CFPB FinEx webinar on disaster recovery and preparedness NWX-CFPB HQ September 28, 2017 1:00pm CT Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. Today’s conference is being recorded. If you any objections, you may disconnect at this time. All participants are in a listen-only mode until the question and answer session at the end of today’s presentation. To ask a question at that time, please press star 1 and clearly record your name for question introduction. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, Irene Skricki. Thank you, Ma’am. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you very much and welcome everybody to our FinEx webinar today on disaster recovery and preparedness. We’re very excited to have all of you here today joining us and we’re also pleased to have some guest speakers today from other federal agencies. We’re joined by Suzanne Isaacs from the HUD Office of Housing Counseling and also Colleen Tressler from the Federal Trade Commission, who both have a lot of expertise with disaster issues. And we’re very glad to be having what is clearly a very topical call -- unfortunate, but it is topical. So thanks everyone for joining us. To start off, as federal employees, we have to give our standard disclaimer, which is that this presentation is being made by CFPB representative on behalf of the Bureau, but it does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice. And any opinions started are those of the presenters and not the Bureau’s. We have to state that every time. I think almost everybody on this call already knows who we are, but so we’ll all on the same page, CFPB is the newest federal agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over the economic lives. And it’s that last part on taking control of their economic lives and helping consumers, that is what FinEx is about and what the call is really focused on today. Again, as background, in the consumer-facing side of the Bureau there are multiple offices. We are Financial Education, which is charged with educating and empowering consumers to make better informed financial decisions generally. We also have special population offices, including Office of Older Americans, who is joining us today to talk about a little bit of their work, and offices that look at military servicemembers, students, economically vulnerable, and others. Don’t gasp, anybody. It’s a very busy slide. But I just wanted to make sure everybody knew what the CFPB Financial Education Exchange is, or FinEx. I put this slide up really to show you there’s lots going on and really, you want to be part of it. So probably most of the people on this call are probably part of FinEx. You probably got a newsletter about this webinar you’re on today. But if you haven’t, we encourage you to sign up by emailing CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov and saying you want to subscribe. You can actually now do that directly on our website as of a couple days ago. And basically, we are a way a vehicle to get our materials out to people who help consumers with financial decisions, to get our tools and resources out to all of you, to hear back from you through surveys, meetings, and other opportunities to hear what you are learning, what’s working for you, and help increase discussion of financial education practitioners generally. So again, anyone who isn’t getting a regular newsletter that’s called CFPB FinEx News and Updates, please do sign up so that you’ll find out about things like this in the future. We have almost 2,700 people who are in that network right now. And I’ll just note we have a resource inventory with all of our materials that you can find online. And this slide has changed for the first time in a long time. We just finished redesigning our web page Financial Education for Adults. It has all of our tools and resources in a much easier-to-navigate way. It only launched a few days ago, so it’s improved much even since last week. I encourage any of you who aren’t familiar with our work and who want to see what we have to go to this page consumerfinance.gov/adult-financial-education. You can also navigate to it directly from the landing page for the Bureau, consumerfinance.gov. We will now turn to our topic of the day, disaster recovery and preparedness. Again, it’s very topical. And what we’re going to do is we have our two guest speakers and then two folks from the CFPB will speak briefly at the end. What we will do is, if you have questions during the presentations, you can send them in through the Q&A function. I will be monitoring that in case there’s any urgent or immediate things that you want answered. And when those presentations are done, we will open for voice questions. At that point, we’ll give you instruction on how to do that and then you can also have your phone line opened up to ask questions directly as well. The last thing I will mention, because this always comes up, is that if you would like a copy of the PowerPoint, we can send it to you. But you’ll need to ask for it via email. Don’t ask for it through the Q&A function because once the webinar ends, that all goes away. I have no way to keep those. But if you email that FinEx inbox, the CFPB_FinEx F-I-N-E-X @CFPB.gov and just say you’d like the PowerPoint, we will send it out to you afterwards. I’ll repeat that again later and you’ll also see the email address later. But just so you know, we are happy to do that. With all that as background, we are ready to get into the conversation here. So I’m delighted to introduce our first speaker, Suzanne Isaacs from the HUD Office of Housing Counseling Disaster Assistance Recovery Team -- obviously very relevant to this discussion. So Suzanne, turning it over to you. Suzanne Isaacs: Thanks, Irene. So I am with the Office of Housing Counseling and I’m the lead for the Disaster Assistance Recovery Team. And we established the team about three years ago at the beginning of some increased disasters across the country. And so recently, we’ve been totally immersed in Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, and now Maria. What we do during a disaster response is we reach out to the agencies that are involved in a particular area, such as the entire state of Texas, the entire state of Florida, Georgia, and now Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands. And our network at the moment does consist of about 1,900 housing counseling agencies. And so while we are responding to emergency, we still are involved with monitoring and compliance of the housing counseling agencies across the country, looking at conflicts of interest, making sure they have quality in their housing counseling. And we just released the exam for housing counselors. And so we now have a new standard that will take place in just under three years that all housing counselors have to become certified by HUD and by the Office of Housing Counseling, very similar to a loan officer taken exam or a realtor. It’s a one-time exam and they have to become certified. If an agency doesn’t have a certified counselor, then they cannot do housing counseling. What I’m going to do today is actually a live webinar. And up on the toolkit right there, you’re going to see two links. And I believe the second link is the most the important link. If you want to bookmark anything, it would be that link. You would cut it and paste it, put it in your browser, take it to your favorites. And I’ll show you why. So Irene’s going to flip up there to my link. Irene Skricki: We’re going to do something very brave here. Suzanne Isaacs: We’re going to be brave. Irene Skricki: And now we’re going to go - this is actually a live demo. And hopefully it will go well. And so okay, now Suzanne’s in charge. Suzanne Isaacs: I’m in the commando chair. And this is that the link that takes you to HUD Exchange, which is we’ve been migrating from HUD.gov to HUD Exchange because on this venue we can do a lot more on the platform. We’re not so limited. We have live links. We can do updates on a daily basis -- which we do during the hurricane response. And we just find it much more friendlier and up to date. What I want to do is take you on a live tour. This is a handy page and you’ll see why as we go through it. First off, if you’re going “Gee, I wonder if they had a declaration on FEMA for this area,” this is the page we constantly are watching. An area first becomes an emergency, it’s a declaration that’s given by the governor of the state. And he raises his hand and say, “We need help, Mr. President or Ms. President.” And then at the point if the president makes the decision whether to declare it a disaster and that’s when FEMA rolls into the site and the funding starts flowing. I check this page every day to see the latest. And of course right now you’re seeing Puerto Rico, all the other Georgia, Alabama, Florida. But what’s interesting about this is that you have to check it and click on something to see the status because it may look like a declaration, but this is just listing disasters. And so as I click on this one, I notice that the Seminole Tribe was involved in the Hurricane but right now public assistance is not approved for that. So it may not go any further than an emergency. And the same thing is happening with the big fires in California. I keep watching that. And it has not even with the loss of 2,000 houses or homes been declared a disaster -- just a national emergency. So this is your FEMA page that you want to constant be watching and looking for if you’re just curious about has a state received the money, since you’re involved in the financial aspect of it. Irene Skricki: Can I ask a question? So a disaster and an emergency are… Suzanne Isaacs: Two different things. Irene Skricki: Okay. Suzanne Isaacs: And handled entirely different. Irene Skricki: Okay. That’s helpful. Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. And then on our - and I didn’t know that at the beginning. And so an emergency is a notice that there may be some extra assistance, that we’re aware of it. There may be something for the states that allows them to call on for troops or something like that. Money may never flow. Irene Skricki: Okay. Only if it reaches the level of a disaster. Suzanne Isaacs: Only if reaches the level of a disaster. Irene Skricki: Thank you. Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. Going down here, you can see the actual disasters that have been declared. And that way, there’s no doubt. You get down here, you see even Ginnie Mae extends their assistance and so forth. Now next I want to show you of the resources for HUD disasters. And I want to take you here to this HUD page. The reason I’m taking you here - please note that now we’re back at the old platform HUD.gov and everything has not migrated over to HUD Exchange. And so you still want to look at this one to get information on your mortgage assistance area because it may not be migrated over to the new exchange. And so it has information on mortgage insurance for disaster victims, the FHA Section 203K rehab, Title One home improvement loans. So all your information around that is available at this particular site. So now I’m back at HUD Exchange. And the next resource I’m going to take you to is the CDBG-DR Toolkit, which is very handy. You want to go to the right-hand side and click on Program Implementation. And right here, you’ll notice on down the page there’s tools. It’s very handy and very clear about once the CDBG-DR money is available. They have a lot of rules and regulations around rehabs, how intakes are to be handled, there’s specific program guidelines, damage assessments are made, and your rehab checklist for your home and the standards. There’s a lot of specifications. And what I’m noticing as we go into these disaster areas that are in the floodplain or the newly noted floodplain, what happens is often home owners don’t realize that at the end of the day they’re going to have to declare bankruptcy. And so that’s disheartening, but they need a lot of guidance around their funding because they’re already got their mortgage. Now they need to get a rehab mortgage that they may or may not be able to afford. And then what FEMA is doing is for these disaster-prone areas as they’re declared a new floodplain or an old one, they’re requiring the homes be raised a foot or two or eight. And for every foot, it’s $20,000 to raise it. That’s on top of all the rehab money that you need to do anyway. So at the end of the day, the husband and wife that are working as teachers making $40,000 a year each in a lot of these areas and then they’re got two or three or four kids, they’re not able to make the numbers come together for themselves. The next toolkit I want to take you to is just be aware that homelessness is a huge issue in recovery. Many of the homeless people have drug, alcohol problems, mental health issues, and when they show up to the shelters there’s big issues. They don’t fit in. And this problem’s so - it’s really a struggle getting them equal access, getting them let’s say health and counseling that they need just like everybody else because they lost their home. It was on the street but now they need housing. So there’s a whole separate guide around homelessness and how to work with them. And normally, it’s recommended wrapping social work around them. VA is often involved and to get them back on their feet even financially. the last toolkit I would like to take you to is the Office of Housing Counseling, which is very thorough. And this is our launching page right here on our Disaster Recovery Toolkit. And so on the left-hand side, note that we have a direct connection on this page as well to CDBG-DR. And then I want to point out our Emergency Preparedness Toolkit because again that’s very different than a disaster toolkit. And so the Emergency Toolkit, we’ve got information here, guidance for housing counseling agencies. And this is a handy one for everybody, Emergency Preparedness and Recovery Resources. That could be for your group, not just housing counseling agencies. And of course, we always have FEMA at the top because they or may not get involved in emergency. But further down the page we’ve got floodsmart.gov, American Red Cross, emergency shelter location -- you click on that, you can find a shelter in your location -- a safe and well website, and all kinds of resources. So you don’t have to reinvent the wheel; we’ve got them all on this one site for you and they’re live, active links. We’ll go back to the main page. And so now on this toolkit, I want to show you the disaster - let’s see. You can back up to the Hurricane Resources for Housing Counselors. And that’s really been what we’ve been doing since I believe the second or third week in August. The advantage of HUD Exchange we literally update this every day. And I’m going to take you on a brief tour for it. This would be a good page to mark as a favorite as well because it gets you right to some information that you might need. Just to take a peek at the Housing Counselor Disaster Recovery Toolkit, that flips you back to this page. And then we have disaster recovery flyers that housing counseling agencies use across the country. And we have them in quite a few languages. Somebody’s been in there today. They’ve already changed it. I want to be able - let me just show you one. Here’s one in Arabic. We have them in full color, black and white, because some agencies -- and two colors -- some agencies want a little color. Some agencies don’t want any color -- just black and white. And so that’s what we listen to them and that’s what we’re doing. But we’re finding that the disasters are all over the country right now with a large population of people speaking different languages, so we’re following the FHEO policy now and translating into 17 different languages. Irene Skricki: So those are fliers that you could print out… Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. Irene Skricki: again, whether you’re a counselor or not. Suzanne Isaacs: Right. Irene Skricki: And hand out to people around… Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. Irene Skricki: I saw some on fraud… Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. Irene Skricki: …and scams and other… Suzanne Isaacs: Right. Irene Skricki: …things related to… Suzanne Isaacs: Exactly. Irene Skricki: Great. Suzanne Isaacs: And that’s why we did it. And we have printed ones as well that we send out to agencies. A perfect example is Puerto Rico and some agencies in Florida still don’t have any internet connection, no electricity. And so we’ll mail them hard copies. And an area like Puerto Rico, they have I believe it’s nine housing counseling agencies. None of them are working at the moment. As well as in Virgin Islands. Let’s see. Also this is a friendly page if you’re ever involved - this is just a good page for yourself. We’ve got disaster.gov located on this page, which is packed full of information of what to do in a disaster. This is where you can apply for financial assistance, getting assistance, check the status of an area. I did that this morning. And it even led me into where I can get shelter. And then again there’s the FEMA resource page on Maria that we were just at. I just want to flip to it to show you as a reminder of the links. And then here’s a Freddie Mac assistance resource page for Maria. We have the Credit Smart information education tools -- this would be handy for you all -- home buying fraud -- which is way up on all respects, financial and otherwise during a recovery. What we’ve done in the Office of Housing Counseling even though this has been Maria because it’s our latest hurricane, we have separate resources for each hurricane because they’re all individual. Then down here are some additional general hurricane resources. There’s an upcoming webinar servicing FHA insured in disaster areas, because that’s a unique situation. Here’s more federal housing assistance finance agency, mortgage relief for homeowners and all the details there. We have even a post-disaster resource page. That gets really tricky after a disaster in these warm areas like Louisiana, Houston. Within a week, I mean or less, really terrible mold moves in. It’s very dangerous. And if the hurricane doesn’t get the house, the mold does. And the problem is if they don’t have flood insurance, the homeowner’s insurance just covers maybe a third of whatever happened to them. And if they’re in a $300,000 house, they’re going to eat the rest. And then they have to get a new loan on top of everything else. It’s really a financial challenge. And again to asbestos, the drinking water is normally polluted, and other indoor and outdoor hazards. And then USDA Rural Development Disaster Assistance has extra funds and monies for the rural areas. Of course, we have the American Red Cross finding shelters, granting immediate foreclosure relief is right here. And apparently, I saw something in the news or one of the HUD.gov things yesterday where they’re getting ready to perhaps extend that because this is becoming dated. You can't get your act together in 90 days forbearance. A lot of these places, they won’t even have electricity in 90 days. So that’s pretty much it for the tour of the website. There’s a lot of information here to digest. And when you’re just bored one day, you can just click your heart out. But if you go to that first page that I gave you and just keep that as your main resource, you can get to everywhere else from there. Irene Skricki: Great. All right. Going to switch seats here. Great. So thank you so much, Suzanne. And what I didn’t see at the beginning is that of course we’ve got - we’re going to talk today both about sort of the broad range of tools and resources in the federal government -- and Suzanne has covered that really well -- and then we’ll also go into some specific ideas for individuals around preparing for disasters as well as recovering from them and managing finances afterward. So this was kind of our maybe not even 30,000 -- maybe 2,000 foot… Suzanne Isaacs: Yes. Irene Skricki: …level. Suzanne Isaacs: Two thousand foot. Irene Skricki: Now we’re going to hone in closer. Let’s see. We’re going to quickly stop sharing the screen and go back into - all right. Great. So we should now be back to the Powerpoint slides. So, thank you very much. And if you have questions for Suzanne, again you can send through the Q&A function or we will have time for discussion at the end for voice questions. With that kind of overview of federal resources, some of the great things HUD has for financial educators, we’ll turn to FTC, Federal Trade Commission. And again, most of you on the phone are probably in a financial education practitioner role. Some of the things you’ll hear in the rest of the presentation may be framed as information for individuals, but this is information you could then share with the people you serve. So obviously you will be thinking about it in the context of a financial educator, that a lot of the things we’ll be talking about would be resources that would be useful to the people you’re working with. So I will turn it over to Colleen. Welcome, Colleen. Colleen Tressler: Great. Thank you so much, Irene and welcome everyone. I want to give a brief overview of what the FTC is doing. We’re working with our regional offices in Dallas, Atlanta, and our New York office actually has jurisdiction over Puerto Rico. So there’s a lot going on in the agency. I want to focus on the consumer education and outreach component today. I want to share first with everyone a screenshot of our dealing with weather emergencies. This is FTC.gov/weatheremergencies. It’s soup to nuts. We have this information in English and Spanish. We’ve been doing this work for quite a while. In fact, this website was originally launched in 2005 in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina. And we focus on all sort of things -- hurricanes, tornados, mudslides, floods, wildfires. You name it, we generally try to get this information out to people as well as media outlets. Taking a look at the page here, you’ll see on the right rail the related items, related blog postings. You see just a couple. Since August 28, we have issued seven blog posts dealing with the various hurricanes and follow up issues like charity scams, how to donate wisely, clean up scams that a lot of residents and businesses are dealing with, and we also issued a blog post in September for National Preparedness Month. Other people are dealing with an emergency right now. Maybe you’re not. But it’s always good to be thinking forward about how to prepare for an event that might affect you and your community. And that takes me into the next of the topics I want to cover today. There are basically three and then there’s some key websites and phone numbers. But I want to talk about preparing for a weather emergency -- not necessarily how to pack up your house, but this is from a financial aspect. And then we’re going to talk about identity theft and then really getting back on your feet financially. So the next slide has some tips on financial readiness in case of emergency. The first thing we want to say -- and don’t wait for an emergency to happen -- is organize your finances. We like to say here at the FTC when it comes to preparing for situations like weather emergencies, financial readiness is as important as a flashlight with fully charged batteries. Having your financial documents up to date, in one place, and portable can make a big difference at a tense time. You want to check your insurance. Find out if any home, health, or any other insurance policy you have will pay for temporary shelter, replacement clothing, furniture, or other items if you’re affected by a hurricane, tornado, or other weather event. You want to conduct a household inventory. Make a list of your possessions and document those with photos or a video. This could help if you’re filing insurance. And we recommend that you keep one copy of your inventory in your home in a lockable, fireproof fire box and keep another in a safe deposit box or another secure location. We also recommend that you buy a lockable, fireproof file box like we said and place important documents in the box. Keep the box in a secure, accessible location on a shelf in your home so you can grab it and go. So whether that’s your entryway closet where you have your coats, hats, scarves, et cetera, or just someplace close to an exit if the need arises. And as you can imagine, some of the contents would be the household inventory, a list of emergency contacts including family members who live outside the affected area, copies of current prescriptions, health insurance cards or information, policy numbers for your insurance -- whether it be auto, flood, renters, homeowners -- and a list of the telephone numbers for those insurance companies. Copies of other important financial and family records or notes about where they are, you know, including things like deeds, titles, wills, birth or marriage certificates, passports, and relevant employee benefit and retirement documents. You want to keep a list always -- regardless of whether or not it’s an emergency or not -- of phone numbers or email addresses for your creditors and financial institutions, landlords and utility companies, a list of bank, loan, credit card, mortgage, lease, debit and ATM, and investment account numbers. We all know you shouldn’t be carrying your social security cards with you. They should be in this box. Backups of financial data you keep on your computer. Keep that in there. And an extra set of keys for your house and car. Of course, the key to your safe deposit box and, you know, maybe even some cash because like what we’re seeing in Puerto Rico, there is no electricity. People are running out of cash. They can’t get cash. So it’s always good to keep that in a secure location. And then the last point here is we say rent a safe deposit box. And of course this is important for storing documents. And some of these documents might include deeds, titles, and other ownership records for your homes, cars, RVs, boats, whatever you own, motorcycles, credit, lease, and other financial and payment agreements. Again, birth certificates, naturalization papers, social security cards, marriage licenses, divorce papers -- anything that has a legal bearing it’s a really good idea to keep copies. Of course, you want to keep appraisals of expensive jewelry or heirlooms, anything of value, certificates for stocks, bonds, other investments, trust agreements, living wills, power of attorney, home improvement records, and a copy of your own will. Going on to the next slide, I want to talk a little bit about identity theft after a weather emergency. You know, as you recover from a weather emergency or your clients do, you’ll need to share personal information to get relief benefits or replacement identification documents from government agencies and organizations. And we urge people to be cautious at this time. It’s a very emotional, stressful period but you do need to use caution. Identity thieves may pose as government officials or representatives for government agencies so it’s our advice to ask for identification and when possible, initiate contact yourself using information posted on official websites or an official information dissemination area. So if somebody says they work for somebody, check it out. You can always ask for a phone number or go to the website. If you find that you inadvertently gave out your personal information to a thief, if your wallet was stolen, or if you’re worried that your information may be accessible to thieves, we really encourage people to take a look at our publication Identify Theft What to Do, What to Know What to Do. It’s only about six pages. It’s really like the USA Today version of what you need to know about identity theft. If you inadvertently gave out your social security number to a thief or know that it was stolen, you may want to place a fraud alert on your credit reports. Fraud alerts, as we know, can help prevent identity thieves from opening new accounts but there’s a caveat with that, that when you place a fraud alert on your credit file, companies take certain steps to verify your identity before they issue you new credit so there may be a delay in getting that credit -- especially if you’ve lost some or all of your identification documents. If you’re concerned that you may be a victim of identity theft, it’s important to check your credit report. If an identity theft thief is opening new credit accounts in your name, these accounts are likely to show on your report. And of course, we all know you can order your report free of charge at annualcreditreport.com or call the toll-free number which is 877-322-8228. And now the FTC has two different websites for identity theft. To learn more about guarding against identity theft, these are our publications, our videos, our audio recordings, you visit FTC.gov/idtheft. Identitytheft.gov is where you report an actual occurrence of identity theft and learn the steps you need to recover from the experience. We have either prefilled forms for you. You can set up and account. You can follow your progress. You can come back to that account and revisit it, add information, delete information -- whatever you need to do. So I think the next thing I want to talk about, the next slide is covering getting back on your feet financially. And of course, everybody wants to do this as soon as possible. People who are involved in these types of weather emergencies and disasters may have to leave their homes without IDs, checks, credit and debit cards, and other documents. They also might be without access to a bank account or paycheck for some time. So if they need to get money, they need to understand their options for paying bills and replacing important documents. And when you go onto FTC.gov/weatheremergencies website, there will be a list of contacts there that may help you gain your financial footing. And I’m going to go through a few of those but I just want you to know that there’s a much longer list on that website. The first thing that we recommend is for people to call their creditors and ask for help. Credit card companies, lenders, financial institutions, landlords, and utilities may offer help to people affected by disasters. And they may be willing to defer your payments or offer extended repayment plans, extend grace periods, waive late fees, raise your credit limit, or refrain from reporting delinquencies to the credit reporting agencies. They most postpone collection, repossessions, and foreclosures. If you’re a homeowner, even if you think your home in uninhabitable, you still have a mortgage. You need to contact your lender to discuss those options. If you think it will take several months before you can make payments, you might want to be in touch with a credit counselor -- just have that support from an objective third party to kind of help you through this process. And the FTC has information about questions to ask when shopping for a credit counselor. If you’ve lost your financial records and need help identifying your creditors, this is again where your credit report comes in handy because it will provide a list of who those creditors are. Going onto the second bullet, we encourage people to report lost or stolen credit, ATM, or debit cards to the issuer as soon as possible. So if you don’t have the phone number, there is the toll-free directory assistance for most companies in the United States. And that’s 1(800) 555-1212. You also want to contact your utility companies and again let them know you’ve lost your belongings in the disaster or ask them to waive late fees and let you defer payments or you even on a different payment schedule. You want to get in contact with your employer as soon as possible and ask how you can continue to get your paycheck and health insurance and how to maintain benefits. On that point, we want to say there are several places you may need to contact. You can contact your retirement company if you’re retired, social service offices, the Social Security Administration, and they have a dedicated web page that is listed on our weather emergencies page and they also have a toll-free number just for this. it’s 1(800)772-1213. The same goes for the VA. They have a dedicated page and their toll-free number is 1(800)827-1000. It’s important to give them your new location, whether it’s temporary or permanent, and ask how you’ll continue to get benefits. It’s important to note that the US Department of Labor works with state and local governments to issue unemployment insurance and other assistance. And that number is 1 (866) 4USADOL. Now, if people hadn’t put together their emergency kit to walk out the door with, they may need to replace vita documents like birth certificates, social security, medical cards, and more. So the USA.gov site has a place where you can get all that information. It’s USA.gov/replace-vital-documents. And their toll-free number is 1(844)-USAGOV1. And some of the documents that need to be replaced if you don’t have them are deeds and recorded real estate documents, mortgage, and other credit issues, leases, insurance policy, wills. And on our website, we actually tell you or tell whoever’s visiting the site what agency or organization they need to visit. So for example, if you need to get your auto title or driver’s license replaced it would be the Secretary of State or the Department of Motor Vehicles. Birth certificates would be Vital Statistics Office from the county where you were born. Of course, social security card is the Social Security Administration. And we have additional information on the website. So I think the last slide I just want to show is a bookmark of these websites and phone numbers that I think the people you serve may be interested in. Again, all of this information is on FTC.gov/weatheremergencies, English and in Spanish. And if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them through the site there that we’re using today for the webinar. So that wraps up my presentation. Irene Skricki: Thank you Colleen so much. We actually got one question while you were talking, although I think you just answered it, which is, is the FTC Weather Emergencies site and resources I presume going to be available in other languages -- specifically besides English and Spanish? Or is it just those two at this point? Colleen Tressler: You know, everything that we do in English we do in Spanish. And then on as need basis, we do other languages as well. I don’t know what the conversations are within the agency right now about adding additional languages for the weather emergencies but it’s certainly something to consider, especially after hearing Suzanne talk about the number I think it’s 17 she said different languages they have their materials available in. Irene Skricki: You’ve got to keep up with HUD here. Colleen Tressler: And Suzanne I want you to know we link to HUD on our weather emergency site. Suzanne Isaacs: Great. Irene Skricki: Great. And by the way safety, the slide that we just put up which has all the websites and phone numbers, is very helpful. And again for those who want it sent to them afterwards, email the FinEx inbox CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. Actually one question -- what was the (800) 555-1212 for? That was national directory assistance, right? Colleen Tressler: Yes. That’s just national directory assistance. So whether you want to find out the number for, you know, a rental car company, a financial institution, a credit card company, you just call them and tell them the name of the company and they’ll look it up for you. Irene Skricki: Okay, great. Thank you so much, Colleen. Colleen Tressler: Sure. Irene Skricki: We’re going to just quickly move through a couple of things from the CFPB and then we’ll be open for other questions. But this is all very useful and I have an urge to go home and start collecting my documents right now, actually. So, terrific. I’m now going to turn it over to Dubis Correal, my college here in the Office of Financial Education, to share a few times. And some of this information is similar to what you’ve heard, so we’ll jump over things that are similar to what others have said. But some ideas from the CFPB about financial recovery as well as preparedness. So for even those of you who are not currently in a disaster area -- which is great, we wish we were all in that position -- it still makes sense to prepare because you never know when something can happen. So Dubis, I’ll turn it over to you. Dubis Correal: Thank you Irene and thank you Suzanne and Colleen for that great information. As Irene said, I’m going to go quickly through my slides because a lot of this has already been said. And just to say that our hearts are with all those people who have been affected and are trying to get back to normal. We understand that it takes time. So hopefully what we’re going to provide helps in terms of getting back to normal. So some general tips -- given that many people are experiencing distress, it might be difficult to contact your creditors. So we’re asking you to be patient. Don’t give up. And after you take care of the most urgent issues, start thinking about your financial obligations. As Colleen mentioned if you have a mortgage, you sort of have the compromise of continue with your payments. In terms of insurance, Colleen also mentioned this -- you have to contact your insurance company. If the storm damages your home, car, or property and you have insurance, you can start the claims process by calling your insurance company. You should verify that you have the right kind of coverage. If you cannot locate your policy, you have to request an electronic one because it might be very hard to get one by mail. Also, document the damage by taking pictures so that it will help with your claim. FEMA, the information I think was provided by Suzanne. But it is going to be very helpful to have that information. In terms of your mortgage, talk to your mortgage lender right away and tell them about your situation. If you don’t have their contact information, consider using the mortgage electronic registration system. And you’ll see the number on the screen (888) 679-6377. Independent of the type of loan you have, your lender might be willing to temporarily reduce or suspend your payments. Irene Skricki: And the mortgage electronic registration system will you identify who your servicer is, is that correct? Dubis Correal: Yes. Irene Skricki: Okay. Dubis Correal: That is correct. With respect to other loans like student loans or credit cards, be sure to contact your lender as well as soon as possible and explain your situation. Usually the lenders are willing to work with you, especially under these circumstances. So it is important that you make those calls before your next payment is due. Utilities -- as Colleen mentioned, contact your utility companies if your home is damaged to the point that you cannot live in it. Ask the utility company to suspend your service. This can help with your budgeting needs. Now we’ll talk about other possible problems like scam or fraud, which Colleen alluded to as well. Unfortunately during these difficult times, there is an increased risk for scams and fraud. To avoid scams, you need to ask questions. Questions can help you determine if something is too good to be true. Look for red flags always and you see a couple of tips on this slide. Sort of be aware of people who want you to pay at-front fees, contractors selling repairs door-to-door, fake charities, limited offers -- especially where they put a lot of pressure on you to make decisions in a short period of time. In terms of disaster preparedness, these recent disasters sort of make you think that that can happen to anyone. And we were just discussing that among ourselves, that when you see that you think about that you have to do it as well because when that happens, you don’t have time to react. So it is very important that you plan in advance. So here at the Bureau we have a tool that can help you keep track of the information. And Colleen was giving some tips about, you know, having the box in an accessible place and also something that is very secure. So this checklist that you see on the screen can help us gather the financial information needed after an emergency. It has spaces for account information and customer service numbers as well as checklists of other important documents we should have in case of an emergency. This is for a lot of us who luckily are okay --but to see these things happening around the country and even in other countries makes us think about how we can plan in advance. So as I said, I was summarizing this very quickly. I would like now to turn it to our colleague (Jennifer) from the Office of Older Americans. Irene Skricki: Sure. I just want to say one thing first, which is that the screenshot that’s still up there, the Disaster Checklist, it’s a two-page folding thing with four pages. It’s a really nice resource. And as all of you are financial educators, I know that disaster preparedness, if you’re not in the disaster area, is probably not the first priority for people coming in the door. They’re coming in with financial issues and crises and struggles. But I do think that if you can get people to focus on filling out this checklist, it actually helps organize your financial information -- which you need to do anyways if you’re going to be undergoing housing counseling, credit counseling. And so it’s a nice piece. It’s simple. It’s free. You can download it, order it on our website. And so I just want to make a plug for it because it’s pretty nice. You can get everything in one place. And I see that we have a couple questions related to this right here. What’s the link to the document? The fastest way to get to it would be to go to the Adult Fin Ed page, so Consumerfinance.gov/adult-financial-education or if you go to the main navigation bar at the top of consumerfinance.gov there’s practitioner resources in the Adult Fin Ed pages there. And there it’s organized by topic, so it’s somewhere I think under money management you’ll see it. I think we can order this one, right for free? Dubis Correal: Yes or you can simply Google CFPB Disaster Checklist and it will take you… Irene Skricki: Yes, Google might get you there faster. And then somebody asked a very good question, which is are consumers able to complete the disaster checklist online and print it out, or is it only available in print? It is only available in print. Many of our tools are not yet - some of them are, but not this one. So you will need to print it out and use it. But you can order it for free and in bulk, so that may be something again for those of you with clients, people you serve, you may want to encourage them to use this tool for preparedness but also I think for general financial organization. All right, so we have left our colleague (Jennifer) with not a lot of time. My apologies there. But we’re very happy to have her here. The Office for Older Americans has done a lot - look, if anybody’s looking in the Q&A, a very helpful person actually put up the direct link to the disaster checklist -- which I won’t read because it’s very long. But if any of you are on WebEx, look in the Q&A and you’ll see that. Thank you very much. So I’m happy to have (Jennifer) here. The Office for Older Americans has done a lot on preventing fraud and exploitation of older Americans in general. And as I know (Jennifer) is going to say, that’s a particularly vulnerable population in case of disaster and emergency. So she’s going to run through a few slides on that. Again, sorry we’ve left you limited time (Jennifer). But I will turn it over to you. (Jennifer): Hi. Thank you so much. I hope you can all hear me well. So I will go through this super quickly. But I think given the short amount of time, I will just give you all just a brief heads up that we have this tool available. It truly is geared towards older adults but is also very helpful for folks that we call family caregivers or financial caregivers -- that’s persons generally over the age of 50 who have an older adult in their family that they’re looking out for. Thank you. So, Money Smart for Older Adults is a comprehensive program with 300 minutes’ worth of training curriculum geared towards older people and their family members and others. It covers a lot about frauds and scams and a lot of different topics. But one of the segments -- which is why we wanted to be here today -- is on preparing financially for disasters. We keep it simple because we are gearing this towards older folks and there’s so many other resources out there that I now realize we need to link to a couple that we haven’t already linked to. So, thank you to the other speakers. But, I’m not going to repeat any of that. So the program comes with an instructor guide for those that want to train older adults or use the curriculum out in the field to help older people think about and prepare for disasters. It comes with a resource guide, which is a handout. It stands alone; you don’t need to take the course to benefit from the resource guide. And it comes with a PowerPoint, which I’ll show you a few slides here today. I will mention that the resource guide and the instructor guide but primarily the resource guide, most importantly is in 14-point font, which is extremely important for older people. This was produced between us and the FDIC. It’s the 12th in the family of Money Smart products. It is the one that is geared towards older people. And the whole curriculum is available for download at FDIC.gov/moneysmart. And you can just go to their search tool and pull it up. Just search Money Smart and it will come up under Money Smart for Older Adults. Also, the resource guides are available in bulk. You can order them from us free of charge up to however many you need wherever you are, whether you’re conducting a course or whether you want to share them with other presentations that you’re doing or at senior fairs or the like. Okay. What we focus on as I said is elder financial exploitation, which basically is theft. And that is really the theme of the entire Money Smart for Adults Program. And in the context of what we’re talking about here today, when contractors and others take advantage of older people in disasters, that is also a form of elder financial exploitation. And in some states, there are enhanced penalties and enhanced charges that can be brought against a contractor or another person who exploits an older adult. Next slide, please. So why are older adults at risk? In addition to this list, they may have a cognitive impairment or have early mild cognitive impairments that makes it very difficult for them in terms of decision making or in terms of discerning a fraud or makes them more vulnerable to persuasion. They are often the direct targets of scammers, including the fraudulent contractors and others after a disaster. They generally don’t plan ahead, and I use the term “they” sort of loosely because neither do we. We’re not all very good at planning ahead. But older people generally don’t plan ahead for cognitive impairment and they often don’t plan ahead for disasters like the rest of us. They also live in disaster zones, and especially in some of the disaster zones that are being very hard hit recently. For example, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Gulf Coast states and in the tornado alleys -- in fact, older people are everywhere but there are large concentrations of older people in Florida and along the coastlines so they’re particularly vulnerable in the event of a disaster. And in the event of a disaster because of all the things I mentioned before and mobility issues, health problems and others, hearing problems, difficulty navigating communication systems, they may well struggle and many of them be ill equipped to navigate in the recovery process. We generally in terms of elder abuse or elder financial exploitation in general, adult protective services and the local police are where you go to report such a thing -- whether you know it’s happened or not, suspected elder financial exploitation or any kind of elder abuse. But in the case of a disaster, to put it into context, adult protective services may be able to intervene in the event of a contractor fraud or other issue. They may be able to find resources for older people in terms of helping them get to shelters and they definitely are very well attuned to dealing with incapacitated elders -- those who have a mental or a physical incapacity or lack of capacity -- to be able to handle their affairs or to get to where they need to be. Of course, all services are compromised in a disaster when it’s happening, but just so you know they’re there in case you’re not already aware. In terms of disasters, I know that attorneys general often make take special measures to focus on frauds by contractors and the sort of traveler rings that will move into disaster areas targeting anyone and everyone for sure, looking to find a senior who is more vulnerable and an easier mark for their scams. Better Business Bureaus in some states are tremendously active around disasters. Louisiana is a pretty good example of that. There’s four BBBs there that coordinate with each other and are very sensitive to the issues of older people. And I don’t know about other places, but I’m assuming BBBs are very aware of the issue. So they’re another potential resource. This is just a quick look at the slides. I see we’re at 3:03. Just what to keep, where to keep it. It’s all of the above here plus this keep it simple. I just want to mention that it is difficult for older people due to their mobility issues. They often don’t pack their medications. They lose their medications and oftentimes there’s no pharmacies open. So this is all the more reason that they need to be thinking about this in advance. And of course by teaching one senior, they may talk about it with others in their community. So we hope that that is one of our goals with the Money Smart for Older Adults Program is to sort of mobilize seniors on the ground who can talk to each other. What else to consider? One thing I notice that we don’t have on the list that we need to add is the keeping emergency cash in a secure location. Many older people are very low income and may not be able to do that, but I appreciated hearing that reminder. It’s sort of a myth that older people are not on the internet. Certainly the old old as we call them -- the over 75 group -- the numbers plunge dramatically. But the 60 to 70 year olds are more internet savvy than many of us give them credit for. And this is also of course a message for the financial caregivers of adult children 50 plus to be thinking about these things for their own family members. Just about done. There are many resources on disaster revoery those you’ve heard today from our colleagues on the line, our other speakers. Also the FDIC’s website has some great resources. I just wanted to mshow you the contractor home improvement fraud slides. This is something we see a lot after disasters is sort of the vultures that circle around and are talking fast at an older adult, saying they’ll give them the best discount and try to get them to agree right then and there and to pay cash up front and then they disappear. Two more ideas here on down at the bottom you see never pay in advance. Never pay cash. Just some good sense tips on avoiding contractor fraud. And last but not least, a few more. See we have consumer FTC there. You guys have great materials. We refer to you a lot throughout Money Smart. And I believe is that the last slide there? Yes, that’s it. Thank you for the time. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you so much, (Jennifer). I know we’re over. I’m going to see if there - I think we’ll actually - I think we’re going to have to skip the voice questions. We had so much stuff to talk about today. Are there any final questions want to pop them quickly into the Q&A box? But I want to be respectful of people’s time. This is all really useful. Let’s open the screen. Right now is just a link to our web page, the Adult Financial Education page, where you can find for example the checklist and other resources. That was again just relaunched earlier this week. To sign up for FinEx or if you have any questions or if you want this PowerPoint because all of those cool phone numbers you saw that I’m sure nobody was able to write down because there were a lot of them, the email address is now up on the screen. But it is CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. Again, it’s CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. If you want the PowerPoint, email that address and just say you want it and I will send it to you tomorrow morning. So let’s see. And I can see where people are dropping off now because we’re seven minutes over. So this was great. I’m sorry we had so much content today that somehow, we ran out of time for questions. But I want to say thank you Colleen, Dubis, and (Jennifer) for a great presentation. Again, this was also recorded. It will take a couple weeks before it goes up, but it will eventually be up on our web page and you can watch it again if you wish or share it with others. And I think we’re going to have to stop here. I hope we're all inspired to go home, work with our people we serve, and prepare your own documents for any issues that may happen to any of us. So again, I’ll repeat what Dubis said -- our hearts go out to everyone who’s actually dealing with a disaster. So thank you very much. We appreciate everyone being on the webinar today. And also feel free to send any questions to CFPB_FinEx@cfpb.gov and I'll forward it on to our speakers if you have additional questions that we obviously didn’t have time for today. So thank you very much and we will end the webinar now. Coordinator: All participants, this concludes today’s conference and you may disconnect at this time. Thank you for your participation. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Sharon Mobley 09-28-17/1:00pm CT Confirmation # 5550531 Page 1