Are you a service provider looking to help your newcomer clients build lasting financial security? This post offers practical, field-tested strategies for building credit, promoting savings, and supporting asset development, that are ready for use in your programming today.
For refugee and immigrant service providers, the first 90 days of resettlement are often consumed by urgent priorities: housing, employment, English language learning, school enrollment, and health care. These pressing needs are just the beginning. Long-term financial security requires a second phase of programming designed to promote sustainability for newcomers.
Most financial capability programs assume an existing credit history, familiarity with banking norms, and no language barrier. Newcomer clients often start from a different place — all immigrants to the US arrive without a credit history and limited access to credit markets, many come with little banking experience, limited English proficiency, remittance obligations, and distrust of financial institutions. Effective programming must be built around these realities.
Integrating Financial Wellness Programming
Financial Education
Financial education is best received when woven into programs newcomers already attend, such as cultural orientation, job readiness training, ESL classes, or career development. Even brief training builds early awareness that can be developed in future programming.
Try this: During job readiness training, spend 15 minutes walking through a sample pay stub and setting up direct deposit. In ESL classes, introduce financial vocabulary like “checking,” “credit card,” and “overdraft” as part of everyday vocabulary building.
1:1 Financial Coaching
Awareness of financial basics is just the foundation for building financial security. Financial conversations often require individualized coaching to assess a client’s situation, overcome challenges, and build a realistic action plan. Recurring check-ins and shared accountability build trust and drive progress. Financial goals connect to housing, employment, and family life, so financial conversations should live inside a newcomer’s wider service plan.
Having a dedicated financial coach is ideal, but this may not be feasible for all organizations. Train caseworkers, employment specialists, and other staff to fold a short financial check-in into job placement follow-ups, case reviews, or education planning.
Connection with Community Resources and Financial Institutions
Help newcomers build strong relationships with financial institutions. Partner with banks, credit unions, and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) offering newcomer-accessible products like accounts that accept ITINs (Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers) or foreign IDs, or that require no minimum balance. Vet these partners in advance so staff and clients know in advance why an application might be denied.
Extend this relationship-building beyond banking. Community organizations focused on small business development and homeownership can help newcomers build assets and grow their finances. Establish referral relationships that promote clients’ access to small business loans, homebuyer programs, and other wealth-building resources when they’re ready.
Connect with Local Asset Development Resources
Find local small business development resources through the Small Business Administration. Home ownership support can be found at local Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-approved counseling agencies. For other lending products, connect with local community development financial institutions (CDFIs). Partner with these organizations to host classes or create a referral pipeline for services.
Tracking Financial Milestones and Progress
Focus your sustained programming on seeing progress in your clients’ finances. Survey tools, budget worksheets, and credit data over time show a client’s trajectory. A rising credit score, a growing savings balance, or a debt paid down offers concrete evidence of an improving financial situation. Share this progress back with clients to bolster motivation.
Outcome data also gives funders concrete evidence that programming works. Budget worksheets are already collected across many newcomer programs, so milestone tracking might only require coordinating existing data rather than building something new.
Financial Focus Areas for Long-Term Wellness
Credit and Debt Management
Credit takes time to build, so encourage clients to begin thinking about their credit score early in their resettlement. Remind them that most long-term goals, including renting an apartment or buying a home, ultimately require a credit history. Service providers should normalize “credit invisibility” as a common starting point for newcomers rather than a setback that puts them “behind” others. Everyone in the US starts out with no credit history. With knowledge of the credit system and careful management, new arrivals can build credit in their first few months of arrival and create positive financial behaviors to maintain a strong credit profile. Focus on the behaviors that build a positive history: using credit within one’s means, paying on time, and shopping around for the right product.
Credit and debt are inseparable concepts. Many newcomers are unfamiliar with how interest and minimum payments work, which can let debt accumulate unnoticed. Help clients understand how debt builds and how it affects their credit, so they can make informed decisions.
- Teach credit monitoring. Show clients how to check their credit score and pull a free credit report, then walk through it line by line to catch errors early.
- Connect clients to credit-building products. Build a referral pipeline with two to three local CDFIs or credit unions offering secured credit-builder loans or secured credit cards.
- Build debt literacy alongside credit literacy. Walk through a concrete example of what happens to a debt balance if only the minimum is paid before a client takes on their first card or loan.
- Flag predatory offers. Teach clients about “red flags” including rent-to-own schemes, payday lenders, and debt settlement scams.
Credit Monitoring: Pull a credit report with a client from annualcreditreport.com, and advise them to check their report every four months. Show clients where to find their credit score from their bank’s website or mobile app or from another free credit score service.
Promoting Savings: Meet Clients Where Their Cash Flow Is
Traditional savings advice doesn’t account for irregular income, remittance obligations, and immediate survival needs. To best suit newcomers’ circumstances, effective savings programming should be flexible, goal-based, and incentive-driven.
- Frame savings around concrete goals. Encourage clients to save for a specific near-term goal such as a visa renewal fee, a flight, or a commercial driver’s license rather than generally encouraging them to build their savings.
- Start small and automate it. Help clients set up automatic transfers of $5–$10 per paycheck and emphasize that the habit matters more than the amount.
- Build remittances into the budget. Include both a remittance line and a savings line in budgets so neither is treated as optional.
- Support existing savings practices. Explore ways to formalize or complement community savings models that clients may have used in their countries of origin rather than replacing them.
- Connect clients to matched savings programs. Refer clients to Individual Development Accounts (IDAs), which match contributions toward a specific goal and are proven to boost participation.
Asset Development: Building Toward Ownership
Auto purchase, homeownership, small business ownership, and retirement savings can all strengthen financial security. Lay the groundwork for these investments well before the purchase itself.
- Introduce asset goals early. Naming a client’s long-term goal in initial service planning gives them a concrete savings objective.
- Track and celebrate milestones. Log a first approved credit card, a first $500 saved, or a first business license, and celebrate it with the client.
- Build a small business referral pathway. Partner with microenterprise organizations or SBA Women’s Business Centers for business plan coaching and immigrant-focused microloans.
- Offer homeownership readiness referrals. Connect clients to HUD-approved housing counseling agencies for free first-time homebuyer education.
- Introduce retirement basics early. Explain employer 401(k) matches or Roth IRAs, even for lower earners. Remind them that employer matching is akin to free money that they can use to bolster their savings goals.
Conclusion
Financial security for newcomer communities is built through consistent touchpoints woven into the broader resettlement journey. Organizations that do this well sequence programming thoughtfully, partner deeply with local institutions, and stay attentive to their clients’ realities. Implementing these changes in your preexisting programming can go a long way toward securing clients’ long-term financial security.
Additional Resources
The IRC received competitive funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant #90RB0053. The project is 100% financed by federal funds. The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
