Mastercard's social impact leader explains why financial education can't be forced Sara BelcherAugust 20, 2025 at 12:31 AM Listen and subscribe to Living Not So Fabulously on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
- - Mastercard's social impact leader explains why financial education can't be forced
Sara BelcherAugust 20, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Listen and subscribe to Living Not So Fabulously on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
Financial literacy is important for everyone, but what is the best way to convince people that getting a financial education matters?
On a July 17 episode of Yahoo Finance's Living Not So Fabulously podcast, Shamina Singh, the president of Mastercard's Center for Inclusive Growth, explained that financial tools and education are most effective when they're designed around the moments someone will actually need to use them in the real world.
"We have done a lot of research at the Center for Inclusive Growth around this very issue, and of course, I think baseline, everybody needs financial education in their curriculum," she said. "The learnings that we've had at the center tell us that people generally will learn financial situations and financial education when they need it. When they have to utilize a different tool or product, they have to open a bank account, or they're getting a government subsidy that requires them to learn how to use their wallet. That tends to open up their minds to 'I need to understand how to do this.'"
This is when people are most open to learning something new, she explained, and when financial tools and education have the best chance at being effective.
"That's the moment when you can get in," she continued. "It's a use case, it's providing the proof point that's either going to help them save time, learn something new that's going to matter to them, or help increase their wealth."
Prior to her work with Mastercard, Singh held multiple positions with the US government focused on policy, including senior positions in the US Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services. She was also a senior adviser to then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Shamina Singh attends the talk Fortune Most Powerful Women International Summit on May 21, 2025, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Amal Alhasan/Getty Images for Fortune Media) (Amal Alhasan via Getty Images)
Singh left public service on the advice of her mentor, former Texas Governor Ann Richards, who stressed that there was much more to learn about financial patterns in the private sphere.
According to Singh, Richards told her, "Once you learn how money moves, ... you'll be able to make even more difference in the work that you decide to pursue."
Singh's financial education led her to develop the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, which aims to help individuals and small businesses grow and develop their own financial security using data-driven research.
She stated that real change comes from pragmatic approaches that are primed to help people when they have real-world needs.
"Financial education is the baseline," she reiterated. "100%, financial education as a tool to increase wealth at the moment you actually need it. So it's a little bit of a difference in how we approach our financial education and the work that we do at the center. We really try to inject it or put it in motion when it's relevant to a life stage or a life situation."
In addition to helping individuals develop their own sense of financial security, the Center for Inclusive Growth also partners with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to help small businesses reach the next level of development where a bank might not be able to offer financial assistance.
"These are little-known gems of financial power that help small businesses who may be on the cusp of growth get to the next level," she explained. "If you connect with a CDFI, their lending terms are different from banks and their ability to look at your history, where you've come from, what you are going to contribute, what your business will contribute, allows them to lend — maybe at a slightly higher interest rate — but they're not they're not loans that are seeking to hurt your business in the end. These are community-based loans, and they're usually given through small businesses."
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