Upcoming events

• January 8: Finance 4 U education series begins at Catholic Enrichment Center
• January 9: Start Fresh! workshop at Louisville Urban League
• January 16: Start Fresh! workshop at 810 Barret Center
• January 30: 2014 Assets and Opportunity Scorecard to be released by CFED

View a full calendar of events here.

Share your story

Have you or has someone you know experienced the challenges of being unbanked or underbanked? Participant Media and JoinBankOn.org are seeking stories for an upcoming documentary. Email Sean Leuchtefeld, JoinBankOn.org administrator, for more information. 

Asset-building news and articles

• Financially Underserved Market Size Study, 2012 findings from Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI)
• Immigrant Financial Services Study research brief and full report from New York City Office of Financial Empowerment
• Know Your Borrower: The Four Need Cases of Small-Dollar Credit Consumers report from CFSI
• Youth and Credit: Protecting the Credit of Youth in Foster Care guide from the Annie E. Casey Foundation

Bank On Louisville wishes you a financially-empowered New Year! Have a healthy, wealthy 2014!

Mayor Greg Fischer joins JP Morgan Chase, CFE Fund to launch Bank On 2.0

On Tuesday, December 10, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer joined representatives from JP Morgan Chase Bank, the Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) Coalition, and Louisville Metro Dept. of Community Services and Revitalization to launch the new Bank On 2.0 project. In September, the Chase Foundation announced a $1.15 million planning grant to the CFE Fund to develop a unified, national approaching to delivering safe and affordable banking products and services to low-income and under-banked people through municipal programs across the country.

Bank On 2.0 will draw on the successes and challenges of local Bank On programs like BOL to find innovative ways to reach unbanked and underbanked individuals and communities.

Read local coverage of the CFE Coalition and Bank On 2.0 in this Business First article and a Courier-Journal Community Challenge.

Below, L-R: JP Morgan Chase Kentucky Market Manager Paul Costel, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, CFE Co-Chair and New York City Dept. of Consumer Affairs Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, Louisville Metro CSR Executive Administrator Tina Lentz, Louisville Metro CSR Director Virginia Peck, CFE Co-Chair and San Francisco City Treasurer José Cisneros

It's almost tax time! This year, the CSR Financial Empowerment/ economic Development (FEeD) divison will once again partner with the Louisville Asset Building Coalition to offer free tax return filing and assistance with self-filing for community members who made up to $52,000 in 2013. Stay tuned to this newsletter or to LABC's website for a schedule of available appointments! Be sure to share information about VITA and the federal Earned Income Tax Credit with your friends, family, co-workers, and the people you serve, using the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' EITC Outreach Kit. You can also encourage good savings habits with Save Your Refund, where individuals who save at least $50 of their federal refund with the IRS Form 8888 can enter to win one of forty $250 prizes or the $25,000 grand prize!

KCRL: New data show more Kentuckians stuck in payday loan debt for longer periods of time in 2012 than in 2011

According to a recent report from the Department of Financial Institutions, in 2012 over 90 percent of payday lending transactions went to borrowers with five or more loans. Kentuckians paid $117.9 million in fees for those services and were indebted to payday lenders an average of 202 days in 2012, up from 137 days in 2011. Read more here...