Chile’s Financial Inclusion Advisory Committee has presented its 2017-2018 National Strategy (ENEF).

Financial Education must be treated as a tool for promoting society’s welfare and the population should be educated from an early age. This will enable people to become more financially literate and understand how the economic system works.

The 2017 ENEF sets up Financial Education programs and an Action Plan especially targeted at young people and women. These two segments have been given priority because of the impact of this training in the early years of economic activity, in the case of young people, and because of their greater economic vulnerability, in the case of women.

The paper selects contents and competences that are aligned with guidelines from the OECD, the World Bank and the G20, essential factors when drawing up these programs.

Suggested core contents include such basics as the financial panorama and its regulation, consumer protection, saving and consumption, budgets and planning, investment, credit and indebtedness, financial digitization, taxes, public spending and insurance.

On the subject of competences, the ENEF has a list which varies depending on which of the two segments is being addressed, and which takes into account the different stages of learning of these groups throughout their lives.  

The Action Plan defines 25 lines of action and 76 specific actions focusing on 3 levels: one general and two specifically focused on each of the two priority segments:

• Specific actions for all. These are generic interventions such as disseminating Financial Education information and contents on digital platforms; running campaigns, giving lectures, training programs and workshops; developing recommendations and guidelines based on international standards, and providing support in drafting and using codes of good practice.
• Actions targeted at students. Actions designed both for students and for teaching faculty: giving courses and lectures about economic and financial education and linking Financial Education to the curricular subjects taught in educational centers, among others.
• Actions targeted at women. Actions such as training for women in cooperative groups, running workshops with rural women and approving programs for entrepreneurial women.