June 8, 2021
We recently released a report, “Financial Coaching Initiative: Results and Lessons Learned.” The report documents how CFPB implemented a 60-site financial coaching initiative and presents data and lessons learned for service providers interested in coaching. An accompanying brief summarizes the key findings.
In 2015, we launched the Financial Coaching Initiative, a pilot program that provided financial coaching services to veterans and economically vulnerable consumers. Professional coaches were embedded into a diverse set of 60 host sites across the country, where they provided free, one-on-one support to consumers. The coaches helped clients clarify their financial goals, commit to specific plans of action, and follow through on those commitments.
The financial coaches served over 23,000 consumers, demonstrating that financial coaching can be successfully implemented in many different settings for a wide range of consumers. Clients worked towards individual goals around budgeting and money management, credit and debt, and savings. Clients’ financial capability scores improved as they participated in coaching.
This report builds on earlier CFPB’s financial coaching projects including the first large-scale, rigorous evaluation of financial coaching for low- and moderate-income consumers and a 2017 coaching symposium.
The CFPB has many tools and resources available to help service providers interested in financial coaching, including:
- An Implementing Financial Coaching: Implications for Practitioners report sharing insights into how to implement financial coaching,
- Your Money, Your Goals resources for social services organizations that equip frontline staff and volunteers to be competent and comfortable in providing financial empowerment services to the people they serve, and
- A variety of handouts, tools, and other resources coaches can use with consumers.