CFPB FinEx webinar on financial education resources for servicemembers and veterans Moderator: Sharon Mobley May 25, 2017 1:00 pm CT Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. After today’s presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask questions. And you may do so over the phone by pressing Star then 1 at that time. Today’s conference call is being recorded. If you objections to this, please disconnect now. I would like to introduce your host for today, Ms. Irene Skricki. Ms. Skricki, you may begin. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you very much. And thank you everyone for joining the webinar today. I know it’s right before a long weekend so we very much appreciate everyone taking the time to be part of this. This is a special edition of the FinEx webinar that we’ve done in partnership with our Office of Servicemember Affairs. So, we’re very excited to be hearing from them today. The first thing we always have to start with as government employees is the disclaimer that this presentation is being made by CFPB representative. But it does not constitute a legal interpretation, guidance, or advice. And any opinions or views stated by the presenters are the presenters’ own and may not represent the Bureau’s views. Probably almost everyone on this call knows what the CFPB is, but we’ll just start off with a quick level setter here, which is that we’re an agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective, consistently and fairly enforcing those rules, and empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. And it’s really that last piece that we’ll be focusing on today, helping consumers. We do that both through through empowering consumers, as we’re going to talk about today, but also through enforcing laws and practices that violate the law. And we also educate consumers but also do research and other things to educate financial companies about their responsibilities as well. To situate you to who we are on the phone today, within the consumer-facing side of the Bureau, we have several offices. Some are special population offices, including financial empowerment, older Americans, students, and our special guest today, the Office of Servicemember Affairs. They will introduce themselves when we get to their section. And then FinEx fits within the financial education office of the Bureau. A quick word about the Financial Education Exchange -- typically most of the people on these monthly webinars are already part of FinEx. That’s how they found out about the call. But I know we have a lot of servicemember-serving organizations who have joined us today. And we’re very excited to have you. If you are not yet in FinEx, we encourage you to sign up. FinEx is a way for the Bureau to share its tools and resources around financial education with practitioners in the field and learn back through occasional surveys and other methods, in-person meetings, what all of you are learning in your work. People can sign up through sending an email to the address you see on your screen, which is CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov or if any of you have a relationship with Servicemember staff, they can also forward a request to join onto us. And after that, you get a monthly newsletter that has this sort of information. This slide shows you what we do. We have over 2,400 people who are part of FinEx now -- quite a few of them in fact are folks working with service members. We are very excited to have all of those folks and again encourage any of you to join who are not part of it. We have regional convenings. We have monthly webinars. You can see a list there of many of the topics that we’ve covered, such as the one we’re doing today. These are recorded and can be listened to at a later time. On the next slide, one of the things that FinEx offers is a resource inventory of all the different tools and resources that the Bureau has for financial educators of all types. We’re actually in the process of redesigning it. It’s going to look much prettier in a couple months. But you can see a screenshot there. It has different sections where you can look up all of our different tools. And again, we’ll have a new and improved version coming out soon, which we will happily share with everybody. Parallel to that, on the next slide, we also have a resources for financial educators’ web page where you can again find all that information. That is also being redone, so that also will be new, improved, and better looking very soon. We’ll let everybody know when those things happen. Those are ways where you can find all of the different things that we have in a fairly quick and easy way. And Servicemembers also has a website -- I think we’ll probably mention that later -- where you can see some of their tools specific to their population. Our last slide is our LinkedIn site. We do have a discussion group on LinkedIn where we post our materials but others can post as well. So, if you have a great tool that you use or question you want to pose, you can join this group and participate in that way. We encourage folks to join that as well. So again, I’ll just note if you want to join FinEx, email CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov and we’ll add you to that list. That’s our standard overview just so everybody knows who we are and what we do. As I mentioned, we have I consider a very exciting topic today, which is some of the tools and resources that the Bureau has for servicemembers. I will turn this over to the Servicmembers Office. I’ll just say one other thing. As we always do on these webinars, you can ask questions during the presentation. You can ask questions through the Q&A function. If you’re in the WebEx, there’s a little Q&A thing. And we will be monitoring that if there’s anything urgent or clarifying. We’ll try to keep an eye on that. And then once we finish with the presentations, we will open for voice questions. The Operator will tell you how to do that. And we’ll continue to monitor the Q&A WebEx questions as well. So, you have two ways to reach us. I’ll also say this upfront because this always comes up -- if you are interested in a copy of the PowerPoint, if you email that same FinEx inbox -- CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov -- I monitor that box. If you just say I want a copy of the PowerPoint, we will send you a PDF of it after the call. So, we are happy to share that once we’re done. With that, I am very delighted to turn it over to our Office of Servicemember Affairs. There will be several folks from that office speaking. I think Dave Dubois, who is the Deputy Assistant Director. will start. Is that right? Dave, you’re on. Dave Dubois: Great. Thanks, Irene. Appreciate you turning it over. Good afternoon everyone. Greetings to all for joining us here for this conversation. As Irene said, I’m Dave Dubois. I am privileged to co-lead the Military team here at the CFPB. We travel to more than 148 military units across the country and around the globe. I always enjoy the opportunity to get out of Washington and back into the ranks with our troops. Meeting with them and their family members where they work and live keeps our efforts focused on the financial challenges that they face. We meet many folks as we travel, just like you that tells us that they are serving the military community and veterans. And to you, we extend our thanks for all of your efforts. We want to take some time today to let you know about our efforts, resources, and tools that you may find helpful in your practice. We’ll share some of the strategies that we’re taking to organize the tools and resources they we have available and highlight some of them for you today. The Office of Service member Affairs is staffed by 11 highly skilled professionals, each having a unique talent in contributing to our collective experience in the military community totaling more than 200 years. We’re a joint team. We’re comprised of military veterans representing the Army, the Navy, Air Force, and the Marine Corps -- some of who will be joining us this afternoon on this discussion. So, I’m going to forgo their individual introductions and I’ll ask them to introduce themselves as they join the conversation. Under the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, our Office was given a statutory mandate. We align our work with these mandates to serve the more than 22 million military community constituents that we represent. Last week, we released a report highlighting the financial hurdles that servicemembers face throughout their military career. This report introduced our new focus -- chartering or charting the financial issues that a services member faces throughout his or her military career. The Bureau has received over 74,000 complaints from the military community so far. And this report concentrates on some of the most prominent financial struggles that they’ve described to us. From enforcement actions resulting in more than $130 million in relief to a comprehensive list of educational tools and resources created to help military consumers through their career lifecycle, this report offers a holistic view of the work that we do to assist servicemembers and their families along their financial journey. Our outreach efforts -- such as conducting town hall discussions with the troops or participating in round table discussions with key leaders helps us inform - keeps us informed and forms the foundation for our future work. We routinely receive invitations to complement training classes for professionals and to facilitate discussions with senior military leaders and veteran service organizations about the issues impacting the financial well-being of the military community. Our work also supports the financial education mandate that the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act imposed on the Department of Defense. Next slide, please. So, I’d like to introduce to you and have you meet Christina Smith who is the primary author of our new report. She will serve as your guide along the journey of the military lifecycle and introduce you to more of the members of our team. So over to you, Christina. Christina Smith: Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon everyone. As Dave mentioned, my name is Christina Smith. And my main responsibility for the Office of Servicemember Affairs is to monitor the complaints submitted by the military community. This helps us identify trends and issues to help shape our policy work. As a bit of background for me, throughout law school I worked at a local legal aid office in Tucson, Arizona. I spent two years helping struggling home buys find relief through mortgage modifications, bankruptcies, and frankly anything that would help these families avoid foreclosure after the housing bubble burst. I came to the Bureau to help struggling families on a larger scale. And after a year of reviewing mortgage complaints for the general population, I moved over to OSA to specialize in military complaints. I must note -- I am one of the only non-veterans on my team, which is why I want to highlight the approach we took for this report. Our approach to Focus on the Military Lifecycle works not only for the military community, but also for civilians helping the military community. For civilians providing service to our clients, the graphic on the screen helps shine a light on the unique moments service members and their families face throughout their careers. These are moments I didn’t understand when I first came to the Office of Servicemember Affairs. These unique stages not only bring about unanticipated financial issues, but the basic issues that I face, my mom faces, and my civilian faces can also be exacerbated due to things like deployments and frequent moves. For the military community, our focus on highlighting various stages in our lifecycle will help direct a servicemember’s focus to products and tools that will help them at the right place and the right time in their life. I’m probably preaching to the choir on that one. As educators, I’m sure you are all aware of how important timing is in providing clients with the tools and recourses they need. Soon, you’ll hear from the rest of my colleagues who will highlight some of the unique financial hurdles servicemembers face throughout all of these stages from basic training through veteran status and even some to retirement. OSA and the CFPB as a whole offer many tools and resources to help educate and protect our military community. In addition to the FinEx inventory you heard about earlier, accumulative appendix of all of these specific resources can be found at the end of our report we just created. Our goal with this appendix is not only to assist financial educators and service providers like yourself, but to help assist, as Dave mentioned, the Department of Defense and their Congressional requirement to provide financial education at critical points throughout a servicemember’s career. I’m now going to pass the mike over to Mechel Glass who will review some of the early stages of this lifecycle. Thank you. Mechel Glass: Thank you, Christina. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Mechel Glass and I’m a Financial Education Program Analyst. A little bit about myself -- I received my Master’s from Oklahoma University and prior to joining the CFPB, I was Vice President of Education and Community Outreach for one of the top three nonprofit credit counseling service organizations in the United States. I am an Army veteran. And I would like to go into more detail about the first few stages of the military lifecycle and talk about some of the resources that we’ve made available to those within those stages. The first stage is the delayed entry period, as you can see on this screen. This period starts when a prospective service member signs a military enlistment agreement and during this period they’re in a holding pattern until a slot opens up for them so that they can enter into basic training. Now, this time period can range from a few weeks to over a year. We believe this is the perfect time for them to get some just-enough just-in-time education on smart consumer decision-making around topics like credit, debt management, understanding sales tactics, avoiding impulse purchases, and how their credit will impact their military career. And of course, understanding features of the SCRA, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Now, while the services do provide financial during basic training, sometimes the information doesn’t get well absorbed. I remember when I was in basic training and I was a young recruit and I would get up at 4:30 in the morning, 5:00 we would have physical training or we call it PT. After that, they’d say it the showers, get dressed, get your duffel bag. We’re going to go on a ten-mile walk on the range to practice shooting. And after that, we’d come back and the drill sergeant says okay, time for a financial literacy class. Well, you know, at that time, you know, I was physically exhausted, emotionally distraught, and it’s not really a good time to absorb that information. But that’s why the Bureau created a program called Misadventures in Money Management. And we’ve made this program available to those in the delayed entry program. We provide the recruiters with a service-specific website that they can pass along to future servicemembers. Now, you won’t see Misadventures on this slide because for that particular program, it’s only in use for those who are in the delayed entry program. But Misadventures is basically an online graphic novel experience that incorporates character videos in a scenario-based learning where the participant actually makes choices in how the story is directed. The program can be completed in less than an hour and it can be taken on a computer or a mobile device. The program is currently in use by all the services, including the Coast Guard and the National Guard. And we’ve made it available to all of them through their recruiters. The program is also part of the Air Force and the Marines military lifecycle. We’ve got 12,000 delayed entry personnel who have utilized the program and we’ve got an overall completion rate of 64% which is incredible. Let’s go to the next slide so I can talk about some additional resources under recruit basic training. This is the next stage in the military lifecycle after delayed entry. And we also have resources available under this stage as you can see on the screen. But before we get there, but before the recruits actually get into recruit basic training, they should have already selected an account from a bank or a credit union to start getting their direct deposit. I remember in m day before the prevalence of online banking, many servicemembers would open up a bank account where they lived to deposit their checks and then once you move to a new location, you’d choose a new bank and open up an account there. And then you go through this process of opening a bank account and closing it and that can cause problems and it makes it really difficult. And some servicemembers will want to do consistent banking, which is one financial institution long term. And what we’ve done is we provided tips and resources so that they can do just that. As you can see, choosing a bank account. Now for new service members with existing loans, once on active duty they may qualify for SCRA -- again, that’s Servicemember Civil Relief Act -- protections. And that basically caps the interest rate at an annual rate of 6% for eligible preservice financial obligations upon entering intro active duty service. If you look under the second resource there, under tackling student loan debt, we talk about that. For many young enlistees -- and I know many of you already know this -- this is sometimes the first time they’ve got a steady stream of income. And for many of them, the first thing they want to do is guess what? Buy a car. And this desire is no secret from others where many of you have seen a lot of car dealership advertisements outside of the military bases that are talking about coming here to investigate and buy a car loan. So, we basically created a tool called Getting an Auto Loan, which goes through and provides tips and worksheets and timely information on making the best decision if that’s something a servicemember wants to do. Now, the next set of resources that we have address those service members who get to their first duty station. This is a place where you want to set up some type of permanency because also the servicemembers may want to start thinking about buying a home -- especially if they’re bringing their family along to a first duty station. And we’ve got an excellent tool called Owning a Home. It’s a fantastic resource for answering questions about credit, loan options, loan origination, and especially when you get that huge stack of paperwork at the closing and you’re asked to sign all of this, if you need to understand what all that means, you should go to the Owning a Home tool. In addition to those resources, we also have other things such as our blogs that we send out on a regular basis just to our distribution list and on our social media sites. And those blogs provide updates on enforcement actions that impact service members. And an example of that is where we heard feedback from servicemembers about advertisements that they were receiving and this blog lets service members know that the VA doesn’t send out direct solicitations for mortgage products and they don’t endorse specific mortgage products. So that’s a few of those resources under First Permanent Duty Station. And at this time, I’d like to turn it over to Nelson Akeredolu who will discuss the next stages in the military lifecycle. Nelson Akeredolu: Thank you, Mechel. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Nelson Akeredolu. I handle direct to service member outreach and digital media for the Office. A little bit about my background -- I’m a Marine veteran -- oorah. I spent about ten years in the Marine Corps and afterwards I worked both in the marketing field and financial services field as well. I’ve been a marketing manager, a communications strategist, and a broker for a financial services firm. So, I have a firm understanding of the military side and the financial side and how to communicate both to service members. Now, as some of you may have guessed by now, the military lifecycle is much more than just a fixed destination like basic training in a military career. It’s the things that can happen along the way. Now, these are significant life events like marriage or childbirth. So far, we’ve given you a pretty concise overview of our mission and you’ve heard a lot of numbers. So, I just wanted to step back and take a minute to give you some visual context to our mission. I’d like you to think about the largest event you’ve ever been to in the largest venue. Maybe it was a game for your favorite sports team like the Yankees or the Lakers. Go Yankees. Or maybe it was a concert like the Rolling Stones or your favorite band. Now, try to guess how many people were around you in the concert hall or stadium and then double that number. What number are you thinking -- 10,000? 50,000? 200,000? Now, imagine all of those people suddenly had a baby and you suddenly had to figure out a way to give them financial information before they left the stadium. That’s kind of the challenge that we have here. So, to do this, we’ve created a number of tools and information resources that can be helpful to service members and their family members throughout their careers and sometimes even beyond. You can see some of those resources listed on your screen right now. For example, we have a resource called Managing Someone Else’s Money which is a tool servicemembers can use to learn how to manage finances for a dependent or more immediately a spouse can use to manage finances of their deployed spouse. We also have information on the Military Lending Act, which is important for service members because it focuses a lot on things like payday lending, loans, rates, which for a lot of young service members is completely Greek. Now uniquely, the Military Lending Act also covers and dependent children. So when a service member gets married, it’s a regulatory protection that they could know about right away. Then we come to promotions and reenlistment. Now promotions and reenlistment, they’re also significant life events for service members. But these ones fall in their own special category since they have more of an immediate impact on the financial resources a service member has to work with as they move forward through their career and even afterwards. Like other significant life events, we have information such as a very good blog on how unpaid debts can affect the military career and a primer of knowing your rights when a debt collector calls. We get more complaints from service members on debt collection than any other category. So that kind of information can be very useful to your clients. As a former Marine service member myself, I can tell you that significant life events come fast and are immediately impactful. I’ve known Marines who have experienced life events that range from the impressive -- like being meritoriously promoted twice within six months -- to the tragic -- like being severely injured in Afghanistan. Those events and the actions service members take have that immediate impact. When I was a 19-year old Marine stationed in California, I got promoted and I went out and bought my first car at an interest rate of 21% -- not because I was dumb, not because I had bad credit, but because I didn’t know any better and there weren’t any resources to teach me. We don’t want that to happen to other service members. So, if you take a few minutes to just visit our website Consumerfinance.gov look at our Service member Page and explore some of the other tools and resources on the various other pages, you will see the resources that are available to help service members and why they’re important and can be useful to servicemembers throughout their military career. We ask that you think about some of these life events for service members. We invite you to learn more about our resources. And most of all, we ask that you help spread the word. Now I’ll pass things off to my colleague Tony Camilli. Tony? Tony Camilli: Thank you, Nelson. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Tony Camilli and I serve as an Outreach Coordinator here, at the Bureau for the Office of Service member Affairs more specifically. And we’re going to march down that lifecycle here. We’re going to talk about some other significant events that typically happen to service members some of the tools that we have to dovetail with that. Before I do that, a little background about me -- I’m an Air Force veteran. I served in active duty for about seven years. During that time, I was a military attorney. And so, I got to see firsthand from meeting with a lot of young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines the financial challenges they happened to be confronting on a regular basis when I was a legal assistance attorney. And, the folks who are going to a deployment in their lives -- myself included -- will tell you that it’s one of the most challenging times of their lives. When are you are going on a deployment -- and I’ll speak from my own personal experience -- you’re going into a far-off place where you’re unlikely to have any digital connectivity or any ability to speak with anybody except for people that are ten feet in front of you. And you’re going to work long days and there are no days off typically in a deployment. I can recall working 12-hour days for six months straight when I was in deployment. And so, having to answer and deal with financial issues while you’re deployed is challenging to say the least. Imagine if you are out there as a service member and you’re deployed and you get sent some type of email that you finally get to figure out or you get notice from a family member who’s monitoring you mail that you’ve got a financial issue to deal with. That is challenging prospect for our service members. And it doesn’t matter whether the service member has family back at home to help them with that or if they’re single. It’s going to be challenging for them to handle it in any case. What I’m going to highlight here on this slide under our deployment subheading are a couple of things that we want to show you that are beneficial to servicemembers. First one I want to talk about is our Fraud Protection Alert that’s available for service members. There’s a law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act that provides service members with the ability to place an alert when they go on active duty to their credit profile. And this provides sort of an enhanced level of protection that requires credit reporting companies to take increased steps to verify new credit requests and identities. It’s very important and very helpful for folks who are deployed because it gives them an extra layer of security and peace of mind that somebody is not committing identity theft on them while they’re gone. Another one that’s mentioned here is regarding sending money abroad. A service member who is deployed may not have access to the internet in order to make a financial transaction. So, guess what? They may be in a country where they have to use some type of service like Western Union. We have some tips and highlights and we talk a little bit at this website that’s listed there about the rules in place for sending money abroad. Prior to the CFPB coming in existence, it was not very transparent the fees that were involved with sending money abroad. The CFPB implemented new protections to ensure that the fees are transparent and that the process is safer and more effective. Moving along our lifecycle here, I’m going to talk next about the permanent change of station or what folks in the military refer to as moving. So, moving is right up there with going to the dentist on the list of fun things to do. But, it is a fact of life in the military. When I was in active duty, I moved four times in seven years. So, it’s a regular way of life. Everyone does it. And there are a lot of challenges with moving, some of which are noted here. We want to highlight some of the most common ones. There are others that are not shown here, but the most common ones we know about we have highlighted what’s known as our Ask CFPB Database. Our Ask CFPB Database is a frequently asked questions database. And if you get a chance to visit our Ask website, you will find answers to over 1,000 regularly asked questions that we’ve had over the past five years since we’ve been open as a Bureau. So, the first one is talking about an auto lease. What happens? How do I cancel or terminate it, for example? Or the second one is a resource talking about what happens if I receive orders and my home is underwater. These are all real-life circumstances that happen to servicemembers. And so, we have really critical advice on how to help those folks when they encounter that. The third one here is something that’s a little more probably not as doesn’t happen as often. I’m sorry, isn’t as big a deal necessarily for servicemembers as losing their home or their car, but it is critically important when moving because everyone who’s moved knows that your credit rating and your credit score is very important when you move, because you often get checked for your credit when you have to sign a lease for an apartment or if you are trying to hook up utilities -- especially if you’re trying to buy a house. And so, we have some information there to help people understand how do you get good credit, how do you maintain good credit. So those are just a couple of stops on our lifecycle. I’m also going to transition here to veteran status because, you know, as the lifecycle points out, service members ultimately become veterans at some point or another. And you know, only about 15% of the people who sign up to do service in the military end up doing a full career. The rest typically do less than a full career. But becoming a veteran has challenges of its own and that transition period between leaving the active duty military and becoming a veteran is both exciting yet challenging. Most veterans when they do leave the military they decide to access some of the benefits they’ve earned. We highlight in a few here that are the most important. Primarily, the largest of which is the GI Bill. For people who are not aware on this call or on this webinar, the GI Bill is a benefit that’s provided to the troops to get a college degree or an advanced degree if they already have a college degree essentially at no cost to them. And so, veterans who decide to further their education have this tremendous asset. Yet we know through our complaint system and we know from surveys and other sorts of research that a lot of them are not using their GI Bill wisely because they might be either choosing a poor performing school or they might be choosing a school that is not fully covered by their GI Bill. And so, the reason we wanted to highlight this tool is if you notice the web address, it’s vets.gov. That is actually a website that is run and managed by the Department of Veterans Affairs but we here at the CFPB worked very closely to design and build this site. The whole purpose behind this is it provides the veteran with a best in class school comparison tool that gives them the right information at the right time, such as what is the graduation rate of this college I’m considering? What is the retention rate? What are the average salaries for new graduates? And also, are there any complaints against the school? Does the school still have an accreditation? These are all critical pieces of information that veterans should know before they apply to go to college, because not all schools are the same and there are a fair number of schools out there in the universe that may in fact not be good choices for veterans. So, we think this is the first place a veteran should go before they even consider going back to college. Now, while the GI Bill is a sizeable benefit to help veterans pay for college, we know that some veterans just like other students still graduate with student loan debt. So, the Bureau has a really innovative tool called the Paying for College Tool that’s designed to help students make informed financial decisions by teaching them how to compare financial aid offers, teaching them the differences between student loans -- for example, what is a Stafford Loan versus what is a Perkins Loan -- and also telling them about their options to repay student loan debt. A lot of people don’t realize that if you decide to go work for a public employer after you attain the student loan debt, you can get assistance with paying back that principle on that loan. So whether a veteran goes back to school or chooses to keep working, we know that some of them are also still struggling to make ends meet. So this is why the Bureau has funded a financial coaching program that is free for all veterans. Like any other coach, financial coaching is there to help veterans determine their goals, define their goals, develop a plan, and provide support over time as the veteran tries to work towards that goal. We currently have 60 coaches across the country and we recently launched a tele coaching hotline for veterans that may happen to reside too far from a coach to meet up in person. So I really recommend you consider in using this resource, recommending it to your clients who are veterans who need help or are struggling to make ends meet. Our coaches are there for throughout the country. And so please check out that link that we have listed there and you can find out more. And then going down the latter end of the lifecycle, we get to retirement. Now, some people on this call may know that servicemembers some of them can retire as early as 38 years old if they joined the military out of high school at 18. However, the large majority of servicemembers do not retire at 38. And those that do typically go on to second careers. But either way, what we know is that we have Census data that tells us that older veterans tend to do pretty well compared to the general population. They tend to show higher incomes, higher levels of assets. But we also know that that makes them targets for financial scams. And so on the screen here under the subheading for retirement we just want to highlight a couple things here that we know based on our research and some of our complaint data that veterans are having some challenges with. One of those is pension advance products. The Bureau is involved with a lawsuit against some companies that were taking advantage of people who were pensioners -- some of which of those victims were veterans. So there’s some information on that. And then also some key tips to consider if someone is choosing a lump sum payout on their pension. Now, while our website is an excellent source of information on these topics and more, we know that some of you and some other service providers have clients who are not digitally savvy. So, I want to point out that the CFPB has created a whole suite of printed financial literacy brochures that are designed to explain complex financial matters in plain English. We literally have hundreds of financial literacy brochures that are free to all service providers so that you can get this critical information into the hands of service members, veterans, and your other clients in your community. So that’s it for the end of the lifecycle discussion. And at this point, I want to turn things back over to Christina Smith who’s going to walk us through our complaint system and educate you about that. Christina? Christina Smith: Thanks, Tony. Hi, everyone again. As Tony said, you’re back with Christina. Now that you’ve had some time to hear more about the military lifecycle and the tools the Bureau offers within that cycle, I wanted to give you some more information about our complaint process in general. As I’ve noted before, I basically live and breathe consumer complaints. And I can truly say that I believe our complaint system is one of the best tools to empower consumers to advocate on their own behalf. This process connects consumers with financial institutions directly and obligates companies that participate in the system to prove substantive responses to consumers’ concerns (when) their federal regulator is watching. We have literally all been there in any type of problem -- you call, you hit 12 different prompts and you wind up with somebody who not only cannot answer your question but ultimately probably claims they’re going to connect you to somebody else and you get disconnected. This happens over and over and over again and it’s a drain on your time and attention at work. And for our servicemembers, it’s a drain on their time and attention when they need to be mission-focused. So, in addition to using our web-based system to submit complaints, the Bureau also offers a consumer hotline -- the number that’s highlighted on your screen. The hotline is a great place for consumers to call and work with representatives to help submit their complaints and answer their common questions. Consumers can be connected to representatives that speak over 180 different languages. This is extremely helpful for those consumers who need help reading the responses companies provide to them. In addition to individual consumer help and monetary and non-monetary relief, the complaint process helps inform the work the Bureau and our offices do to learn more about what our consumers are experiencing as a whole. As David mentioned earlier, we received over 74,000 complaints in the military community. As a whole, the Bureau has received over 1 million complaints from the American consumers. We use these complaints to help identify trends and issues. For instance, just last year we noted that service members submit debt collection complaints at twice the rate of the general population. This statistic helped shape our work and focus on providing tips and tools to the military community about how to deal with debt collectors. And you’ll see that in the promotion and reenlistment section a few slides back. Our review of complaints also led to the Department of Justice suing a student loan servicer for violating service members’ rights under the Service member Civil Relief Act. This resulted in over 60 million for 78,000 harmed service members. I really encourage you all to check out the complaint process, if you haven’t already and use the compliant process as a tool to assist your clients with their financial services’ needs. I’m going to pass the mike now over to Pam McClelland who’s going to give you some insights into our video forums. Pam? Pam McClelland: Hi. This is Pam McClelland. I am the Senior Financial Educator on the team. But more importantly, I’m an Air Force retiree and I also spent many years as a personal financial manager in the military on a military installation. I’m also an accredited financial counselor -- which many of you are. You heard a lot today so far that many of you if you’re a military PFM you might be familiar with. But many of you that I run into when I’m out and about in the country are seeing servicemembers -- especially Guard and Reserve -- and their families and you’re not armed with this kind of information. I’m really excited to see so many people join this webinar because, you know, one of the saddest things for me when I was a counselor was when somebody was getting the runaround from the credit bureau or their bank or their credit union or the debt collector was hounding them, and really all I could do at that point was kind of commiserate. There were places we could send their complaints -- maybe to the Better Business Bureau. There was a function called the Military Sentinel, which was a place that (FTC) had where you could send in complaints. But nobody would advocate on your individual complaint. It was a function that went to the law enforcement folks. So very important, don’t get me wrong, but nobody was advocating on your behalf, trying to get you an answer until the CFPB stood up. And that function I cannot emphasize enough -- and Christina told so much about it. And I would tell you it informs everything we do as educators here in the CFPB but especially in the Office of Servicemember Affairs. So, I want to tell you about this next tool which is for you, the practitioner. Because so many things that we delve into and start to develop here at the CFPB they’ve only been around for the past few years. So, for you to have this information at your fingertips is very difficult. What we did was come out with these training videos. And we have a philosophy here in OSA -- we think that people learn better when it’s fun. And I know, practitioners, all of you guys like to have fun. So, believe it or not, the US Department of Agriculture they have a film studio and we took advantage of that. So, we created the OSA News Desk and we used some of the folks here at the CFPB for actors and we made this fun we hope. So not only will they be good training for you, but more importantly when you see gaps and needs in your folks and when your leadership is asking you to do a workshop on debt perhaps or credit reporting, you can use these. These are at your fingertips -- especially that complaint process that Christina and I just talked about. This walks you through step-by-step in video format so people can know exactly what to do. So if you’re setting up some kind of a workshop or you need to take something into the squadron or into the unit or you want to take it to a spouse working group, just use one of these. They work great. As a matter of fact, if we go to the next slide I will show you can match these with some of our publications that Tony talked about. So not only do you have the visual in the video, but you have your handouts. They’re all right there. And I will tell you, we don’t load them up with lots of words. We give you just enough just in time. We like to think that we are targeting the information that’s most important to the people that you are servicing when they need it the most. So those are the kind of things that I think as practitioners could really serve you well. Now what I want to do is turn it back over to Nelson so that he can talk about ways you can connect with us because not only do we want to tell you about things, but we want to hear from you. What do you need from us? What other tools and education pieces would make your life better? So Nelson, take it away. Nelson Akeredolu: Thank you Pam and good afternoon everyone. Much like the tools we use to push information out to servicemembers, we have a number of resources that we use to engage and have conversations with servicemembers and people like you. In marketing, we call these channels. Now, you can see some of these channels on your screen right now. We’re on social media. You can find us on Facebook. Just search CFPB Military. On Twitter we’re also at CFPB Military. Now, please we ask that you like us, follow us on Twitter and also most importantly share our content so other people can see it and share it as well. If you’d like to email us anytime, you can always email us at Military@CFPB.gov. We also invite you to join our listserv to get the latest news on events, consumer protection information, and resources that the military community can use. You can use that information yourself to educate yourself or to serve your clients in the best way you see fit. But we’d also like to hear from you about ways you think we can improve. We’re always developing new tools and resources. We’re developing some now. But we’re always open to ideas. So we’d love to hear your feedback. Most importantly, we ask again that you just help spread the word and share what we do with all your clients and have them look at us, visit our site, and see the ways that our tools can fit with their career and help propel them to financial well-being. Now I’ll turn things back over to our Deputy David Dubois. Dave? Dave Dubois: So how many of you are thinking wow -- I had no idea. So over the past 45 minutes or so, we have focused on introducing the Office of Servicemember Affairs to you and the work that we do on behalf of all who have worn or wear the uniform of our armed forces. We’ve introduced you to the military lifecycle and we’ve covered just a few of the tools and resources that we have available. In our recently released report, there is a full appendix of resources and tools available throughout the whole Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As Nelson mentioned, we invite you to connect with us on our social media channels, bookmark our website, and share our tools with your client. Now would be a perfect time for you to pull out your phone and bring up your Facebook page. Like us on Facebook at CFPB Military and if you Tweet, search for CFPB Military and start following us today. I’d love to hear from you on our email address Military@CFPB.gov. And ask to be included on our military distribution list. So we do have some time left in this segment if you have any questions that anyone has on their mind, we’d be glad to take your questions. Irene Skricki: Great. Thank you so much. So this is Irene again with the Office of Financial Education. I want to thank Dave, Christina, Mechel, Nelson, Tony, and Pam. I think this is a new record for the number of speakers we’ve had on a FinEx webinar. That was fantastic. So we have a little bit of time for questions. So Operator, can you tell us how to open a line for a voice question, please? Coordinator: Certainly. If you would like to ask a question over the phone at this time, please press star then 1. Please unmute your phone and record your name at the prompt. If at any time your question has been answered, you can remove your request by pressing star 2. Once again that is star 1 if you would like to ask a question over the phone. Irene Skricki: Great. And we also again have options for sending in questions on Q&A. So, let me ask (Dubis) who’s looking at those. (Dubis) do we have any questions coming in through the Q&A that you want to address to our servicemember folks? Christina Smith: Hi. We haven’t received any questions over the phone yet so I wanted to go back and highlight more details of our tackling student loan debt guide. And I want to emphasize that this guide really is for active duty servicemembers. And what it does is it helps lay out the various programs that are available for service members to either help reduce their interest rate under the Servicemember Civil Relief Act as Mechel had noted, and other various programs like military deferment, a 0% reduction for hazard pay when you are in an area of hostile fire when you’re deployed, and also giving service members some more information about public service loan forgiveness and some other programs that are available to them in order to reduce their interest rate and begin to tackle some of the debt -- whether it’s a pre-service obligation or student loans they’ve taken out while in service. It is available as a resource in our report, which is available on our website. It is also available under the student section of the servicemember web page at the CFPB as well. Irene Skricki: Great, thank you Christina. Operator, do we have any voice questions yet? Coordinator: Yes, we do have two responses so far. The first is from (Michael). Your line is open. (Michael Bryant): Hello. Can you hear me? Irene Skricki: Yes. (Michael Bryant): Okay, thank you very much. My name is (Michael Bryant) and I’m a community library manager for Broward County Library. And my question was we have a program that we’re doing here where we will make free hotspots available for veterans and their family members. And I see that you have several different resources that veterans can tap into. Is there a way for us to make this information available similar to what you’re doing where we can share this information with you and then you can share that information with veterans that they can obtain these free hotspots? Pam McClelland: Hi. This is Pam McClelland. I was thinking as you were talking. I have financial coaches that are throughout the country. So you’re trying to reach veterans in Broward County. Is that correct? (Michael Bryant): Yes. Pam McClelland: Why don’t you contact me through our Military@CFPB.gov and I will work with you one-on-one to see because you have a specific target area what we can do. And we’ll do everything we can. Thank you for what you’re doing for veterans, by the way. That’s a great way to service them. (Michael Bryant): Okay. You’re very welcome. I sent the email and so it should be in the inbox, the Military@CFPB.gov and we’re looking to expand the program. We have approximately 450 and if it goes well, we’re looking to expand it so we can serve more for free. Pam McClelland: Outstanding. Thank you for what you’re doing. (Michael Bryant): You’re welcome. Thank you. Irene Skricki: Great. Operator, can we hear the second voice question you mentioned? Coordinator: Certainly. (Cain) your line is open. (Cain): Hi, my name is (Cain) and I am a personal financial counselor at Fort Bragg. First I just want to say thank you all for the work that you do. You provide a great service for servicemembers. My question is there has been talk of weakening the CFPB or disbanding it. Are there any updates of this happening? Irene Skricki: Dave, that’s for you. You’re the most senior person on the call. Dave Dubois: Yes, and thanks for your question. So, what, you know, you do hear a lot of stuff going on out in the media and stuff. But I can just tell you the way that we address this here is that we are busy focusing on our mission and proving our value to the consumers across the nations. So we are not giving much thought to any of that chatters that’s going on outside of the building. And we’re just keeping moving forward. We have a mission to exercise and we’re going to make mention. Irene Skricki: Thank you, Dave. Are there any other questions coming in though the Q&A box that we should address now? Pam McClelland: There is. This is Pam again. Someone asked about guard and reserve and yellow ribbons. I’m very familiar with that program. It’s amazing. When I worked for the Department of Defense and I also worked in Headquarters for a while. We work very closely with the Guard and Reserve Headquarter committees to get our information out, but you know we’re still the new kids on the block. And the more that we can get folks like you to help us get that information. But I’m going to circle back with them again because it’s a nice reminder that we should always do that. I’m also very proud that a lot of the financial coaches for veterans are making connections through the Yellow Ribbon Program because, you know, those folks are two minutes away from being veterans. So we’re doing a lot of work through that community as well. Our programs CFPB-wide are for everyone. And then of course Servicemember Affairs Programs are also for Guard and Reserve just like they are for active duty members. So we push as much as we can and try to get the word out, but you know what? Good reminder for me to circle back in that yellow ribbon community. So help us as much as you can and I’m going to do the same thing. Christina Smith: And this is Christina. There was another question in the Q&A about a client who had about 70 hard hits on their credit report and were struggling to not only get information on how that impacted their credit score, but how they could help it. What I do want to mention here is that one of the things I always recommend is to file a complaint with the Bureau. You are able to file one complaint and sent it to all three credit bureaus if your client or any other service member has - it’s impacting all three of the main CRAs they are voluntarily provided in our system and they will send the complaints and they will receive an answer from the CRA there. Another thing I’d like to address there is over 70 hits seems like -- especially hard inquiries -- seems extreme. If that’s a situation of fraud, I’d also recommend contacting the financial institutions who are the ones making the hits because if they are fraudulent, there is a chance that once you contact them, they would actually remove the information from the servicemember’s credit report. In terms of knowing how much these inquiries affect the score, hard inquiries do affect your credit score. However, there is no set formula to how this is determined and it’s impossible to ever know exactly two points here, ten points for this. it’s all based on a ton of factors around a credit score. Also, if those hits are not fraudulent and your client had been out shopping for mortgage or a car loan, there are protections that within certain windows they should not be getting multiple hard inquiry hits. It should all register as one. We have more information on credit reporting on our website and I would recommend checking it out in addition to encouraging your client to file a complaint with is. Pam McClelland: Great. Thanks, Christina. And this is Pam again. We’ve had lots of inquiries about how do we get a copy of this deck. If you sign up, all you have to do is email CFPB_FinEx@CFPB.gov. And somebody else up there said they love the CFPB. Thank you so much. And we love all of you for what you’re doing for servicemembers and veterans. And now it looks like our time is coming to a close so I’m going to turn it back over to Dave. Dave Dubois: Great. Thanks, Pam. And I want to thank our entire team. Also thank all of you on the call. There was at one point well over 100 folks on this call that we’ve been able to connect with this afternoon. And on behalf of the Director for the Office of Servicemember Affairs, Paul Kantwill, thank you for spending this part of your day with us. We realize there was many other things that you could do today, but you carved out the time to connect with us and we appreciate it. We hope to see you on our Military Facebook page. We hope to see you on our Twitter channel. And we look forward to talking to you again on a future FinEx event. If you’d us to do one of these events just for a specific community, please reach out to us and let us know. Enjoy the remainder of your day and thanks again for all that you do. Irene Skricki: Great. And thank you and servicemembers team. We’re delighted to have you guys on today. Thank you everybody. Coordinator: Thank you for your participation on today’s conference call. At this time, all parties may disconnect. Speakers, please stand by. END NWX-CFPB HQ Moderator: Sharon Mobley 05-25-17/1:00pm CT Confirmation # 4129966 Page 1