1. Financial Empowerment through Employer Engagement: Migrating San Francisco to a Paperless Payday Leigh Phillips Director San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment

2. SF Office of Financial Empowerment Our mission is to use City Hall’s strength and influence to help more of the City’s lower-income residents enter the financial mainstream  Education and Awareness  Access and Availability  Policy and Protection  Asset Building

3. -An estimated 68% of lower-income families in San Francisco receive paper checks. -Lack of direct deposit prevents quick, safe and efficient access to wages, and increases the cost of checking accounts. -Lack of direct deposit has implications for disaster preparedness. -Financial systems are increasingly becoming electronic and financial exclusion could increase in modernized financial systems. -Customers who do not use direct deposit are more costly/less profitable to financial institutions and therefore less desirable. Ensuring that low-wage employees are accessing direct deposit is an increasingly important financial empowerment initiative…

4. … and provides their employer with significant benefits too. It costs employers an additional $1.75 for every paycheck that they cut. Beyond direct cost savings, direct deposit reduces the administrative burden and assists employers in their “greening” efforts.

5. -Develop the program with scale and replicability in mind, modeled on the national success of Bank on San Francisco -Create a cross-issue model, working with stakeholders across issue-silos, including financial empowerment, environmental impact and corporate social responsibility. -Build an employer pipeline to engage in further asset-building initiatives San Francisco will become the first paper paycheck free city, improving the financial security of our low-wage workers and developing a replicable model.

6. Key Solutions: Payroll products Financial Institutions Paycards An online employer toolkit An outreach and marketing campaign Bookkeepers and CPAS

7. www.CurrenCSF.org

9. San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment www.sfofe.org