Building financial capability
Above: Barbara Norris is one of the 6,000 members of staff who have delivered MoneySense lessons to 1,500 schools across the UK. Here she is helping pupils at Ramsey School Essex.
Below: Sharon Johnson who has worked for RBS since leaving school 17 years ago, took a two month sabbatical to work at the Sepilok Orangutan Sanctuary in Borneo.
When people have been educated about money and how to work with financial services firms they are more likely to make the right decisions and to avoid difficulties. Our commitment to building financial capability began over 14 years ago with the Face2Face with Finance for Schools programme. During that time we have invested more than £40 million in related activities, from providing lessons to almost 1.5 million school children to supporting 20,000 free training courses for debt advisers. In 2007 our employees delivered more than 16,000 lessons to over 635,000 pupils.
To ensure we have a sound evidence base for our activities in this field we have established the MoneySense Research Panel, a cohort of 10,000 secondary school pupils aged between 11 and 18 years. We will keep in touch with this group of young people over the next five years to understand how different levels of financial education and understanding affect the capabilities, aspirations and decisions they make as they enter early adulthood.
The work we do to build financial capability extends beyond young people in schools. In October, Face2Face with Finance was brought even more firmly into the heart of our business and rebranded as MoneySense.
We reached beyond our customer base in building capability through media partnerships with two UK national newspapers. The Metro Debt Alert campaign, run in partnership with Citizens Advice sought to help people better understand their finances and encouraged those with concerns to seek help early. Our partnership with the Daily Mail offered its readers a free guide on How to Take Control of Your Money.
Promoting financial inclusion – Next
© 2008