What is Express Advantage?

Mission

Express Advantage helps empower people to build assets and achieve financial stability through education, outreach, collaboration and advocacy.

*These links will take you away from the Express Credit Union web site.

Click here to see our community partners

Click here to see Community Support

Community Impact

We believe that community impact can be measured by the results we achieve that are beneficial to our members and the influence we have in changing policies and practices that reduce poverty and increase wealth building opportunities for people with low incomes. To measure the human impact of our work and the viability of our model we have implemented an extensive evaluation based on the following theory of change.

The design of the Express initiative is based on the premise that as members gain access to a financial institution with low barriers, and increase their financial literacy — they will increasingly enroll in and use financial services that credit unions and banks provide; and as they gain experience and confidence in navigating financial systems — they will make wise use of banking services to increase savings, build credit and utilize those resources to their benefit and to the benefit of the community. This knowledge and access to financial services will help members to build financial resiliency and assets, which will ultimately help them to make progress toward their financial goals.

Research

The impetus for the Express initiative began in 2005 under the leadership of the Medina Foundation. The Medina board and leadership invested significant energy and resources to explore why a significant percentage of the low income population in King County was either unbanked or under-banked and as a result were using high cost and often predatory financial services that were eroding their income and trapping them in a cycle of debt. Based on initial research the Medina team determined that there was a significant gap in services, resulting from a failure in the market, and as a consequence many people with low incomes were being deprived access to financial services that were so critical to their self sufficiency. Medina convened key stakeholders, non-profit organizations and not for profit financial institutions to design an initiative to fill this gap. Through the continued leadership of the Medina Foundation and efforts of the many partners it brought together, the Express Credit Union / Express Advantage alliance was born in 2008. Click here to see the initial market research report conducted by the Medina Foundation.

Express initially piloted its model of customized products and services plus financial support services and outreach in the community in February 2009. From that date through October of 2010 the following results were achieved.

  • 1400 new members have joined Express since the beginning of the pilot in spring of 2009
  • Over 90% of new members are low income
  • Over 50% of new members had adverse banking history when they joined Express
  • One in four new members opened their account with the help of a bilingual community member service representative on site in the offices of one of the eight community partner agencies
  • Eighty people have signed up for our Vehicle Ownership Program, a matched savings program that includes a financial education component and access to affordable loans for people who need reliable transportation. Twelve people have made vehicle purchases.
  • Over 500 people participated in financial education or received other support through Express Advantage and its community partners and many others also receive one-on-one guidance from Express CMSRs or in-branch staff.
  • Through participating in financial education classes members significantly increased their ability to navigate the financial system, increased their trust in financial institutions generally and increased the types of financial products they use and the frequency of use.

For more information download the full evaluation report prepared by Clegg & Associates.

Research

Initiatives and Best Practices

Over the past decade there has been an increasing recognition that lack of access to quality affordable financial services is a significant barrier to moving people from poverty to financial stability and resiliency. Major national and international initiatives have been started by large private foundations; state and local governments have formed alliances with banks, credit unions and other non-profit organizations to reduce barriers and increase access to financial services; innovative products and services have been created to serve harder to serve populations; and research institutions have increased their efforts to track and report on the results of these initiatives. Following is a selected list of research, publications and organizations that provide context and findings for this work.

*These links will take you away from the Express Credit Union web site.

Initiatives