The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) has completed the development of its MyMoney Learning Series as part of its mandate to take consumer financial education (CFE) to consumers, available as e-learning content, and at no cost. Recently, the FSCA has increased its communication to consumers as there has been a rapid surge in financial crimes against consumers and, due to a lack of financial knowledge and desperation, the FSCA realises that consumers are being taken advantage of.
The series is built on five key themes:
1. Financially Smart
2. Financial Safeguard
3. Financial Protection
4. Financial Knowledge
5. Business Finance
These themes are broken down into 31 sub-topic packages and includes foundational concepts, such as good financial habits, to advanced topics such as understanding investments.
The FSCA’s MyMoney Learning Series moves away from the traditional training style where financial literacy programmes have been developed and deployed in a manner where facilitators merely passed on information to participants covering pertinent topics. Instead, the learning series now uses techniques to encourage participants to share experiences, ideas, and opinions. This creates a learning environment that is engaging, interactive, customised and adaptable. Facilitators have the ability and freedom to choose the topics and tools that work best for their specific audience’s needs.
The development of the FSCA's MyMoney Learning Series was preceded by extensive research into the financial literacy needs of South African consumers, including the needs of the youth and young adults, as well as the blind, partially sighted, deaf and hard of hearing. The research revealed that consumers lack the basic foundational financial literacy information needed to make informed financial decisions.
In addition, a gap analysis of our current content against legislation was conducted into the South African schooling curriculum (Foundation, Intermediate, Senior and FET phases), as well as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)/International Network on Financial Education (INFE) competencies framework on financial literacy for youth and adults. The content development processes took two years to complete and included the adaptation of the content to the needs of the blind, partially sighted, deaf and hard of hearing.
The Series provides the information that consumers need to make better financial decisions in these trying times and beyond and is available HERE!
PERSONAL FINANCE