More stories about our investments in the community can be found in our Community Engagement Report, available at ir.regions.com.
Regions’ Financial Education Strategy: Regions Next Step®
Regions Next Step is a Company-wide financial wellness program designed to help students, adults, and business professionals take strides toward achieving their unique financial goals. Through Next Step programming, Regions creates shared value by helping our associates, customers and the communities we serve achieve financial wellness.
As a key component of how Regions seeks to make life better, various areas of the Bank contribute to financial wellness programming. Regions Next Step serves as a unifying umbrella, connecting our many financial education offerings and different audiences. This holistic approach provides operational efficiencies, creating synergy, as well as a common framework and focus in programming. Regions Next Step audience segments include students from kindergarten to college and adults at various life stages and income levels. Regions Next Step also provides resources for businesses of all sizes.
Delivering financial education with a customer-centric approach is what makes the Regions Bank approach to financial education unique. During 2019, we continued to engage our audiences through in-person seminars at businesses and community organizations, as well as through relevant digital programming, including the launch of a new Regions Next Step landing page and podcasts.
The open accessibility of our resources to all, regardless of whether they are a Regions customer, reinforces our dedication to inspiring, motivating and helping everyone during their individual financial wellness journey. Every Regions associate brings different perspectives, backgrounds and skills to our team, but we unite with a passion to serve via Regions Next Step. More information on Regions Next Step content and tools are available at regions.com/nextstep.
Disaster Recovery and Storm Preparedness
A disaster can strike anywhere, anytime. A community that suffers a disaster is at risk of losing population, schools, businesses and revenue, so providing a quick response in emergency situations is imperative. Regions and the Regions Foundation have a history of working with nonprofit organizations in the community to expedite financial support to aid in relief recovery. In 2019, we stepped up our investments, loans, technical assistance and flexible banking to communities impacted by tornadoes in Alabama and Missouri, floods in Arkansas and Louisiana and a hurricane in Florida.
We maintained this resolve to respond quickly as other severe weather events affected areas in our footprint during 2020. In March, tornadoes ravaged Middle Tennessee, and the Regions Foundation provided $250,000 in grants to support nonprofit organizations working on the ground to help those who were affected. We assisted in long-term recovery efforts following tornadoes in Louisiana and Arkansas, floods in Mississippi and a second tornado in Tennessee. In addition to assisting our communities through funding of community organizations, Regions announced a series of disaster recovery financial services to help people and businesses during their economic recovery from these events.
To see how we support our associates during disasters, see here.