H&R Block Launches Influential Consumer Financial Savings Program

With the goal of sparking greater consumer savings at tax time, H&R Block, the world's largest consumer tax services provider, will be rolling out its innovative “Savings at Tax Time" program, which also will help inform the consumer-focused work of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the U.S. government agency responsible for protecting consumers within the realm of domestic and global financial markets.

One of many important elements of this H&R Block pilot program will be a focus on educating consumers regarding the range of ways in which they can use tax refunds to build their savings. The initiative also will include expansive research that will be conducted over a three-year duration to assess how various mechanisms used to prompt greater consumer savings behavior can be made more effective and impactful.

Financial education professionals have long held that financial literacy among consumers relating to tax-time decisions has always been lacking, as individuals and families too often fail to sufficiently understand their options not only regarding how to most effectively handle their tax-related affairs, but also regarding how to best use tax refunds.
As the research results and insights gleaned from the program will be shared with the CFPB, the agency will benefit greatly from learning about which methods of impacting consumer behavior work most effectively in connection with both short-term and long-term financial well-being.

Given the very large number of consumers who receive tax refunds on an annual basis, the scope of this H&R Block initiative is expansive. Moreover, as other large multi-national corporations see how beneficial this H&R Block initiative is in financial literacy, it is widely expected that they increasingly will follow suit, which bodes very well for the financial education industry in the years to come.