In 2023, 22.9% of people in the ten provinces lived in a food-insecure household. That amounts to 8.7 million people, including 2.1 million children, living in households that struggled to afford the food they need. With another year of rising food insecurity, the percentage of people affected is...

A new OSC behavioural science experiment reveals Canadians are equally open to investment suggestions from AI systems and human advisors. As the use of AI increases, understanding the role of AI in supporting retail investor decision-making is important. While AI presents a range of opportunities...

Following the crowd can help you simplify complex decisions like investing. But you could lose money by investing in something just because everyone else is. Find out how to avoid herd behaviour by watching this video from the Ontario Securities...

Individuals with lower incomes may face a range of economic challenges and barriers to upward mobility. Two types of services that may both contribute to the goal of improving individuals’ financial situations are employment and training (E&T) services, which have the goal of improving...

Investment firms are required to provide to each client an annual summary of all fees paid the previous year for services and advice. These requirements result in greater transparency about what you are paying, either directly or indirectly, for investment advice and other...

The 2021-2023 Building Financial Wellness in First Nations (FWFN) project - led by Prosper Canada and funded by IG Wealth Management - aimed to integrate culturally appropriate financial wellness supports into existing services in Manitoba and Ontario First Nation...

Filing a tax return is one of the most important ways for Canadians to access income benefits. However, numerous barriers can make tax filing challenging, particularly for people living on low incomes. After engaging with 31 individuals, we discovered that there are disruptors and compounders that...

The Office of the Investor at the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) engaged with Innovative Research Group to conduct the organization’s first national investor survey. The objective of this general population (and particularly investors) survey research is to help CIRO better...

Maytree recently published the latest count of social assistance recipients in Canada. Learn how many people in each province or territory were receiving social assistance in 2022-23, and how those numbers have changed over...

In 2020, the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network (ICAN) set out to widen the scope of its financial counselling services by looking at how it could deliver a holistic financial counselling framework that could better meet the financial and well-being needs of its service users. Over the past...

The external evaluation firm, Taylor Newberry Consulting, evaluated the Benefits Wayfinder between June 2022 and January 2024.  This infographic showcases the feedback received based on feedback collected from 500 users and over 35 organizations across Canada.  Impact: L'orienteur en mesures...

Visitors to the Learning Hub may read past copies of the quarterly Learning Hub Digest where we share quarterly updates to keep you informed on the latest financial empowerment, resources, research, and learning events. Issue 12: September 2024 Issue 11: July 2024 Issue 10: January 2024 Issue...

One of the goals of The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) is to provide better debt advice. While debt advice is available in many different forms, many people who could benefit from debt advice do not seek help. In this study, we sought to better understand the barriers and drivers to people...

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation establishes evidence-based international standards and finding solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental challenges. The OECD/INFE Toolkit includes a financial literacy questionnaire...

The annual BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report report analyzes data that individuals and businesses submitted to BBB Scam TrackerSM (BBB.org/ScamTracker) in 2023. The findings shed light on how scams are perpetrated, who is being targeted, which scams have the greatest impact, and which behaviors and...

The Asset Funders Network engages philanthropy to advance equitable wealth building and economic mobility. For 19 years, AFN has provided a forum for grantmakers and financial institutions to connect, collaborate, and collectively invest in helping more people achieve economic security. The 2023...

The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest, and a severely distressed economy poses a real and significant crisis to an already fragile safety net for the 1.2 million people that comprise Canada’s diverse Black communities. The aim of this report is to provide a systematic analysis...

This report is about the financial resilience and financial well-being of Canadians with low incomes based on the Seymour Financial Resilience Index ®  It provides a call to action for more targeted support from policymakers, financial institutions and community non profit organizations for...

A key component of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s (FCAC’s) mandate is to monitor and evaluate trends and emerging issues that may have an impact on consumers of financial products and services. Technological innovations in financial services and shifting consumer behaviours have...

While much research has been conducted on how giving is correlated to factors like educational attainment or income level, the influence of ethnicity has been elusive. This research attempts to better understand how newcomers to Canada and second-generation Canadians perceive and approach giving...

The Social Assistance Summaries series tracks the number of recipients of social assistance (welfare payments) in each province and territory. It was established by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy to maintain data previously published by the federal government as the Social Assistance...

In 2019, the Australian Government committed to additional actions to improve the financial outcomes of Australians, including undertaking an immediate review of the coordination and funding of financial counselling services that disadvantaged Australians rely on.  The review noted the benefits...

This report examines how diary participants achieve the financial wellbeing that they have. The evidence we found is that low-income people work very hard to manage their finances. They endeavor to control their finances so that, as one participant said, their finances don’t control them. They...

This report summarizes the results of a follow-up survey with nineteen low- and modest-middle income Winnipeggers, undertaken in June through September 2020. These respondents were drawn from the 29 Canadian Financial Diaries (CFD) participants who completed a year-long diary in 2019. The results...

Given the scope and the diversity of the reports and studies that examined the impacts of the pandemic on well-being, it can be challenging to absorb and understand all the ways in which quality of life has been affected by COVID-19. The well-being literature offers an approach that may help. This...