Transcript
CFPB FinEx Webinar, "CFPB Multilingual Resources," September 2024
Presenters:  Carmen Cruz, Office of Financial Education, CFPB
Facilitators:  Susan Burgess, CFPB

 INTRODUCTION
>>Susan Burgess:   Good afternoon. I'm Susan Burgess from the Bureau's Events Management Team. We'll go over some logistics before we begin. For Webex-generated closed captioning, click on the CC button at the bottom left of the Webex window. If you're having issues with your audio, click on the Audio button near the bottom of your screen. The audio options are located within the circle button with three dots, near the bottom of the Webex window. There, you'll receive guidance on switching your audio to your phone. For tech support during this event, send a message in the chat box to the host, and I will provide assistance.
 
Now I'll turn the program over to Carmen Cruz, Financial Education Program Analyst in the Office of Financial Education. Carmen, the floor is yours.
 
>>Carmen Cruz:  Thank you, Susan. On the next slide. My name is Carmen Cruz. I have been with the Bureau, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, since 2011 from when we first opened. I am currently in the Office of Financial Education. I am a Financial Education Program Analyst, and I'm happy to be on this webinar with you all today.
 
Next slide. And here is our lovely disclaimer that tells you that this presentation is being made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau representative, and I am doing this on behalf of the Bureau, but it does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenter's own and may not represent the views of the Bureau. 
INDIVIDUALS WITH LIMITED ENGLISH PROFICIENCY 
Thank you, Susan. Next slide. Limited English proficient consumers often encounter significant barriers to participating in financial marketplace due to insufficient language access. That includes completing financial education documents, managing bank accounts, solving problems with financial products, and understanding their consumer rights and accessing financial education. 
 
With that in mindÑnext slideÑI wanted to share some statistics with you. I apologize. In the United States, financial products and services are generally described in English. We know for those who primarily speak a language other than English, it can be challenging and understand it's challenging to understand and use these products and services. There are still more than 41 million immigrants that live in America, and some have unique needs when it comes to managing their finances. Millions of people in the United States are more comfortable using Spanish, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Tagalog, Korean, Vietnamese, and Arabic. And the most widely spoken languages are those that I just listed.
 
Considerations like limited English proficiency and unfamiliarity with the U.S. banking system can make it very hard to navigate in the financial educationÑI'm sorryÑin the financial marketplace. To help these consumers understand more common products and transactions, we at the CFPB would like to provide them with some information in these languages. We work with advocacy organizations that have noted that some populations with limited English proficiency skills are more susceptible to fraudulent and predatory lending or practices. 
 
If you notice on the slide that I'm presenting right now, Latinos represent probably 16.7 percent of the United States population. Sixty-two percent of these people still speak another language at home or speak Spanish. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders now represent a very fast-growing ethnic minority in the U.S., and between 2000 and 2010, the Asian American population grew 46 percent, and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population grew 40 percent.
LANGUAGE OPTIONS
Next slide. So, with knowing that information, we at the CFPB have resources for people that you might serve. The materials you can share are in eight languages, and that's English, Chinese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, which is for the Filipino community, Russian, Arabic, and Haitian Creole.

 CFPB EN ESPA„OL
Next slide, please. Our first resource that I'd like to talk to you about is our CFPB en Espa–ol. CFPB en Espa–ol is not necessarily one-to-one with our English website, but it's pretty close. So, with that being said, you can see that we have a lot of resources, and it's probably the most comparable to our English site. So, obviously, because we have more Spanish speakers and we started doing Spanish way further ahead than we've done the other languages, there is a lot of materials that are in Spanish for you to share with your constituents and the people that you help in your communities. You can access CFPB en Espa–ol by consumerfinance.gov/es. The landing page, again, of the website is almost identical to the English site, and in a little while, I will demonstrate our website so that you can see what we're talking about.
 RESOURCES FOR MULTILINGUAL COMMUNITIES
Next slide, please. We have practitioner resources, a landing page there for multilingual communities and newcomers. If you go to consumerfinance.gov/language, you'll see that there are resources that practitioners can use with your multilingual communities and for the newcomers that are coming to the United States. 
 
There are common transactions that are explained on this, like sending money overseas. There's help for older Americans, children and families, and families that are economically vulnerable. If you see, you can click and point in the top right to the language of your choice, and you'll be led to our languagesÑour language pagesÑI apologizeÑwhich I definitely would love to kind of demonstrate if we have time at the end of this presentation.
 
The next slide, please. Next slide, please. These are in-language pages. If you notice on one side, we have it in English, but on the other side, we're just demonstrating the Chinese, and that's how it looks. And again, toward the end of the presentation, I'll kind of demonstrate what the in-language pages have. You'll see that on the pages, we have money topics and key terms. The key terms are more than just a glossary. The key terms are where the term is, and it also gives a definition of the term. That could be very helpful for that specific topic. We have various money topics, and we'll show you those at the end of the presentation.  
 NEWCOMERS GUIDE
Next page, please. Next slide. Our Newcomers' Guide. The Newcomers' Guide for money management is a suite of four guides, which we created for exactly what it says, newcomers, people that are just coming to this country who are new to the financial system. The information is very straightforward. It's about basic money decisions. There's a suite of four. They are in all of the languages that I mentioned to you before.

One is called "Ways to receive your money," which is how you get paid, right? So there's sometimes these people are coming and they don't know how they can get paid, and we explain that they can get paid by cash, they can get paid by debitÑI'm sorryÑdirect deposit, or even like sometimes there's payments on cards. So that's all explained to them, and again, it's in their language of choice.
 
The second offering that we have is a checklist for opening your bank account or credit unit. So it kind of helps them decide what type of financial institution that they want to go with, and it gives them a checklist on how to make that decision.  
 
And then there's the third one, which is ways to pay your bills. A lot of people come and they don't know how to make payments to their bills, and so this specific offering shows them how they can pay their bills and different ways that they can access that.
 
And lastly, they haveÑthe last one is selecting financial products and services. And that's again, showing them different types of financial products and services and howÑjust briefly how it would work and how to select that, and that you also can access on the website. They are downloadable in PDFs. 
 
You can also order these. If you order them, we will mail them to you. They will come nice and packaged up. You can order up toÑI believe it's still up to a thousand. They're free, they're in color, and they're ready for you to put on your shelves and use. We've gotten a lot of great feedback around these guides. They fly off the shelves when we are at different types of conferences that we share.
 
So, againÑand then also, anything that we share with you today has no copyright infringement. So if you run out and you want to make a copy and you want to share it, you are free to do that. Again, there's no copyright infringement on these offerings.
 TRANSLATED GLOSSARIES
Next slide, please. We have our translated glossaries of financial terms and services. In 2015, we created these glossaries of financial words and terms that we at the CFPB frequently used when creating content. We translated those words into Spanish and Chinese. The glossaries then were about 250. We updated the glossaries in 2016, and we added about 1,200 more financial words and terms. We did this in partnership with other agencies and organizations who also had financial glossaries, and we combined them. Those people that we partnered were FHFA, the FDIC, DOJ, IRS, the FTC, the Social Security Administration, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, GSA, and the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. Since then, we've added more to those glossaries, and now our glossaries are about over 2,000 financial words and terms.
 
Why we created these glossaries was in the Pleasantville idea, so that anybody that is picking up any type of financial publication from a government agencyÑand hopefully, when others are creating content, they will use these glossariesÑthat we're using the same words to translate the financial terms so that in Spanish, "balloon payment," if we have it, will be the same if Freddie Mac is using it. It'll be the same if Fannie Mae uses it. It'll be the same when the CFPB uses it.
 
Also, this is not guidance. This is definitely promoted as a tool. It is not mandated. We are asking you to use this as a resource when you want to translate your own content. Also, if you are wanting to create a publication, you can use these glossaries to do that. There are some instances in the glossaries where you'll find a word that might have two or three different translations for that word, and that's just because to break up kind of the monotony or to alleviate or avoid redundancy.
 
In Spanish, you can say "house" a few different ways. Maybe you want to say "casa" one time. Maybe in another sentence, you want to say "hacienda," just to keep it interesting and palatable.  So you can feel free to do that. Again, we started out with Spanish and Chinese. Then in the next iteration, we partnered with those agencies and FHFA, added Vietnamese and Korean and Tagalog. Then in 2020ÑI believe it was 2020Ñwe then added Russian and Arabic. We have these translated glossaries in Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. 
 
We also have tested these glossaries and did a lot of user testing to make sure that these things make sense. So we encourage you to look at them and give us some feedback and see how you like them. If we're missing words, we always like to hear from people that say, you know, we were creating a publication or there's a word that keeps coming up in the financial word that we don't really know how to translate. Could you give us some, you know, help on that? We definitely collect all those words, and each iteration we would add them to the glossaries. So it's a living document for us.
 ASKCFPB
Next slide. Ask CFPB. So Ask CFPB is to help practitioners and people you serve find clear, impartial answers to financial questions. It is a resource. You can go to it on our consumerfinance.gov/ask. You'll see it right there. You see that dashÑI'm sorryÑslash, ask, dash, CFPB, forward slash.
 
Now, CFPBÑAsk CFPB is only in Spanish and English right now, but it has over, like, 1,100 different types of financial questions that you can kind of just type in and get the questions. It will lead you to another page. Sometimes it can lead you to a publication or to a blog. It helps with when somebody has a question and maybe you don't know. You can work with the people that you have and just visit Ask and show them how to do that. It's trusted. The information is vetted with us, and then you can vet it with the people that you work with to make sure that our information is correct. 
 
For an example, you can put "How do I get my credit report?" and then a variety of articles and tools will appear to show you how to get your credit report, or you can explore it by topic from auto loans to prepaid cards, student loans. There's information available to you that all the people that you serve would probably find very useful. Again, it's in English and in Spanish.
 FINANCIAL WELL-BEING SCALE
Next slide. Our Financial Well-Being Scale resources, this resource can be used to assess a person's financial well-being before you provide a service to them. It also can track an individual's financial well-being over time if you're working with them. You can measure the extent to which the programs are improving in the financial well-being of the individuals that you serve and whether you want to use it in a pilot or write a grant. The scale is available in Spanish. We also have benchmarks that you can use to assess your client's financial well-being based on the national survey data, including benchmarks for Hispanics and Spanish-speaking population. 
 
If you're interested in knowing more about this, let us know. We have our colleague, Sangeetha, who is the expert on this. She would be happy to do a presentation and do a deeper dive in this scale. This scale has a scoring, and it scores the person's financial well-being. It also gives you a definition of what we consider what financial well-being, which doesn't mean that you're so financially smart in that sense. It just says that financial well-being is the ability to take a financial blow. 
 
So let's just say you have a blowout. Your car, your tire's blown. Can you pay for that? Or the other thing is that measures financial well-being in our definition of financial well-being is that can the person meet all of their monthly bills without being worried about meeting their monthly bills? Or if they'reÑlike I said, if there's a national disaster or something happens, can they withstand a small blow, up to probably about $1,000? Also, financial well-being is the idea of can I do the things that I like to do? Some people might be like, oh, I like to travel. Can I travel? But some people might not be that way. I just like to knit. Am I able to go down to the store and buy knitting and not feel like it's a financial burden? So you'll learn more about financial well-being and how we define it. But this is a great tool, and we've gotten a lot of good feedback on it as well. 
 PRINT PUBLICATIONS
Next slide. Our print publications. So we talked to you about the different materials that we offer, and I will show you on our website some of the materials as well. But if you go to consumerfinance.gov/order, you will find that you'll get our financial education materials in English and the other languages we spoke about. They're available for bulk ordering and free shipping. You can search them by category. So when you go to that site, it'll have a dropdown. You should search by category of like auto loan or checking account, credit. There's another dropdown where you can search by language, and it'll tell you which languages that we have and whether those are available in PDF only, which would be downloadable, or if you could actually have them printed and sent out to you.
 
You can also search what type of publication you're looking for. You could be looking for worksheets, or if you are having an event and you want some posters or bookmarks or handouts, we have all of that. It's very easy, it's very user friendly, and we encourage you to order those. Our site is in Pueblo, Colorado, and it takes about three to four weeks to get your delivery. So, again, if you've already ordered some and you still have some left over, if you want to make some copies because you're waiting for your next shipment, you absolutely can do so. But all of our publications will come to you in color and ready to go.
  DEMONSTRATION OF WEBSITE - OVERVIEW
And the next slide. So let's stay connected. So if youÑand I'm going to get ready to share my screen with you and show you how we can stay connected, and also, you can subscribe here by staying connected, but I will show you. So if you go to consumerfinance.gov/language/CFPB-in-english/, you will be able to sign up, and you'll get our newsletters and be able to stay in contact with us.

And so, Susan, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so we can kind of go over the website, and so I'm going to share that now. Okay. I am sharing now. Susan, can you see that? 
 
>>Ms. Burgess:  I see it.

>>Attendee:  Yes, we can see your screen. 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Perfect. So this is our in-language page. If you see here, it says consumerfinance.gov/language/CFPB-in-English. But here is the ribbon that I was speaking to you in reference. So here's English, and so I'll go over the English because I'm sure that many of you probably speak another language, but English is safe. So we'll just do the English part.
 
You'll see here, we did a lot of testing on this website when we createdÑor we were creating it. We heard from practitioners, and we heard from consumers. And they asked forÑfirst, they asked for images that looked like them. Also, they asked for snippets, like different social media platforms you know of right now that have videos and little clips. So if you see here, this says "The CFPB is on your side," and this is a little video for about one minute. And I'm going to actually let you see it. 
 
[Video plays.]
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  That is an awesome video. And you see that we have incorporated another language, which is ASL. So, again, that is on the site. You can show it to your consumers that you're working with. There are, on this page, money topics and key terms, and I'll show you how that works. So if you see here, the auto loans, if you click this here, you'll see where you're shopping for an auto loan, and you explore the key terms. And here are key terms that pertain to auto loans in it, and if you click the language that you want to see it in, you will see it in each language. The only language right now you do not see is Spanish, because Spanish has its own site.
 DEMONSTRATION OF WEBSITE Ð SUBMIT A COMPLAINT
So we'll go back to CFPB in English. So you see that there's plenty of different money topics here. We have auto loans, bank accounts, credit cards, credit reports, all of these. I won't go into a whole bunch of that because I want to scroll down and show you that we have the Submit a Complaint. A lot of people said that they didn't really even know how it works to submit a complaint. So we kind of made it quick, fast, and easy on how to submit your complaint online, where you can click right here or by phone if you want to call this line, because then you canÑwe have 180 other languages. We have a language line, and they can take your complaint in your language. Currently online, it's only in English, but again, they can call by phone and be assisted in 180 languages to submit their complaint.  
 
So we did some FAQs on answers before you start to even submit a complaint, and here it shows you which services that we offer for complaints. We also have testimonials for different people that have used the CFPB and had a positive outcome. Scrolling back up on the side here, you will see in this little gray area here, this is where you would sign up to receive more information from us and stay in touch with us, and that's just how you would do it. I'm sorry. And then you just would click Sign Up, and you would see there's a privacy act statement. We're not going to share any of your information. 
 DEMONSTRATION OF WEBSITE Ð OREDER PUBLICATIONS
Here's the link where you can quickly order theÑorder or download the publications that we spoke about.
  
Here is alsoÑif you click this link, this is where the practitioner page is. I can quickly go to that real quick. This is your practitioner page that talks to practitioners more about people that you serve.
 
And then here are our glossaries. Our glossaries are for everybody. The public can use them as well. So we are definitely eager to share with anyone and everyone, and here they are. They are in a PDF form. So you'll click that, and let's see if I getÑmaybe it's not working. Let's try Vietnamese. It's giving me a little bit of a problem. It might be because I'm sharing my screen, but anyway, it is in PDF.
 
We do have our language access plan. That's the only little bit of policy that we have, and there's our legal disclaimer here. So these are our in-language pages. Again, I promised you that I would show you also the Spanish site. So we'll go ahead and click there, up here in this ribbon, and here is our Spanish site. So if you see how the Spanish site is basically designed, it almost looks like our English site.
 
Oh.  No, our English site has changed. So there you go. So our English site is more like the other site. So the Spanish site is a standalone site right now. It looks like our older English site. But this is something that we're hoping will change in 2025. They are in talks right now and doing some testing and construction because, again, we want to make sure that we provide each community with their needs and their asks. So that's something to look forward to in the coming months, I should say, in 2025. 
 
And so here we are back at the website, and again, I'll click on Tagalog. You'll see that it's in Tagalog. We had this tested. We did user testing, and we listened to what everyone said. You click this video here, you'll see everything is in Tagalog. And that's in the English site as well.
 
I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing for now, and I will open up for questions. I know that there's some in the chat, and I see that Ken has been answering some of the questions. But if you want to open up for questions, I'm ready to answer questions. 
QUESTION AND ANSWER
>>Attendee:  Hi, Carmen. There were just a few comments and questions that did come through the chat. Some of the comments were that they ship it pretty quick too, thinking of some of documents that get shipped. And there's some cool information, both in English and Spanish. Someone else said the printed materials are phenomenal, especially since so many places don't print resources any longer.
 
here were a few questions that Ken wasn't able to answer. There's one here that says several of the books we would like to use have been out of stock. Will they be back in stock soon? 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  So I don't know which books that you're speaking in reference to. If you can send those to us, we can take that back and get you an answer. If you put your email address into the chat, we would love to get you an answer for that. 
 
>>Attendee:  Thank you. One of the other questions was, do you offer any games to help with terms, et cetera?
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Did you say games? 
 
>>Attendee:  Games, yes. Maybe interactive tools.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  No at this time, we do not have interactive tools like gaming, but that's a good suggestion. 
 
>>Attendee:  There's another question in chat here. Any resources around financial aid for college?
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Yes. So that is not the Office of Financial Education. It's actually the Office of Students and Young Americans, and if you go on our website and youÑlet me see. I'll see if I could share it again, just so that I could show you real quick where you can go. Give me a minute. Let's share that.
 
So let's go to CFPB. So you would go here. So you're at this consumerfinance.gov. You would go under here, and then you would see students, student loans, and I feel like if you click here, you learn about student loans and getting a student loan and those things, knowing your rights.
 
So is there another question?
 
>>Attendee:  Yes. Does the CFPB have PowerPoint presentations that we can use to teach classes? 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Unfortunately, no. I don't think that we have those. The only thing that I think that we do have is Your Money, Your Goals, and that is a suite of how to help with things of that nature.
 
>>Attendee:  And this was more of a comment, not a question, but this viewer says please continue to make more documents available in Spanish. This is good materials for those who happen to be incarcerated, so to reach all consumers. 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Thank you.
 
>>Attendee:  The next question was, do you have misadventures in money management for the regular population? I used to use one for military.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Misadventure in money management is only available at the military version.  It's a great resource, though.
 
>>Attendee:  And that is all the questions that we have in chat at this point.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Okay. See where it says misadventures in money management will be great for our young people?  I agree andÑI'm sorry.
 
>>Attendee:  I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Go ahead.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  So Kelly is about data. I don't know what data she's referring to. I did cite data.  Are you speaking about forÑI guess I need a little bit more clarity on what you're speaking in reference to Kelly.
 
I know that we were talking about some of the Your Money, Your Goals books that we're no longer printing, and that's because of cost reasons. So that might be the ones that you're referencing, Lynn.
 
So the Latinos present in the United States right now, we do use current data for that. So, yes, we do have current data for that. I believe right now it's about 42 million in the United States thatÑand when we say that, we're talking about that still speak EnglishÑI mean, still speak Spanish at home. So there may be many more, but these are the people that are saying that they stillÑno, it said it was 16.7 percent of the entire population of the United States, Kelly. 
 
Okay. Is there anything else? Anyone else? 
 
>>Attendee:  We have another question. I've noticed that some resources are not available in other languages other than English or Spanish for print. Will this change in the future? 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Yeah, so we are looking into that. A lot of people are not printing as much anymore. So, again, it's a cost thing with the government. So a lot of times we're not doing it in print because of that. 
 
So we are getting ready to do a little bit of a project about printing to do someÑbasically like user testing. That's what I was looking for. I apologize. User testing to see how much of a demand that is. 
 
>>Attendee:  Rich, would you like to continue with the comments and questions? 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  I don't see any others. 
 
>>Attendee:  I have a comment here from Lynn. I hope you can find funds to print those books again because clients in our tax program really like them. 
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  We hope so too. They fly off the shelves when we go out to conferences. Ken and myself have been with our department for Your Money, Your Goals. And when they bring those books, they fly off. So we know. So we're hoping as well. 
 
>>Attendee:  Yeah, there's just a lot of other comments thanking you for the great resource to help in underserved communities, and thanks for sharing these resources. And someone else had mentioned the CFPB Your Money, Your Goals workbook is a great resource. But the Spanish translation hasn't been updated for about eight years, and parts of it can be difficult to understand for those who have limited knowledge of financial systems. Can we anticipate a revised edition in Spanish anytime soon?
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  That's not a question that I can answer, but I can take that back and make sure I give that feedback to the people that own Your Money, Your Goals. It's not one of the publications that our Office of Financial Education offers. It is in a different department.
 
>>Attendee:  And then there have just been a lot of comments thanking you for your time, thanking you for sharing the information.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Okay. 
 
>>Attendee:  And that is it.
 
>>Ms. Cruz:  Well, I want to thank everybody for logging on today. We appreciate you guys' support, and continue to share your feedback with us. We always love hearing it, and thank you and have a great day.
 
[End of recorded session.]