DollarSmart needs more support
The Financial Planning Association (FPA) has acknowledged that its program for raising the financial literacy of Australian students, DollarSmart, needs more industry support.
In response to industry calls at the FINSIA conference last week for dealer groups to take action on financial literacy themselves, Rebecca Murray, FPA general manager of marketing and membership, told there needs to be more of an industry-wide push to fix student financial literacy.
However, Murray warned that any dealer group initiative to go into schools to teach financial literacy needed to be pro-bono.
“When financial planners are doing it pro-bono, as an individual practitioner, it’s probably appropriate for them to do it under the FPA banner. If you’re doing it [in] the dealer group as a pro-bono initiative of the group, then I think it’s totally appropriate for them to do it,” she said.
Any work that anyone can do to contribute to raising financial literacy is very valuable, Murray said.
Murray acknowledged that not all schools have taken up the FPA’s offer for planners to teach financial literacy in the classrooms, despite it running since 2003.
The FPA is investigating how to integrate the DollarSmart program into school curriculums, Murray said.
The DollarSmart program is free of charge for any customer.
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