[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] good afternoon, everybody. Well good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us on this panel and nice to see familiar faces in the audience, andy, nice to see you. Im excited about the Panel Discussion that weve had today because its a very, very timely issue. This is the topic im excited about talking about here is the issue with working families, inflation, and how we can use fin tech to solve some of povertys pressing problems. Working families are facing a time of rising inflation, energy costs and food costs, everything in everyday life. Workers are too often seeing the paychecks lagging behind and businesses are facing a difficult time hiring, as we enter into this time of economic hardship, we know that households will face financial hardships, and we also know that reducing that hardship is going to require policy makers, forProfit Institutions, not for Profit Institutions and everyone in between to come together to explore a new and innovative ways to improve assets to Financial Institutions. Too often, when individuals fall short of money, they either have nowhere to go or the places they turn end up costing them more than they can afford and puts them into a long run problem, into a tailspin. Policy makers look for reducing costs for americans looking to Access Financial services, we know that new Financial Technologies can be helpful in this goal and weve Seen Technology disrupt and reduce costs for consumers in a wide variety of industries, and the Financial Services industry should also be subject to this disruption. But as this occurs, we also need to ensure that these new technologies, also have Consumer Protections that ensure that individuals are not taken advantage of. This, in my opinion, would require a light, but real touch by regulators in this arena. This is why im very excited about the panelists that we have before us today. We have individuals who are on the cutting edge of payment technologies, such as earned wage access, as well as some of the foremost scholars and individuals thinking through the issues. I want to quickly introduce our panelists and then get into some q a and then for the audience, im going to come to some of you as you raise your hands so start thinking about your questions as well. First, we have rahm, a financial tech entrepreneur, someone ive known quite well for some period of time. His mission is to meet the unique needs of those living paycheck to paycheck, hes a serial entrepreneur, an engineer and i want him to tell his story about what earning is and earned wage access is, but to briefly summarize, earn in, helps people from more than 400,000 Companies Access wages otherwise would have been held up in the pay cycle. Were going to talk a lot about the pay cycle in the panel today. Rahm holds mms in Technology Science and mba from Purdue University school of management. Next we have ida rademacrer, from the aspen institute, the vicepresident there, and as aspen Financial Security institute. And she has expertise in economic inclusion, research and policy with her record as a collaborative and creative thinker to expand the effort to bring to the national forefront a Solutions Focused discussion of how america can actually improve Economic Growth by addressing growing levels of wealth inequality and Household Financial insecurity. Her efforts have resulted from the creation of several new cutting edge initiatives, including, the expanding prosperity impact collaborative and the recorrecting work and Wealth Initiative and the Aspen Leadership Forum on retirement savings. Through these projects, ida and her team are building a cross disciplinary leaders and change agents together who are deeply probing critical challenges with u. S. Households and shaping policy innovations that can improve the wellbeing of all americans. Next, came all the way from the brookings institution, next door, we have aaron klein, center fellow at brookings institution, a senior fellow in economics in brookings and focused on Financial Technology and payments and macro economics and infrastructure and policy. Part prior to joining brookings, he was Regulatory Reform initiative between 2009 and 2012, when we were at similar stints and he served as Deputy Assistant security of the economic and Treasury Department and Regulatory Reform issues including crafting and helping to secure passage of doddfrank and Consumer Protection act of 2010. He was the Senate Banking staffer at the time if im not mistaken and played leading roles in responding to Economic Crises and housing response reform and transportation infrastructure policy and native american policy. So, we have here, a panel that is expertise in this area, so, ida, i want to start with you, real quick because youve taken a very good macro view of these things. Were here to talk about Financial Inclusion, but fundamentally, were talking about Financial Inclusion because we care about Financial Wellbeing. What is missing in your assessment from our current Financial Services marketplace that promoted you to lead the initiative to call on the treasury for a National Strategy on inclusion . Why did you do that . What is lacking that called for that . Thanks, paul and thank you so much aei for having this conversation, i love having the crowd and look forward to the q a later. The upside part of that answer is that, theres probably more going right for real Financial Inclusion that leads to wellbeing, than we have had in a long time, in terms of Financial Service, with the levels of innovation and leadership in the Public Sector and the private sector. The reality though is that the sum is still not greater than parts. There are lots of different siloed initiatives and innovations and well hear about some today. There are lots of beginning to be understanding what it really takes to deliver wellbeing for a household, what gives them digitty and agency and choice, but theyre still not a birds eye view of how the different pieces connect, because peoples Financial Lives arent siloed, the payment pieces and the savings pieces and whats going on, daytoday, and week to week, is still not connected. So, we ended up supporting what senator koontz had senator coons had called for and what was out there, the idea of a north star being Financial Wellbeing for all households and whats the financial infrastructure to deliver on that and we certainly saw that during covid when the payments, the households and businesses were hung up with some of those last mile problems. And to our delight, over 110 companies and civil rights organizations, every Industry Association related to finance in all sectors signed on with the idea of a comprehensive, coordinated government quarterback to help think about Financial Inclusion as a foundational piece of inclusive growth in this country. So, we think its the right time. There certainly seems to be the private sector will to do this and happy to talk about how in particular, the components as we come into a very inflation driven environment, will matter for households. Briefly, where are we in the stage of the effort . We have weve made a call and this growing stake holder coalition and youre always welcomed, others, to ask about it is in working groups and helping to inform and were continuing to find support on the hill and support inside of the administration for it. So, its not a done deal, but there seems to be a threw line to get this done. Okay. Rahm. I want you to tell us your origin story, ive heard it, and some of the other panelists have heard it, its interesting. Your he on the cutting edge of payment technologies. Tell me, what is earn in, what is earned wage access and what possessed you to even into this in the first place . Yeah, so, the way it started, quite by chance. I was running another company and out there, i found that some of my employees were getting everdraft fees and pay day loans and that doesnt make sense to me, because i was baying them well. And paid and couldnt wait until the following friday and it was the day already worked and i tried to get the system to do that and the system couldnt do it, and kind of i said, well, i just give you mon for the days youve worked when the system finally does its thing, and pay me back. And theyd do that for a couple of years and in the office. And i moved from cincinnati and if i would do that, and i knew how the systems work and i could tell if theyre working or not. And so i continued to do it for them and over messenger, and then not the most convenient way, but keep getting messages and developed a way, if you need money you fill out that form. And they had the wage page up and people trying to use it. So i did it for them as well. And what i realized is that if you give somebody access to their money when they need it, life is much simpler, and paying bills on time, no more Overdraft Fees, no more pay day loans and if i tried to make it into a product that scales to some people, id feel bad by myself. And every day, and we started paying people in and employees if you get paid two weeks before you go to work, but its not that way you get paid two weeks after you work. It doesnt have to be that way. The technology exists its almost crazy its a two week batch. And the house side of the hill, one month batch, right . Four weeks. But go on, please. Just imagine if google said give me your resources and in two weeks ill give you the results. And thats the system that we have. You did for your employees at your business, you started and you built a crude web page. Did the concept earned wage access exist then were there other people doing this or you just it was happening, and in lots of Small Businesses the manager or the Business Owner was doing it for the employees, it wasnt done the way. So i probably started doing it like in person, maybe 2008, 2009, and then we made it into a company, only in 2013. Thats really, really the issue. And i want your reaction to that, you think about payments and how it affects workers in a very unique way. What, from your perspective, does government need to do to make the payments and function better for working class citizens either directly or by allowing businesses to serve customers in a way that isnt currently done because of regulation . So what is wrong with the system today and whats wrong with the regulations of the system today and what should be done about it . Thank you for the question, speaker ryan and thank you, ai for hosting this important conversation . Im going to start out with the fact that i think that everyone in this room can agree with. Friday is going to be september 30th is going to be a friday and we can all stipulate late you need more analysis. What happens you get paid on friday, september 30th, you get a check and its thereafter tuesday, october 4th, not quite clear when in the day it will magically get credited to your account. What do you do for the weekend . How do you live, how do you pay rent . How do you pay the automatic bills coming into the month, right . 40 to 50, 55 of americans are living paycheck to paycheck at some level, right . Weve designed a system that assumes you always have money and assumes you dont care when the money comes in and that assumption works great for half of americans who always have a thousand bucks in their account. Who get agree checking and get all the other benefits and who is paying for that system is the people who are living paycheck to paycheck, Overdraft Fees, one out of 11 americans pay 350 a year or more in Overdraft Fees. Heavy overdrafters. Theyre the ones subsidizing free checking and you ask the question, why do we have this system . And the rest of the world has realtime payments. Bank of england in 2008 and europe was complicated and had legacy systems and they got it in 2019. We dont have it. Why, the Federal Reserve chose not to do it and simple policy choice and whats the ramifications of that. Over 100 million in wealth transferred from People Living paycheck to paycheck, pay day 100 million. If we did it when the bank of england did it in 2008, sand brand new coming out, called the iphone, thats the Technology State that we were. In england in 18 months did realtime payments. We dont have it. Right. The private sectors developed some, realtime payment and in terms of regulating the Payment System and how fast that checks clears and operating their own system, the automatic clear house, ach system so theyre the operator and regulators. If we told blockbuster youre in charge of developing streaming, would we have netflix . Thats the mistake we made and the people that suffered are People Living paycheck to paycheck and those who prospered with the Overdraft Fees, the check casher, the pay day lenders, people that werent so fortunate to have a good boss that took care of you and ended up going to somebody less reputable. And its really infuriating to me, because the rest of the world is light years ahead of us in this. So, i would give us something here to talk about. Give us the glass half full. The glass half full, one, you have some companies stepping in to bridge the gap. Two, you have some Financial Services banks trying to the right thing and move forward on the overdraft stuff, reduce their punitive fees, do some other things, early wage access, Companies Like square and uber, trying to pay their workers and move things. Companies like visa who figure out push duct to reverse the transaction to clear things faster, right . And then you may have this thing called fed now that the fed says theyre going to start operating. Yeah. Seven years since they said they were going to start studying it, they had a thing called fed 2020, and all by 2020, that was 10 years ago and they started this thing and we still dont have tim skeptical of those initiatives. I think we actually made huge mistakes in our covid distribution payment. We had millions of americans waiting on paper checks coming to them in september and october from march of 2020. And by one report, you have over 60 Million Dollars of cares act money went to check cashers, so, technology and private sector folks are making progress and doing workaround and real problems are facing americans every day. Let me ask you, where are good workarounds so curing. What are promising moves in government and obviously in the industry that you see, steps in the right direction . Yeah, i mean, i think the a couple of things with this, what earn ins, with rahm, with your personal story and engineering mind, right, you focused in on a specific problem. And this is with Entrepreneurial Solutions and Underlying Technology can do. You can focus on specific pain points for them and prove that you can do that in a way that has a business demand and that is solving real problems and saving households money. The problem in the long run, is you have an era of tech, is that you end up with 47 different apps on your phone. And that 40 different slices of your Financial Life being managed, and we havent actually centered on the full curated set of, not just apps, but systems that people need, payments need to work and government to people payments, p government to business payments, and work and payroll systems need to work for household and we need know know in terms of financial household wellbeing, its not Rocket Science what weve found over and over and this is research that bears out in the qualitative and quantitative work and people need routinely positive cash flow, people need to experience routinely positive cash flow in their life. That can be from their earned income coming in when they need it and can be from the way that nonlabor income comes into their life, i. T. Or a Social Security payment. When your income is lumpy and you can solve it through technology and government can, from a regulatory perspective and understand that somewhat with what it can do for market innovation and degree that finance is becoming a bit of a utility for utilities in this country for households to be fully participating in their Economic Life of the country. We need to solve it not in one off ways, but systematically. One of my colleagues says when youre 50 of folks who have 1,000 in the bank and when youre not, when youre the other half of that, you need to behave for the sy