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.