Financial education during pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing major economic and social crisis that will burden societies for years to come. Many people's personal finances are also under pressure. Organisations and financial education providers are responding to the public's needs under the pandemic, by providing timely and much needed information and education messages via mostly digital means.

OCED

The OECD/INFE Secretariat has developed a short policy note outlining immediate measures that can support the financial resilience of people throughout the COVID-19 crisis. It provides meaningful policy suggestions for stakeholders' financial education directions to address the immediate and post-pandemic future needs. In addition, OECD has set up a COVID-19 response hub, providing additional data, analysis and recommendations on a range of topics in response to the emerging health, economic and societal crisis, facilitate co-ordination, and contribute to the necessary global action.

IFEC

The IFEC has created a webpage titled Ride out the Coronavirus placed in a prominent position in its The Chin Family website, providing important and relevant information on managing one's finances under the pandemic. Webinars for public enrolment are available as face-to-face programmes have been suspended.

The Hong Kong Federation of Insurers (HKFI)

The HKFI has launched a thematic webpage titled Insurance Dashboard on COVID 19 providing useful information pertaining to insurance matters related to the pandemic.

NGOs

As face-to-face financial education activities cannot be conducted during the pandemic, some NGOs have resorted to digital means to provide financial education to their service targets. Here are some examples.

The Hong Kong Family Welfare Society – Financial Education Centre (HKFWS) publishes social media posts, articles and short videos for youths. They involve HK Polytechnic University students to prepare these online posts and videos to convey the messages of healthy financial management attitudes and skills, setting financial boundaries and financial goals, etc. Over 55,000 beneficiaries were reached from March to July.

In July, Junior Achievement Hong Kong (JAHK), conducted a virtual JA Personal Finance workshop to help a group of secondary students learn essential money management skills, under the guidance of business volunteers via video conferencing. JAHK is also working with its partners to develop a web-based finance capability building tool.

With many members being young-old retirees and computer literate, Happy Retired has resorted to providing online financial education talks via Zoom and Facebook Live. Four online talks were conducted from March to July. As a result of moving online, the reach has even increased compared to the previous on-site talks.