The Vice President General of the Bank of Italy, Alessandra Perrazzelli, yesterday unveiled the central bank's new online portal dedicated to theFinancial Education, "The economy for everyone“, operational from 15pm on Friday 22 November.
According to a recent study OECD, Italy ranks penultimate among the G20 countries in terms of economic-financial skills. An extremely worrying fact, aimed at indicating a lack of knowledge on the part of Italian citizens on a topic relevant to the management of their savings. And it is precisely to fill these gaps that the Bank of Italy, which has always been committed to promoting financial education, offers a portal entirely dedicated to increasing basic knowledge in the economic field.
The Economy for all, together with What matters, the first public portal of Edufin, completes the training offer proposed by the Bank. Indeed, the portal is Free and accessible to everyone, from the young to the elderly, but also to visually impaired users, who can use the portal without needing external help.
The home page is characterized by its simplicity, where all the contents are present in two languages, Italian and English. The site, structured in a clear and intuitive way, allows you to test your level through the sections Word Searches e Quizz, to then land in the section dedicated toBasic information, to have a first contact with the subject.
Those who, on the other hand, want to deepen certain issues can do so by accessing one of the five sections related to money management: Planning, Paying, Borrowing, Saving and Investing. For example, by clicking on the Pay item, you access a list of cards aimed at explaining the functioning of the main payment instruments, from banknotes to credit and debit cards.
The site also offers a series of videos, updated every two weeks: Watch your choices, which recounts the experience of people grappling with daily decisions, such as using a credit card to shop online and all the associated risks. behavioral traps, which explains the possible mistakes that anyone can unknowingly make when making decisions in the economic field. The aim is to simplify a subject as much as possible, which is still greatly underestimated today, but which is essential for gaining knowledge that affects the investment choices made. Finally, to complete the collection, Economics and Finance. It's never too late, where prominent teachers, such as the governor Ignazio Visco and some Bank executives, explain everyday concepts, such as the payment system and complementary pensions.
Once you have a basic understanding of the subject, you can proceed to the section Publications, where more complex documents are found, but still conceived taking into account the need to distribute information in a simple and clear way.
The objective of the Bank of Italy is to retain customers, achieving an economic-financial literacy of citizens, so that users are more encouraged to learn and verify the progress made through quizzes e interactive activities entertaining, always keeping up to date with the section dedicated to news.
To conclude the event, the fourteenth lesson Paolo Baffi of Money and Finance, held by the professor of the London Business School, Helen Rey, entitled "International Monetary System and the global Financial cycle".
Professor Rey's studies focus, above all, on economic analysis and on policies aimed at reducing the fragility present in the economic and financial system. The lesson started fromendogeneity of the dollar and US monetary policy as the main authors of theinstability of the international monetary system. His speech then continued by discussing the various policies that can be adopted, both in the short and long term, to make the economic system stronger, dedicating much space to macro-prudential tools, often underestimated, and the possibility of future technological solutions, such as digital currencies, to decentralize the dollar and make international payments more efficient.
