Disseminate financial knowledge about deposit insurance and the role of the deposit insurer
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), financial literacy or financial education can be understood as “the process by which financial consumers/investors increase their understanding about financial products, concepts and risks through receiving objective information, guidance and/or advice to develop skills and confidence to better understand financial risks and opportunities, make informed decisions, know where to find support and take effective action to improve your financial situation.” In the world, disseminating financial literacy is one of the proactive and effective ways to protect financial consumers, and is also an effective support tool for transparent and healthy financial markets, contributing to supporting the implementation of national goals, towards developing a sustainable and comprehensive financial system. According to the OECD, financial literacy programs should be designed to meet the needs and knowledge levels of the target audience, as well as how the target audience wants to receive financial information. Disseminating financial knowledge should be identified as a long-term and continuous process, especially as the financial market grows increasingly complex, with many new products and multi-dimensional information.
As a member of the financial safety net, the deposit insurer also has the responsibility to participate in disseminating financial knowledge, especially financial knowledge about deposit insurance. In fact, many deposit insurance systems in the world have specific goals and activities to promote the dissemination of financial knowledge as well as knowledge about deposit insurance to the public in order to protect depositors and raise awareness of the public and ensure the safe and healthy development of the financial and banking system.
Experience in promoting financial literacy of deposit insurers in the world
Established in 2005, the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Malaysia (PIDM) is responsible for protecting depositors in the event of bank failure, contributing to maintaining the stability of the Malaysian financial and banking industry. PIDM focuses on and actively implements public awareness and financial education programs. Accordingly, PIDM applies a variety of measures to communicate and disseminate financial and deposit insurance knowledge to the public through channels such as radio, print newspapers, digital advertising and through cooperation programs with media partners, online publishers to publish articles, digital audio files (podcasts) and video content about DI. In particular, PIDM regularly implements financial communication and education programs for the public, notably the MoneySmart Project. The MoneySmart project is PIDM's knowledge dissemination program implemented since September 2009 with support from the Malaysian Ministry of Education. This is one of the highlights of PIDM's Public Awareness Strategy, demonstrating PIDM's strong commitment to social responsibility, engagement and bringing benefits to the community. The main objective of the program is to disseminate knowledge about deposit insurance, PIDM's role as the national deposit insurer as well as sound financial management skills such as: budgeting, saving and consuming wisely. bright. Initially, Money Smart's target audience was students in middle and high schools as well as higher education levels, then expanded to people with disabilities and finally to all subjects. demand. MoneySmart is implemented through forms such as online games, challenge games at school and boarding houses, as well as quiz competitions... Every year, PIDM adds additional initiatives to expand the audience and improve the quality of this educational program to help the program have increasingly higher results. Since it was officially organized in 2009 until its conclusion in 2016, the MoneySmart Project has spread financial literacy in more than 2,000 high schools and 150 higher education institutions in Malaysia with thousands of students. Millions of students participated, creating a great reputation for the organization.
Established in June 1963, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) is the earliest deposit insurance system in Asia. PDIC operates with the goal of protecting depositors and enhancing public confidence in the banking system, as well as contributing to promoting a safe and sound banking system.
Starting from the above functions and tasks, PDIC has developed financial knowledge dissemination programs since 2005 and started implementing them since 2006. This is a financial knowledge dissemination program implemented by the deposit insurer with earliest appearance in Asia. Specifically, PDIC has cooperated with the Department of Education to implement the Financial Literacy Project with the long-term goal of creating savings habits among young people and contributing to efforts towards increasing economic growth. national savings rate, creating capital, thereby increasing financial investment, contributing to national construction. In addition, the project also sets short-term goals including: launching an educational campaign on disseminating financial knowledge focusing on young people; build a self-recovery campaign, saving costs for the government; Create savings awareness among young people so that in the long term, the national savings rate and economic development will improve. The economic crisis of 2008 required a depositor education campaign to promote safe and responsible banking. In that context, PDIC expanded the financial knowledge dissemination project into a national program on financial knowledge dissemination for young people (mainly high school students and students) called “Become a smart saver” campaign that promotes 7 habits of a smart saver. On June 17, 2009, the Campaign was officially launched with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between PDIC, the Central Bank of the Philippines and the entire banking industry represented by the Philippine Banks Association and the Savings Banks Association, Philippine Rural Bankers Association and Philippine Bank Marketing Association. Financial literacy dissemination programs have achieved success and received positive reviews from stakeholders, attracting millions of students and people across the country. In addition, PDIC publishes a handbook on disseminating financial knowledge to provide financial knowledge and financial transactions to the public faster and easier. The book provides easy-to-understand instructions and aims to simplify knowledge about financial and banking transactions. The book is designed with the main characters being a family and wondering about financial issues, with dialogue and explanations that are easy to understand for everyone. The book includes 7 chapters, each chapter talks about an important issue in financial transaction activities such as types of savings accounts, checking accounts, time deposit accounts and closing deposit accounts; interest rate; the power of information… The book is a collaboration between PDIC and Efren Ll. Cruz - a famous expert on financial knowledge.
Current status of DIV's dissemination of financial knowledge about deposit insurance
In Vietnam, disseminating financial knowledge is an activity that receives special attention. This is considered a key task to implement the goals, tasks and solutions of the National Strategy on Financial Inclusion. In particular, disseminating financial knowledge about deposit insurance also plays an important role in strengthening public trust and contributing to stabilizing the financial system.
Deposit Insurance of Vietnam (DIV) is a State-owned financial institution established in 1999, carrying out the mission of protecting the legitimate rights and interests of depositors, contributing to maintaining the stability of credit institutions and ensure the safe and healthy development of banking activities. After more than 24 years of construction and development, DIV has deployed a variety of methods to promote and disseminate knowledge about deposit insurance, reaching out to many public audiences to widely spread DI policy, meeting the needs of depositors' growing demand for information.
In the period from 2020 to 2022, DIV's financial knowledge dissemination activities have achieved many encouraging results. Specifically, in the field of journalism, DIV has posted more than 1,000 news/articles on its website and published a quarterly DIV Bullettin about current information on banking industry activities and new policies of the DIV, information relating to depositor protection, news articles about the activities of DIV and issues that need orientation and advice for depositors. In addition, DIV has signed contracts and implemented communication of deposit insurance policies with reputable newspapers and magazines inside and outside the banking industry.
Regarding the field of radio and television, DIV has organized policy seminars, broadcast reports on television channels such as VTV2, News Television, VITV Channel... as well as conducted a Policy Advice column on the Vietnames Broadcast channel. In addition, DIV coordinates with reputable agencies to carry out activities to disseminate financial knowledge about deposit insurance such as coordinating with the Department of Communications - State Bank of Vietnam to join a number of communication programs of the banking industry; Coordinate with the Department of Education of Vietnam Television to produce and broadcast 08 Talkshows on VTV2 channel to popularize new regulations on deposit insurance; Coordinated with VOV Traffic to broadcast 6 skits and 6 messages; coordinated with the State Bank of Vietnam to record 03 episodes of the program "The Key Box", broadcast on VTV1 channel.
For on-the-spot communication and knowledge dissemination activities, DIV has organized many events to disseminate deposit insurance policies to audiences of People's Credit Fund (PCF), commercial banks and microfinance organizations; Coordinate to organize communication of deposit insurance policy at annual member congresses of People's Credit Funds, Farmers' Union and at the Congress of the Communist Youth Union and the National Financial Supervisory Commission.
In addition to the achieved results, there are strong and rapid changes in the financial market such as digital banking products and services, fluctuating interest rates, and the impact of epidemics and the environment on the financial market. sets new requirements for DIV's activities of disseminating financial knowledge about deposit insurance.
Firstly, in the context of people gradually switching to online payment methods, reducing working time at transaction points of banks/people's credit funds, DIV has not focused on disseminating financial knowledge about deposit insurance on digital applications used for payment such as digital banking, e-wallets...
Secondly, Vietnam's population is nearly 100 million people and is expected to reach 100 million people in 2023. With such a large population, DIV's activities to disseminate financial knowledge about deposit insurance need to have changes in the scale of media. Communication programs or strategies need to be designed with larger scope, scale, broader coverage, with the participation of the SBV, Ministry of Education, etc.
Thirdly, in terms of subjects, we should focus more on high school students, students and vulnerable groups in society. Students are the ones who will participate a lot in financial activities in the future. Vulnerable groups of people in society often have many difficulties in life and lack financial knowledge.
Fourthly, financial knowledge dissemination activities are not considered a key task of DIV, leading to limited funding sources for this activity, not meeting the needs of developing financial knowledge of deposit insurance is an important activity of the organization.
In the coming time, DIV's activities of promoting financial literacy about deposit insurance will be maximally effective, supporting the process of implementing the task of protecting depositors and contributing to maintaining the stability of the finance – banking system, some changes should be implemented as follows:
• Develop mechanisms and work with commercial banks and electronic payment applications to design and deploy communication activities and disseminate financial knowledge about deposit insurance on these applications.
• Learn from the experiences of deposit insurers around the world and advice from media agencies to build a comprehensive and appropriate communication strategy for each stage. In addition, it is necessary to design systematic financial knowledge dissemination programs about deposit insurance that are novel, attractive, and attract the public's attention in accordance with the overall communication strategy.
• Design programs to disseminate financial knowledge in general and about deposit insurance in particular, focusing more on students and vulnerable groups in society. In particular, it is possible to draft handbooks and instructions on understanding in the field of finance and banking as well as coordinate with universities and high schools to organize communication and knowledge dissemination for this subject.
• Clearly identify the importance of communication and dissemination of financial knowledge about DI, increase funding for this activity in accordance with the tasks to be performed and the capital source of DIV.
Communication Department