Disability Financial Management App

A Disability Financial Management App

Make It Easy to Plan – A Concept Paper – May, 2017

This concept paper focuses on the design and development of a technology platform to serve the financial planning needs of people with disabilities who live independently and work in their communities.

Americans with a disability can use 21^st Century technology to manage the use of disability benefit systems while planning and building careers. The technology and expertise are available to develop these tools.

Online budgeting and planning tools are available to clients of Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, and other financial service institutions. Retirement and mortgage calculators are ubiquitous. The Disability Financial Management App will expand the features of such tools to include modeling changes in income for those who use selected state and federal government benefits systems while building a career, or transitioning into retirement from a job.

Project Objective: Design and implement features people with disabilities could use in an online app to plan and better manage their personal budgets and funds in real time. Many users of this app may use, or need to use, public benefits including Social Security’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicaid, and Personal Assistant Services.

The app could serve budget preparation, planning and projection activities, and with crucial protections built in, could transfer funds or data to third parties using encryption technologies.

Functionalities to should include budgeting modeling and calculations, disability benefits calculations and rules related to changes in income or status, fund transfers between financial institutions and others, bill payments, and data reporting functions both to the user and then to selected government or financial services with the user’s permission.

Project Outcomes; This app intends to enable users to manage and optimize their income and assets when also receiving disability-related services. The app will:

1. Assist users to identify their financial needs and goals, including disability-related income and expenses;
2. Optimize financial planning by identifying appropriate disability-related and/or employment support programs and services;
3. Assist users to build and maintain budgets that comply with complex government regulations;
4. Transfer funds to tax-advantaged accounts and dedicated accounts used for disability-related expenses to protect income and assets from disqualifying users from receipt of needed services;
5. Automate recurring disability-related and other bill payments; and,
6. Produce financial reports including reports required by government agencies.

Organizations such as the World Institute on Disability (WID) and the National Disability Institute (NDI) have subject matter experts who could partner with financial institutions to develop such a project.

Context and Background

Disability Benefits 101 Information Services at WID

WID has developed disability benefits calculators (DB101.org) that serve a range of state residents with disabilities who are building careers or changing jobs. These tools enable residents in Alaska (Fall 2016), Arizona, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Ohio to understand and better manage how wages can affect their state or federal disability benefits. The Earned Income Tax Credit and other benefits are also modeled within these free online planning tools.

These tools and their technologies could be foundational for building an app with some or all of the features described above.

Wells Fargo could develop and market the app on their own, or in conjunction with WID. With our 14 years of development and expertise in this domain, WID brings to the table its experience that no one organization on its own has the breadth and depth of capacities to develop this niche of online tools and services. WID needs new partners and sources of development funds to bring the design work and experts together that can shape and sharpen a scope of work from this concept paper. Wells Fargo could have a new, long term customer base with such an investment. Government cooperation and support would be solicited from the start of a design protocol.

CareerACCESS for Young Adults Building Careers

CareerACCESS (see CareerACCESS.org) is one of the WID initiatives that could integrate with designs and testing of the app platform outlined above. CareerACCESS pilot projects will test changes in federal policy aimed at significantly increasing the employment rate of people with disabilities by expecting young adults with disabilities ages 18 through 30 to work. CareerACCESS will provide support and services recognizing that disability benefits are offsets to the high costs of disability rather than subsidies for the inability to work. By better managing the complexities young adults with disabilities face in retaining benefits while building careers, this app will enhance career goal setting for CareerACCESS pilot project participants or anyone using public disability benefits.

We Can Do This Today

There are federal, state and local agencies with a maze of programming to assist people with disabilities with the high costs associated with managing disability. These costs include health care, personal assistant services, medications, durable medical equipment, accessible housing, and wheelchair accessible transportation. Programs that can support these costs are trying to get into and harder to navigate once found eligible. Each program has strict and different eligibility rules as to how much income and assets participants may have at application and after award of the benefit.

Many programs have work incentive rules that can shelter income and assets to encourage participants to seek employment. Their current methods are also complex. Benefits specialists and lawyers are dedicating their careers to help participants get through the maze of processes, procedures, and regulations. National data on disability program beneficiaries reveals that most participants don't bother and decide it is easier and safer not to work.

Apps that foster expectations and make it easy to plan financially, manage current benefits systems and build careers are investments worthy of smart financial institutions.