PEWAUKEE, Wis. – Wisconsin’s credit unions have set a goal of assisting as many as 5,000 low-income and underserved residents in the first year of a program that aims to boost saving for retirement.
Since fall 2009 employees of Wisconsin CUs have received more than 30,000 hours of online investor education and now are moving into advanced levels of that same program. The goal, said the Wisconsin league, is for those employees to help “motivate the least likely investor to make positive financial strides – financially underserved or low-wealth individuals.”
The league reported that in July plans call for up to 25 CU staff – those who completed basic investor education online as part of an ongoing study involving 3,520 credit union staff from 80 credit unions – will be able to apply to enroll in 50 additional hours of online investor training this fall. Those graduates will earn a Certified Financial Educator designation. “Each of these grads will, in turn, train at least 100 financially underserved or low-wealth individuals so they can turn modest contributions to investment accounts into significant assets,” the league said.
“Most Americans haven’t done any retirement planning,” said WCUL CEO Brett Thompson. “But we can’t afford to let the failure of entire generations to plan for their futures become a public burden. That burden would be enormous – totally unsustainable. So we can’t afford to let the average citizen – those who live paycheck to paycheck – think they can’t become successful investors.”
The Wisconsin program, dubbed “RP3,” or REAL Progress & Pathways to Prosperity, offered approximately 10 hours of online learning about investing concepts. Phase one, said the league, involved 53 credit unions whose 1,623 employees completed the courses in December and achieved passing grades averaging 88.17%. In January, another 1,897 employees from 56 credit unions began the coursework. Upon completion of their studies in April, that group achieved an average passing grade of 87.69%. The advanced investment training phase of RP3, as the initial phase, is being conducted in partnership with the league, the Puelicher Center for Banking Education at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Precision Information, the Governor Doyle’s Council on Financial Literacy and the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions.
Funding for the latest phase includes a $15,000 grant from the National Credit Union Foundation and a $53,000 grant from the Investor Protection Trust (IPT).
