Benefiting Customers, Building Communities
Many companies are working to make a positive impact by making sensible decisions when it comes to environmental and societal issues
As featured in Business Week | Via Bloomberg Media Page 4
Showcasing Responsibility
Responsibility is obviously a key component for conducting any business, and when it comes to the financial services industry, that approach has even more impact when it also does good things for society. For that reason, MetLife Foundation, the charitable arm of MetLife Inc., pivoted to a focus on financial inclusion in 2013.
Part of its plan is to distill studies focused on financial behavior into actionable information that real people can use. “Truthfully, there’s a lot of research out there that nobody ever reads,” says Evelyn Stark, financial inclusion lead at MetLife Foundation. “One of the things that we do is to make sure that research is put into plain English, and that people understand the power of it.” With that in mind, the foundation has pledged $200 million in grants for organizations dedicated to increasing financial health around the globe, including here in the U.S.
Recently, that support came in the form of a three-year, $2.5 million commitment to the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), which was founded in 2004 to help the traditional banking system meet the needs of low- and moderate-income individuals. CFSI encourages those companies in its network to ponder the question: How can we measure, track and improve the financial health of our customers? Its most recent success is an executive summary titled “Eight Ways to Measure Financial Health” which marks the first time that a cohort of financial services companies has measured the financial health of its customers.
