Brazil: a National Strategy for Financial Education

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Brazil a National Strategy for Financial
Education
José Linaldo G. de Aguiar
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National Strategy for Financial Education
Enef Estratégia Nacional de Educação Financeira
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Enef A Coremec initiative
Coremec

• Committee for Regulation and Supervision of
  Financial and Capital Markets, Insurance, Pension
  Funds and Capitalization Systems

• Four regulation supervision agencies
• Central Bank of Brazil
• Securities and Exchange Commission of Brazil
• Superintendence of Private Insurance
• Private Pension Funds Secretariat

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Enef A Coremec initiative
Coremec

• Promotes coordination of the four agencies
  activities, in order to improve their achievements

• Has established a working group
• representatives from the four agencies
• guest members (from public private sectors)
• descriptive document of the National Strategy
• acting from November/2007 to November/2008

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National Strategy
Scenario

• Myriad of financial and credit products, on one
  hand
• Financial isolation (no access to financial
  institutions), on the other hand
• Access to risk assets
• Private capitalization vs. Social Security
• Longer life expectancy

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National Strategy
Financial education

• Sound decision making
• Protection against fraud
• Financial equilibrium (dealing with unexpected
  situations)
• Planning for the future
• Stimulus to saving

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National Strategy
Some countries dealing with financial education,
such as Australia, Spain, United Kingdom and the
USA have one thing in common
All of them have adopted a national strategy.
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National Strategy
Two main reasons to create a national strategy

• People are not aware of financial matters that
  affect their lives, regardless of their age,
  social position or education background
• Well-educated citizens deal better with their
  money, which is a condition to the existence of
  sound financial institutions and a reliable
  financial system

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Enef Strategic guidelines
Directives

• Permanent State Program nationwide
• Public interest actions
• Centralized management vs. decentralized
  implementation
• Permanent assessment and periodic revision
• Three levels of action
• information
• instruction
• orientation

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Enef Strategic guidelines
Objectives

• Integrate financial education into peoples
  lives
• Broaden peoples understanding of finance and
  economy, so they can make wise decisions
  concerning their financial lives
• Contribute to the effectiveness and soundness of
  the financial and capital markets, and of the
  insurance, pension funds and capitalization
  systems

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Enef On-going actions
Actions

• Cooperative efforts with public and private
  institutions
• Specific website launched (for on-going
  initiatives to be recorded)
• Nationwide survey to identify peoples knowledge
  on finance and economy and peoples habits on
  dealing with money
• International Seminar on Financial Education
  (09/23/2008)

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Enef On-going actions
Actions

• Structure of a written document describing Enef
• Written texts about
• Introduction and international experiences
• Brazilian scenario on specific topics
• Strategies to reach students
• Strategies to reach adults
• Discussions on Enefs governance

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Enef Document structure
Chapters
Section 1 Introduction Section 2 Presentation
of main topics of interest Section 3 Proposed
actions 3.1 Financial Education for
students 3.2 Financial Education for
adults Section 4 Governance Section
5 Conclusions
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Challenges
Students

• Once the document is approved, it is crucial
  that Brazilian Education Authorities implement
  the necessary actions to accomplish the defined
  strategy

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Challenges
Adults

• Heterogeneous target audience. Actions,
  programs, campaigns, materials must reach all
  segments of society

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Thank you
Secretariat for Institutional Relations
linaldo_at_bcb.gov.br 55 61 3414-1955