‘More efforts needed to expand financial literary’
Credit to Author: Aric John Sy Cua| Date: Thu, 30 Jan 2020 16:19:03 +0000
MANY Filipinos remain financially illiterate and more efforts need to be exerted to change that, a finance expert said on Thursday.
In an interview with The Manila Times TV, Greg Aguilar, head of sales of online finance platform MoneyMax, said that “when it comes to financial literary, we still have plenty more to do.”
“A lot of our customers — when we [talk] to them or when they are [about to make] a particular purchase — don’t fully understand some of the basic concepts of what it is that they are buying,” he added.
“That can be slightly concerning, because they’re making a purchase — that is, to protect an asset — that can be considered of significant value, but…don’t know why they are making this purchase or how it would directly benefit them.
“We learned that we need to do better in terms of offering our customers different [kinds] of products [and] tailor [these to meet] their different needs.”
MoneyMax is working to be part of the system to resolve that problem, according to Aguilar.
Customers’ improved understanding of “the products they are buying…can translate to other things, and they can enjoy other benefits,” he said. “They can divert funds to…[their] savings, insurance or retirement.”
Citing the 2015 Financial Literacy Report of global credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, Aguilar said the country’s financial literacy was “not as strong,” with a “large or significant” percentage of Filipinos regarded as financially illiterate.
“Here in the Philippines, financial literacy is not as strong as we would like it to be,” he said.
According to that report, only 25 percent of Filipinos consider themselves financially literate.
Founded in 2014, MoneyMax is known as the Philippines’ online platform for “comparing financial products.” Its column in the business section of The Manila Times appears every Thursday.