Financial empowerment
Empowerment is the process of
increasing the capacity of people to
make choices and transform those
choices into actions and desired
results, according to the World Bank.
Financial empowerment is building
the knowledge and ability of
individuals to manage money and use
financial services products that work
for them.is about building an individual’s knowledge,
skills, and capacity to use resources and tools,
including financial products and services.
Financial education leads to financial literacy.
Financial empowerment includes financial
education and financial literacy, but it is focused
both on building the ability of individuals to
manage money and use financial services and on
providing access to products that work for them.
Financially empowered individuals are informed
and skilled; they know where to get help with
their financial challenges. This sense of
empowerment can build confidence that they can
effectively use their financial knowledge, skills,
and resources to reach their goals.
We designed this toolkit to help you help your clients become financially empowered
consumers. This financial empowerment toolkit is different from a financial education
curriculum. With a curriculum, you are generally expected to work through most or all of the
material in the order presented to achieve a specific set of objectives. This toolkit is a collection
of important financial empowerment information and tools you can access as needed based on
the client’s goals. In other words, the aim is not to cover all of the information and tools in the
toolkit - it is to identify and use the information and tools that are best suited to help your
clients reach their goals.
An introduction to the CFPB
CFPB is the abbreviation for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB’s mission is
to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for Americans—whether
they are applying for a mortgage, choosing among credit cards, or using any number of other
consumer financial products.
Above all, this means ensuring that consumers get the information they need to make the
financial decisions they believe are best for themselves and their families—that prices are clear
up front, that risks are visible, and that nothing is buried in fine print.