Washington Trust has 134 convenient ATM’s available in the state of Rhode Island, including most Rite Aid locations? No matter where you go, your money is never too far away. Click here to find an ATM near you.
The Bank's annual peanut butter drive to benefit the Rhode Island Community Food Bank was completed on April 30. This year marked the 11-year anniversary of Washington Trust's PB Xpress - a regional drive to collect jars of nutritious peanut butter for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. This year's two month long drive brought in more than 14,056 pounds of peanut butter, equivalent to 7 tons, to help local families served by the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. In the past 11 years, Washington Trust has collected nearly 93 tons of peanut butter to help fight RI hunger.
This year, Washington Trust introduced "Donate the Difference Day" which was held on Friday, April 1. The initiative was kicked off by a press event at the Rhode Island State House with the Governor of Rhode Island and business leaders from all over the state encouraging fellow Rhode Islanders to pack a lunch and donate what they would have spent on buying lunch, to the PB Xpress campaign. The single day effort amounted $1,669 in online donations which the Food Bank turned into jars of peanut butter.
Washington Trust also hosted the PB Xpress Community Day on Saturday, April 30 at the Bank's Governor Francis Branch in Warwick where businesses, schools and organizations dropped off more than 7,000 pounds of peanut butter that they collected from March and April. The Cartoon Network's Scooby Doo and the Pbruins' Samboni were on hand to mingle with children and families.
Thank you to the 100 schools, organizations and businesses across the state and region that held their own collection drives to contribute to the PB Xpress to help end hunger in Rhode Island!
Look for our newly redesigned Washington Trust website to launch in the next few weeks! There will be some exciting changes to www.washtrust.com in the month of June. Our redesigned website will provide visitors with a more interactive experience and easier access to information on products and services. The site's new functionality will allow you to quickly access all of your important banking information with fewer clicks and easier navigation. The site's new design features will assist customers with all of their Personal Banking, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management needs.
New features of the website include:
Click here to view the home page of the new site.
National headlines continue to decry the poor state of the nation's economic climate. These news stories do an excellent job of capturing the public's collective fiscal anxiety, but rarely convey what individuals can do to empower themselves and alter their own personal financial landscapes.
The issue of economic empowerment is especially acute in the senior population, community that is often misunderstood and misrepresented when it comes to the debate over personal financial management.
To cut through the rhetoric and misinformation, a national survey of seniors (and their adult children) was conducted in order to get an accurate snapshot of the key financial issues facing our nation's seniors.
In an effort to better understand public attitudes toward reverse mortgages, Marttila Strategies conducted six focus groups during late September 2010, and three national surveys during the final two weeks of October 2010. The research was extremely informing and it revealed a number of key strategic opportunities that we believe should guide National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association's public policy advocacy during the coming years as it seeks to increase public acceptance of reverse mortgages.
Three National Surveys: October 16-30
Three demographic cohorts were targeted for research:
We began the research program by conducting six focus groups, two from each of the three target cohorts. The focus groups were informing in their own right and they also made an important contribution to the question wording and strategy of the national surveys. After the analysis of the groups was complete, we conducted three separate national surveys of 600 persons each among the target demographics.
The information gleaned from the surveys was unsettling, and yet, wholly unsurprising:
As the conversation turned from economic woes to potential solutions, reverse mortgages emerged as not only a viable, but also an effective method of facing difficult economic circumstances. Rarely does a research program provide such decisive results as this one has. The research clearly shows:
1. ENTHUSIASTIC SUPPORT FOR REVERSE MORTGAGES: Seniors who hold reverse mortgages are delighted with the product and give it exceptionally high ratings. These attitudes belie the negative accounts that have been widely reported in the media.
2. PLAIN DEALING, FEDERAL PROTECTIONS: Further, seniors with reverse mortgages believed they understood the terms of the product, were not pressured to buy it, were not misled and benefitted from the mandatory financial counseling required by federal regulations. Again, the research is unmistakably emphatic on this point; another finding that counters widespread media presumptions.
3. PROVIDING A REAL SERVICE: Nearly half of the seniors who hold reverse mortgages would struggle to pay their monthly expenses, AND/OR, stay in their home without their reverse mortgages. The research is unmistakably clear on this point: seniors use reverse mortgages because they need to do so. What's more, nearly 25% of seniors without a reverse mortgage worry they will not be able to cover their monthly expenses in the future without supplemental income; 17% worry they will have to leave their home without supplemental income, clear future problems.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF STAYING IN THEIR HOME: 80% of seniors want to stay in the home in which they currently live for the rest of their lives. 85% of children with at least one living parent who own their home believe their parents would like to stay in their home for the rest of their lives.
5. INTERGENERATIONAL CONSENSUS REGARDING RETIREMENT: Seniors with and without reverse mortgages believe the best financial strategy for their remaining years is to pay their own bills so their children will not have to worry about them. And adults with at least one living parent do not want their parents to worry about an inheritance for them; they want their parents to take care of themselves. This really is a clarifying piece of sociological research. In this regard, 40% of seniors with reverse mortgages involved their children in their decision to obtain a reverse mortgage. Of those children who were involved, 65% approved of their parents decision to obtain a reverse mortgage.
6. HARD TIMES: The three surveys documented that these are hard times in America: all three cohorts are deeply worried about their current economic situation and are only slightly more optimistic about their future economic situation. The three surveys confirm widely documented polling on the profound economic anxiety that a majority of American's feel. And for many, their economic future is even more worrisome: seniors and their adult children believe the current generation of adults will face a much more challenging economic future than their parents did; another very informing piece of sociological/economic research.
7. A TARGET AUDIENCE NUMBERING IN THE MILLIONS: There are currently more than 36 million seniors in the U.S., the majority of whom own their homes. While the research indicated that the more well off seniors were less responsive to the arguments for reverse mortgages (understandably), that still leaves a potential audience of millions of seniors for reverse mortgage marketing.
Click here for more detailed results included graphs and tables. For more information about Reverse Mortgages, please contact one of our Mortgage Specialists.
Washington Trust is sponsoring the traveling panel exhibition The Many Faces of George Washington which will be hosted by the Newport Historical Society in July 2011. Founded over 210 years ago, in the coastal town of Westerly on August 22, 1800, Washington Trust was named in honor of our nation's first President, George Washington, who died in December 1799.
The Many Faces of George Washington will be a centerpiece of the Newport community’s Fourth of July celebration, which will also feature the reading of the Declaration of Independence from the steps of the Colony House—the same place where it was originally read in July 1776. For more information, please visit the Newport Historical Society’s website.
