José Cisneros is the elected Treasurer of the City and County of San Francisco. As Treasurer, José serves as the City's banker and chief investment officer, and manages tax and revenue collection for San Francisco. Treasurer Cisneros believes that his role of safeguarding the city’s money should extend to all San Franciscans and, as such, has embarked upon an ambitious financial empowerment agenda since taking office. The most known of these programs, an
innovative public-private partnership to bank the unbanked called Bank on San Francisco, launched in 2006 and is currently being replicated by more than 70 cities and states nationwide. In early 2010, the US Department of the Treasury announced the creation of a national Bank on USA initiative, based on the San Francisco model and supported by $50 million in federal funds.
In 2009, San Francisco became one of only three cities in the country to launch a municipal Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE), housed within the Treasurer’s Office. The first major new initiative of the OFE is the recently announced “Kindergarten to College” program, the first universal matched Children’s Savings Account program in a public school system in the country.
To further this work on a national level, San Francisco joined with New York City to create Cities for Financial Empowerment in 2007 and partnered with the National League of Cities to launch a national Bank On resource and networking online portal, joinbankon.org, in 2010.