Disruption creates opportunities to learn about the faults in systems and the resiliency of individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to extraordinary disruptions in people’s lives, including their financial lives; disproportionately so for lower-income people of color and women. The recent antiracism protests, rallies, and vigils have also shone a light on systemic faults and individual resiliency. Commonwealth is taking this moment to double down on our work to understand the financial challenges faced by people living on low to moderate incomes (LMI) and to design and test novel and useful solutions to address them.

As always, we are learning with and from people living on LMI. We are exploring what financial challenges they are facing now and how they think about which of these challenges impact them and matter to them the most and why.

We do this by talking to individuals living on lower incomes, making sure we talk with those most affected – people of color, women, households with children, and non-traditional workers. We also hold focus groups, field surveys, and examine social media, and we are experimenting with new research techniques that use AI and other technologies to enable rapid, large-scale qualitative research and natural experiments and simulations.

Based on our past research, we know to ask specific questions about financial actions individuals are taking, including savings behavior, expense prioritization, and debt management. With open-ended questions, we listen for new challenges and opportunities, especially with new ideas coming to the forefront during these unprecedented times. In recent conversations, we have heard about the trade offs people are having to make between their financial security and their mental and physical health or the health of loved ones.

We also listen to learn what people living on LMI are doing to meet these challenges, and what they wish they could do. What financial products, applications, and services are working for them? What is their employer – traditional or “gig” – doing to support them in meeting their needs? What have individuals had to “duct tape” together to make their financial lives work? In recent conversations, we have heard about people turning more to their families and friends for support: the barrier of feelings of shame about one’s financial struggle does not apply to the same extent when a virus is the cause — economic hardship is widespread and not blamed on the individual.

We take what we have learned and translate findings into actionable insights and solutions designed to change the systems that are clearly not working for so many people living on LMI. We do this by partnering with fintechs, financial institutions, employers, governments, and community groups to design and test real-world solutions that not only work for individuals and families, but also meet the business needs of our partners, increasing the likelihood of their widespread implementation.

At Commonwealth, for nearly two decades we have been deeply listening to people living on lower incomes and amplifying their lived experiences in order to influence and change the U.S. financial system. Given today’s rapidly changing environment, we are now working towards developing insights from and amplifying these experiences more quickly.

We will be sharing an “actionable insight” every other week with our network. Insights will be based on our original research and will offer ideas to spark action for our partners and other stakeholders. Our aim is for new innovative products and approaches to be quickly deployed in order to build financial security and opportunity for all. 

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