Financial Literacy: a Key Tool to Improve People's Life Cycle

"Economic-Financial Literacy (FL) and sensible wealth management are core basic skills key to improve personal financial wellbeing and achieve a more active citizenship. Mastering these set of skills may be crucial for low-income groups, helping them to achieve a better standard of living and avoid crossing the poverty line. The importance of financial education programs, in particular those targeted to low-income groups, is widely recognized by Governments and international organizations. FinKit aims at improving FL by developing specific tools, targeted to poor elderly (male and female over 65), and middle age women (55+) - single or head of an household - to increase the capacity of practitioners, such as educators, coaches, volunteers, local development agencies, to successfully transfer financial knowledge to individuals at risk, with a particular focus on the specific segment of population made by “house rich, cash poor” elderly.The study was carried out by a network of Eu institutions: CeRP-Collegio Carlo Alberto (leading institution, research centre, Italy); Observatoire de l'Epargne Européenne (OEE, no profit association, France); Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal (IPS; academic institution, Portugal); Spanish Confederation of Education Centres (CECE, Spain), Ufficio Pio della Compagnia di San Paolo (No profit institution, Italy), Turin Savings Museum (local partner).The team reached the project objectives by:•exploring the needs and characteristics of the older and more vulnerable, the existing financial education initiatives/tools in the partners’ countries, and the products and initiatives tailored to vulnerable consumers available in the market•producing a set of financial education tools, to be used as a support for social operators to approach and successfully transfer financial knowledge to individuals at risk •opening a table with local associations working with group at risk, to explore the expectations and needs of social operators in being carriers of financial education actions, as well as to survey the characteristics of the target groups affected by the education activitiesThe Intellectual Ouputs of the project consist of:•FinKit Evaluation Map: tools for the assessment and delivery of financial education programmes targeted to elderly and women 55+•Study: Influences on financial decision making of the elderly and women 55+, reached through surveys obtained gathering information and data from stakeholders and end users•Study: Financial inclusion - products and initiatives tailored to vulnerable consumers, focusing not only on their analysis, but also on their true accessibility and the legislative and market limitations/barriers•A set of 5 booklets, collected in the series “It is never too late. Financial education for older people”•2 videos, to reinforce the understanding of a selection of financial concepts •The web app SIMCO, meant to show in a simplified way how the spending capacity can be increased by exploiting a share of the ""illiquid"" wealth •5 FinKit Bites, short factsheets aimed at turning the key findings of the project into concrete recommendations.The impact of FinKit can be measured by its effectiveness in: -increasing the awareness of the importance of financial literacy and education, even at older ages, to help individuals at risk make informed decisions when saving and possibly avoid financial exclusion; raising greater awareness of the existing financial literacy gaps-increasing the awareness of the importance of teaching financial literacy to groups at risk through a mediate delivery of content, and thus of the crucial role played by formal/informal trainers of the no profit sector in transferring financial literacy-improving the operators’ FL competencies and increase their capacity to transfer FL, by providing the operators with: a better knowledge of their assisted population; a better knowledge of the more effective systems to convey financial literacy skills; a better knowledge of the existing initiatives/products tailored to vulnerable consumers; new targeted teaching instrumentsA key achievement of FinKit was the great impact on local operators involved in the project. We believe that the project will be able to affect the existing financial education initiatives: the booklets, videos and app constitute very useful non-commercial resources to enhance the transmission of financial basic skills and can serve as basis for the development of new, targeted tools.All the reports, factsheets and tools produced in FinKit will remain available on the FinKit website. We think that the outcome of FinKit will be able to stimulate further initiatives, as the need for innovative methodologies and instruments for effective financial education is becoming stronger and stronger, as institutions gain awareness of the role of EFL in improving individual wealth management and preventing financial fragility."