Aug 19, 2010 | Andile April
ONE of South Africa's leading banks launched its free-for-all financial literacy tool-kit My Money My Power yesterday.
The Absa toolkit forms part of the bank's ongoing drive towards creating a financially savvy society.
The toolkit includes a multitude of topics such as financial planning - as well as how to grow and make the most of the consumer's hard-earned money.
Speaking at the launch, Absa chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer Venete Klein said the consumer needed to be empowered with knowledge to make sound financial decisions - to benefit their lives and contribute towards their financial freedom in the long term.
Klein said that since 2007 Absa had taught thousands of consumers about financial matters, but now the bank planned to reach at least one million South Africans through its consumer education activities by the end of the year.
She said that during the 2010 Teach-a-Child-to-Save drive, Absa would mobilise employees to teach 300000 schoolchildren about the importance of saving.
"There is a general lack of knowledge and interest in saving and investing among South Africans," said Klein.
"This could be attributed to a number of factors, among these is that children are generally not taught to save at an early stage, and they take this behaviour into their adulthood."
The South African Savings Institute chief executive Elizabeth Lwanga-Nanziri said: "In these times of massive job losses and low consumer confidence, entrepreneurship shines as a potential pathway for sustained economic growth and recovery.
"There is a need for creating both a culture and a generation of entrepreneurs and self-employment projects."
She said education and financial literacy played a key role in the development of skills and behavior patterns that would allow future entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses in a responsible and inclusive manner.
"The starting point is an individual's own savings and reduced dependency on the state.
"The Absa financial literacy toolkit will be handy in entrenching the much desired skills in our consumers," she said.
Absa retail bank managing executive for product and pricing Keith McIvor said people must strive towards saving more and owing less.
"We all need to start getting our money to work for us.
"A nation with good saving habits contributes to the building of infrastructure."
From Sowetan Live published on Aug 19, 2010
