Focus groups and/or interviews

This report was prepared to provide background on the “Bank On” model, a new approach for expanding access to safe, affordable financial services for unbanked households. The purpose of this report is to describe the landscape of Bank On programs, their origins, and their context within a broader financial access field. The report provides basic information about Bank On programs that currently exist, including information about program structure, partnerships, and funding as well as an assessment of successes, challenges, special considerations and gaps in the field.

The case is often made that financial education leads to improved financial decisions. In this paper, we begin by assessing the need for financial education by reviewing national trends in savings, debt, and retirement funding as well as by reviewing the literature linking personal financial behavior and participation in financial education programs. We then describe the conceptual underpinnings of a link between improved personal financial behavior and work outcomes.

To foster greater participation among workers who have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, Congress included provisions that facilitate plan sponsors’ adoption of automatic enrollment policies in the Pension Protection Act of 2006. To foster greater retirement savings among workers who do not have access to an employer-sponsored plan, proposals have been made at the federal level for an “automatic IRA” and at the state level for state-based programs.

American workers increasingly rely on defined contribution (DC) plans like 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRA) for retirement income. In this report, GAO examined: (1) the types of fees charged to participants and investments of various DC plans; (2) how DC plan sponsor actions affect participant fees; (3) how fee disclosure requirements vary; and (4) the effectiveness of DC plan oversight. GAO reviewed laws and regulations and consulted with experts, federal officials, service providers, and six plan sponsors.

Under federal regulations, 401(k) participants may tap into their accrued retirement savings before retirement under certain circumstances, including hardship. This "leakage" from 401(k) accounts can result in a permanent loss of retirement savings.

In 2003, the Financial Literacy and Education Improvement Act created the Financial Literacy and Education Commission, which comprises 20 federal agencies and which the Department of the Treasury’s (Treasury) Office of Financial Education coordinates.

Despite the growing importance of housing counseling, there is little systematic information about the industry. The industry is known to be marked by significant diversity in a number of dimensions, including the types of organizations involved, their organizational capacity, the types of clients served, the types of services delivered, and the funding sources used. The primary goal of this study is to provide a systematic overview of the housing counseling industry as of 2007.

From 2002–2007, Kleimann Communication Group, Inc. (KCG) conducted six rounds of qualitative testing on various consumer mortgage forms for the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development. This report summarizes each round of testing. Mortgage disclosure forms included in the testing were the Good Faith Estimate (GFE) form, the Guaranteed Mortgage Package Agreement (GMPA), the Mortgage Package Offer form (MPO). Testing was conducted in several U.S. cities using several hundred demographically diverse consumers.