Back to basics
While launching the Australian Bankers’ Association’s (ABA) new online financial literacy program, chairman David Morgan said increasing the financial understanding of those who were the most illiterate would increase their personal income by $3,000 a year.
He said this was a sustainability priority that banks could most affect, and over a decade would inject an additional $6 billion a year into gross domestic product.
“The lowest levels of financial literacy were associated with those having lower education, those not working, those with lower incomes, those with lower saving levels, single people and people at both extremes of the age profile,” Morgan said.
“Broadening financial literacy is part of the wider sustainability agenda — an agenda that is determined not just by banks … but by all of us working together in partnership.”
Also the chief executive of Westpac Banking, Morgan said the bank employed the philosophy that a prosperous business went hand in hand with a prosperous society.
For this reason, Westpac introduced a Financial First Steps workshop three years ago to teach its young employees the basics in money management.
Today, school students, apprentices and indigenous communities also use the program.
The ABA’s new Financial Literacy Info Centre provides access to other workshops of this type from Australia’s banking sector.
“The new section of the ABA website complements the ASIC consumer protection FIDO website and the Financial Literacy Foundation’s pending web portal, as well as our member banks’ financial literacy resources,” Morgan said.
Recommended for you
Advisers at DOD Bookkeeping, which received an $11 million penalty last week, received as much as 40 per cent of their remuneration via a bonus when clients purchased a property via a SMSF, according to court documents.
Private wealth manager Escala Partners has launched an end-to-end investment platform to strengthen its alternatives capability as clients seek sophisticated vehicles.
Perpetual Wealth Management has hired two advisers from Ord Minnett as part of five hires, just weeks after the rival firm announced it had picked up six from Perpetual Private.
ASIC has cancelled the AFSL of a Perth financial services firm following payments to its clients by the Compensation Scheme of Last Resort after a failed managed investment scheme.