and business is recovering from disaster or emergency impact. So in 2018, FEMA released 2017 IHP data. What's interesting about it is that out of a total of 4.7 million individuals that applied for assistance in response to the 2017 hurricane season -- which included Hurricane Harvey, Irma, and Maria -- of those family about 35% received assistance both for housing and other needs assistance. The average amount paid for housing assistance was roughly $4,300 and the average amount paid for other needs assistance was 1,300. It's clear that the disaster relief funds relief provided was small in comparison to the maximum amount which is 30,000 per household. Clearly these statistics further underscore the importance of individuals and families preparing financially in the event have an unexpected disaster. It's obvious that FEMA assistance isn't intended to make individuals whole so it's really important that your clients and communities know their risk and make a plan and to put it to action. Sebra Yen: Thank you, Nisah for covering the first step to being financially prepared. The second step of the three is to make a plan. The most important question to ask yourself is financial counselors, coaches, intermediaries is what kinds of information, messages, or tools can financially protect my clients from the impact of disaster. In this section we will share a resource that can help enhance the planning process. As you can see, the Emergency Financial First aid kit is here -- also known as the EFFAK. And it's a great tool to share with your clients. In cooperation with Operation Hope, we at FEMA developed the EFFAK in 2004 and revamped it in 2018 during National Financial Capability Month of that year. The EFFAK is a useful tool that helps individuals and families organize critical financial, medical, and household information. It includes a checklist of important documents and forms to compile for the emergency planning process. To provide some context on the importance of this tool, following a disaster individuals and households are eligible to apply to FEMA's disaster assistance program, which Nisah mentioned earlier. When individuals apply for this program, the registration process go through a series of questions they will ask individuals about their critical financial, medical, and household information -- which is what we're asking them to compile through this guide. Accordingly, the EFFAK is meant to serve as a folder that will help disaster survivors navigate to the recovery process quicker should be unexpected occur. Having all this information consolidated in one repository creates that peace of mind Nisah mentioned earlier in terms of the benefits of planning ahead. As individuals will most likely have little time to react the situation answer this would be a good opportunity to start planning now. The EFFAK can be ordered in English or Spanish. And 2,500 copies are ordered from our warehouse each month. So moving on to the next slide, we are going to be talking about the four key financial preparedness actions that the EFFAK embodies. The first key action is to safeguard important documents. Again, gathering these documents using the EFFAK as a guide can help better assist individuals in the recovery process when applying for assistance. The second key action is to save for a rainy day. The EFFAK encourages saving for the unexpected. Saving money and maintaining an emergency fund is not only good practice what puts your customer base in a better position with financial preparedness. The third key action is to establish a cash in hand reserve. During a disaster, anything can happen -- extended power outages, closing of banking institutions, limited or no access to ecommerce banking apps, credit cards, ATMs, et cetera. In this case it is good practice to ensure that customers have cash on hand to purchase a variety of goods during a disaster. A good rule of thumb is to have a mixture of ones, fives, and tens with the highest being a twenty in order to eliminate to the challenge of finding change during an emergency. And finally the fourth key action is to know your insurance coverage. The benefits of your clients obtaining insurance for their home, apartment, or business property will assist in the repairing, rebuilding, or replacing damages that may have occurred during a disaster. Encourage clientele to periodically review insurance policies. Most importantly, ensure data coverage includes floods, earthquakes, water damages, tornadoes, or high winds in hurricane prone areas. We work with the Federal Insurance and Mitigation Administration -- also known as FIMA -- here at FEMA to promote a savings and insurance. And a good resource to check out is floodsmart.gov. And moving on to the final step, which is to take action. The next question to ask is, “what are some steps my clients can take right now to better protect themselves and their property as well as manage risk. Also, what types of insurance might be important in preparing for a disaster?” In the next few slides we'll bring up some ways, activities, immediate actionable steps your clients can take to be more involved in being financially prepared. As you can see here, every April is National Financial Capability Month, which serves as a reminder for the nation to review their financial health and well-being. This year we partnered with over 20 interagency and private sector organizations to promote messaging, tools, and resources for the public to use. Feel create a check them out at usa.gov/flec at the bottom. This year we had the opportunity to reach over 75 million individuals, which was a substantial increase from last year 28 million. Sharing messaging and encouraging your customers to consult these events and resources is a way to strengthen financial preparedness. As we have found from our national household survey that Nisah mentioned earlier, we found that individuals who are exposed to messaging are more likely to take action on being prepared. Another step is encouraging your clients to encourage their youths to be financially prepared. Financial preparedness isn't limited to just adults. If we want to build a true culture of preparedness, it starts with our kids which means teaching our kids the value of money from an early age. FEMA has the Youth Preparedness Council -- also known as YPC -- which brings together youth from around the country to support youth preparedness. Projects from this year include elevating financial preparedness among youth. Encouraging youth to be more involved starts now. And you can visit ready.gov/youth-preparedness-council. Finally, another immediate action to share with your customers is to review insurance options I've mentioned earlier from the EFFAK portion. Most standard insurance policies do not cover flood damage. Only flood insurance protects from the financial devastation of flooding. Getting the right type and amount of insurance may mean the difference between a quick recovery from a disaster or years of financial challenges. Taking actions now to find and secure the right insurance policies can protect your clients' financial health. An important thing to mention is that just one inch of water can cause up to $25,000 of damage to an individual's home. What's more, flooding is the most common and costly disaster in the US and your clients should talk with their insurance agent to see if their property is at risk for flooding or mud flows, including flooding caused by hurricanes or earthquakes. To participate in insurance, clients can consult the national flood insurance program -- also known as NFIP -- which can be found at floodsmart.gov. Another important item to note is that there is usually a 30-day waiting period between the time when an individual purchases flood insurance to the day when they're covered. So it's important not to delay this action. So those are the three actionable ways your customers can take to be better prepared. And with that, this wraps up the main content of our presentation. Nisah Abdul-Sabur: Thanks, Sebra and thank you all on the line for your undivided attention. This last slide we have a bunch of resources just to reiterate some of the resources that we mentioned throughout the presentation. To learn more about financial preparedness and flood insurance resources, please visit ready.gov/financial-preparedness and floodsmart.gov. Thank you for your undivided attention. Heather Brown: Thank you so much. That was very informative and lots of good information and links that I tried to capture in the chat. And also, I'm just going to share one link as well that was from our newsletter in case people didn't see it. This is from the last link was basically our portal for disaster preparedness for the CFPB. So you can check that out as well. Okay. So thank you again. And I know that somebody may have a question about where to access the manual that you were discussing throughout the slides. And so if you could put something in the chat about that as we move forward, I think that would be great. I haven't seen any questions coming in yet. So let's see just to make sure - I do see that there's a couple in the Q&A. So I'll go back and check those once I introduce the next speaker and get you after that speaker is done. So the next speaker is going to be Dave Sieminski. And he is going to - he is from CFPB and he is going to speak on our Start Small Save Up program. And I'm going to hand it over to you Dave. Let me find my name with the ball and pass it on. I guess it's (unintelligible). There we go. Dave Sieminski: Okay. Can you put up my slides? Heather Brown: Yes. Dave Sieminski: Thanks. Heather Brown: I don't know why when I do it ahead it doesn't really take it but here we go. Okay. Can you see it? Dave Sieminski: No. Still looking at the last slides from FEMA. Heather Brown: Okay. Let may just try to take it back and send it to you again. Hang on. On my screen do you want to become the presenter? Yes. Now I'll give it back. Dave Sieminski: There we go. Okay. All right. So thanks everybody. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you for a few minutes today about a new initiative that the Bureau is starting. Literally started with in the past three or four months called Start Small Save Up. And really, what this is about and how it relates to the previous presenters is more associated with the fact that the people experience, you know, people certainly experience natural disasters from time to time but there's many unnatural disasters that occur every day in their lives as my colleagues Sebra and Nisah referenced in their presentation about the day-to-day small emergencies -- unexpected expenses and other kinds of experiences that people have in which they find themselves financially unprepared. And so, Start Small Save Up is an initiative to begin to address some of those issues. And so I'll tell you briefly about it. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide because it's already been cited in a couple different ways. You see the number 39% or 40%. And in the case of Robert's presentation I think their financial capability study actually had the number over 50%. The difference in the percentages is you know, probably has to do with the way the questions are asked and answered. But the significant point to make here is that there is a substantial portion of our population -- and not exclusively low-income people, but across the whole population -- who have insufficient liquidity to be able to withstand an unexpected expense. And so that's an issue that really needs to be addressed. And I should say that when we think about this, we think about you know, building liquidity to withstand unexpected expenses -- emergencies or other kinds of expenses -- is really a stepping stone. It's not the last step; it's the first step to being able to start thinking about meeting your longer term financial goals because if you have sufficient liquidity, then you have something to fall back on so you don't have to tap into the retirement savings you may have or the other kinds of savings that you are setting aside for other longer term goals. So a couple of things to say about this -- obviously having savings is critical to a person's financial well-being. For folks that are familiar with our financial well-being scale and our research, we found that liquid savings is one of the most highly influences people's financial well-being when using the scoring system that we have developed. So that's clearly an indicator that having that liquid savings is an important confidence builder for people in feeling better about themselves financially. You know, a lack of short-term savings as already been referenced can cause financial stress and can result in significant mark up when the unexpected happens. If you don't have liquid savings, you may not be able to fix the car they broke down. You may have to go borrow money from a place that you know, will be charging you a higher rate than you might like simply because you have to have access to the money immediately. And if you don't get access to it then you may you know, lose days of work or other experiences that are going to put you in a more financially fragile position. So and as I said, you know, building liquid savings, having that cushion helps you to think about longer term savings goals. So the Start Small Save Up vision is that we seek to increase people's financial well-being through education, through partnerships, through research and policy and regulatory improvements that increase people's opportunity to save and empower them to realize their personal savings goals. And I'll just say a couple things about this. Certainly education is important. You know, helping people to understand not only the importance about of having liquid savings but I would say you know, also how to build liquid savings, you know, given their current financial experience. You know, I'm hesitant to say that people don't know how to save. I believe that a lot of people do -- it's just that they may not have enough resources or they don't have access to the right kinds of tools to be able to save. Because I pretty firmly believe that people really do want to save and they certainly do have goals and many of them certainly know how to manage their money well -- especially if they're living on limited resources. We think partnerships are critical -- not only with other federal agencies like the folks on this webinar, but with other partners in the private and nonprofit sector and in local communities so that we can help sort of create this set of messaging and information that is consistent and gives people good information about how to save and build liquidity. We certainly are going to engage in research to test what works. And as I think about it when I engage in this kind of research, also to learn what doesn't work -- you know, what is not meaningful to the people, what isn't effective because that sometimes helps you to sort of limit the efforts that you make so that you're using the most effective and best practices in order to help people to save. And certainly you know, because we are a regulator, we do have some influence in the policy and regulatory space. We can't tell financial institutions, you know, what kinds of accounts to offer or anything like that. That's not our purview. But we do partner with them and we do have relationships with them and we can encourage them, if you will, to offer savings products that allow a low balance an inconsistent depositor to access a conventional account with relatively low or no fees so that they feel confident about putting their money in a place where they can not only keep it but get access to it when they need it. So our focus in the first year -- and as I said we literally are starting this up so we don't have the full plan put together. So this is really a preview of coming attractions -- is that we're going to focus first on people who have experienced a financial shock in the last 12 months and who have some reasonable ability to save, are reachable through multiple channels available to us and other of our partners, and are receptive to the message about savings. Now, that seems like sort of like you know, the obvious place to start. But we really need to test what works and we need to identify a population that is willing and able and ready to sort of begin working with us and to help us learn about what works for folks as they are building their liquid savings. And in future years, you know, we plan on expanding it to you know, working with people who have actively or are actively working to overcome debt because we understand one update impediments or barriers to saving is if people have to make a choice between saving and paying off debt. That's not an easy choice to make, and oftentimes the better choice is to not necessarily save but to pay down that debt. And so providing good information that allows people to help make good decisions is something that's important to us. And we also think that you know, we will want to focus in the future on people that you know, anticipate a pivotal life event -- getting married, having a child, having a child leave the home, other kinds of pivotal life events, getting a new job where you may have more income. So that as they're thinking about how the changes in their life affects their finances, that they are an obvious good place to provide good information and resources to help them save. So we have four primary strategies. First, to increase access to conventional savings products. The second, to increase the supply of automated savings options because we believe and we know from research that when people have access to automated savings options, they are more likely to be able to save because when you have to make multiple financial decisions in your daily life, it's hard obviously -- or harder at least -- to choose savings as one of those options, especially if you have other financial obligations. And besides, the vast majority of people who save on a regular basis mostly saved through automated means. Also, we want to increase consumer capacity to save within existing income constraints. That's difficult because especially if somebody is extremely low income, that's not an easy thing to do. But there are resources that are becoming more available -- especially in the FinTech space and other spaces where there are tools to help people better manage their money and anticipate their expenses. And their income to the extent that people have access to those kinds of things, they may have greater capability to save. And we want to increase the availability a reliable information so people can make good decisions about their saving options as they're making other financial decisions. And so finally I want to close with a preview of coming attractions. As many of you may be aware, one of our primary financial education and financial capability tools is Your Money Your Goals. It's a suite of tools to help primarily service providers have the money conversation with their customers, their clients, and the people that they work with. And so that toolkit we rolled out I think five years ago now. But it's expanded to have a variety of additional resources. And we've had specialty savings booklets created around debt, around credit, and around being behind on bills and how to manage that. And so booklet that's soon to be rolled out sometime this summer is fourth in that series called Building Your Savings. And the vast majority of the tools in there in that booklet are focused on building liquid savings. We placed an emphasis on that at the expense perhaps of some other longer-term savings goals because we think that's foundational to people being able to meet their longer-term goals. So with that, I'll turn it back to Heather. Heather Brown: Thank you so much Dave. That was great. We did have one question. That was when was the book available, which you sort of answered at the end -- that it's coming soon. I don't know if you have a predicted date that you wanted to share or if you just want to have people check back on our web site. Dave Sieminski: I think it's safe to say that it's sometime in August. The limitation is, you know, we've finished the booklet. It's been created. But we don't want to sort of advertise its availability until we have it printed and available in stock so that when people go to our website, they can actually order the booklet. So that's the variable. But it will be sometime in August. And stay tuned because that booklet is coming in the very near future. Heather Brown: Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Okay. And now last but not least we're going to hear from Andrew Fay. He just has a couple minutes. He wants to talk about an issue related to mortgages and disaster preparedness. Andrew, are you there? Andrew Fay: I sure am. Thank you, Heather. And I know I'm on the clock. Thank you Dave, Heather, all the presenters for this fantastic information. Thank you for the opportunity to share a quick observation about some of the complaints that consumers submit after hurricanes and other disasters. As many of you probably know, the most frequently offered tool for consumers after disasters for their mortgages is forbearances. As you're speaking with people about disasters, we wanted to very quickly note that we've seen number of complaints where consumers believe that payments missed especially hurricane forbearances would be automatically added to the end of their long terms. These consumers typically express surprise when informed that missed payments are typically all due at the end of the forbearance unless a workout option was in place. After looking at these consumer complaints -- we were looking at the clarity of some communications from services about disaster forbearances -- you can help consumers who have been hit by disasters by working with them to ensure but they understand the terms of plans they're offered by mortgage services after natural disasters. Thank you so much for just this quick minute. And I'm going to turn this back to Heather. I said I'd be quick. Coordinator: Heather, we are unable to hear you. Would you please check your mute button? Heather Brown: Thank you. Thank you so much for that presentation. I appreciate Operator calling my attention. I was on mute. I just wanted to say that it's time to take some questions. And we're right at 3:00 but we'll try to hang on for five minutes or so. I know some of our guests may have to go, but we'll try to get some questions answered if there are any. Could you provide those directions, Operator? Thank you. Coordinator: Absolutely. If you would like to ask a question, press star 1 from your phone, unmute your line, and record your first and last name clearly when prompted. If you would like to withdraw your question press star 2. One moment while we wait for questions to queue. Heather Brown: Thank you, Operator. I just wanted to also mention if you didn't get a chance to check the links in the newsletter that went out to you, I'd encourage you to do that because there's some great information in there that you can share with your audience when you're doing your teaching and coaching on financial preparedness for disasters. And so you can hit those links and get to some of our materials. And of course all of our materials are available through our publishing house. And the link to get to that is also in our newsletter -- how to get free bulk copies of all these materials. And when the book is ready in August, you can order bulk copies of those as well for your class and for your individual coaching meetings as well. Operator, did any questions come in? Coordinator: There are no questions in queue. Heather Brown: Okay. It looks like perhaps one more question came in on the Q&A. How would you suggest rolling this Start Small Save Up program as an employer to employees? Dave Sieminski: So it's a great question. And I really appreciate you asking. One of the strategies that we have -- and again I say this as, you know, we are still in the development phase -- is specifically to engage the employers. And we actually had a work group internally that's going to start teasing that out about how to engage employers. There are some models out there of employers that have already sort of embedded some financial capability resources into the resources that they provide to their employees. And there's always some innovation going on. So I would say I don't have the complete answer for you right now, but I do know that that's one of our primary areas of focus. So I would say stay tuned because as we figure out, you know, exactly what role we can play and what role you may be able to play, that there's going to be more information about how to engage employers. Because that's the logical place or one of the logical places because obviously the money relationship that employers and employees have is one of the essential, you know, is one of the fundamental relationships people have about how they manage their money and how they use their money and possibly how they distribute their money into savings. Heather Brown: Thank you, Dave. We had one more question in the Q&A. It's for the first presenter. That's Mr. Ganem. It says that I missed the link on the last slide for the FINRA educational materials. And can you provide it again? Now, I thought I may have it in here. Robert Ganem: Yes, Heather I think you posted that to the chat on the right-hand side of the screen… Heather Brown: Okay. Robert Ganem: …about halfway down tools.finra.org/portal/sai-portal. It's a bit of a mouthful but it is posted. Heather Brown: Okay, great. Looks like it was a 2:43 pm posting. So you should have it there. All right. Any other questions Operator that may have come in while we were talking? Coordinator: There are still no questions in queue. Heather Brown: Okay. Somebody asked would you please let me know where the CFPB booklet for building your savings - that's the one we've already seen, right? Okay, I'm sorry. I'm going the wrong direction here. Let me find - looks like there was one more coming in that I missed. Presenter. No, I don't see it. Okay. I'm sorry. If I missed it you can send me an email to CFPB_FinEx@cfpb.gov. But from what I can see, I captured all the questions. Thank you all for your attention. Thank the speakers for the great information that they shared. And hopefully you all have a chance to explore these sites and information to get prepared for the upcoming hurricane season. Speakers, you can stay on the line if you have time for a quick debrief. Otherwise Operator, could you give our conclusion instructions? Coordinator: Yes. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. All parties may disconnect at this time. Leaders, please stand by. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Heather Brown 06-27-19/1:00 pm CT Confirmation # 9203176 Page 1