It appears that the Illinois Assets for Independence Program is currently on hold. Several weeks ago, we contacted the Department of Human Services, which administers the program, we were told that Illinois cannot afford the program right now, particularly because it requires the state to match any federal funds provided on a three-to-one basis.

The Department still maintains a webpage for the program, but many of the links are broken and the helpline (866-441-8540) has no functioning voicemail. Note that the Illinois statutory provisions creating Individual Development Accounts (305 ILCS 5/12-4.103) and the Assets for Independence Program (305 ILCS 5/12-4.103a) both condition the program on “available funding” or “funding availability.”

If you do set up a similar program outside of the rubric of the Illinois law, we recommend consulting with bank counsel to review the agreements between the bank (which may be acting as custodian of the accounts), the customers, and the third party nonprofit agency that will be involved with the program. Some of the areas that may need to be addressed in those agreements are (1) clarifying the account owners’ rights as to the funds in the accounts, (2) handling of disclosures and account documents, (3) protecting the privacy of the account owners’ financial information, possibly with waivers of those rights as to disclosures to the nonprofit agency, and (4) ensuring that the nonprofit agency complies with all of your institution’s legal requirements, compliance policies and procedures, and reputational concerns. There may be many more concerns that we have not yet identified, and you will likely need to consult bank counsel in identifying areas of concerns and crafting account documents that will mitigate the risks to your institution.