Too many Malaysian households have been thrust into vulnerable financial positions that might have been mitigated, due to high debt levels, low buffers and poor financial habits that left them sorely unprepared to cope with unexpected shocks during the pandemic. When confronted with having to deal with their financial difficulties, many struggled to take appropriate steps to gain control of their situation and make good choices. As a result, individuals have had to resort to drawing down on retirement funds, or incurring higher debt just to get by. And there are still too many who continue to fall prey to desperate financial scams and fraud. Indeed, the need to double down on financial education has never been clearer. We need to build stronger resilience among all Malaysian households. We need to equip and empower Malaysians with the right knowledge and skills to confidently make responsible financial decisions at key stages of their lives. We need to promote healthy attitudes towards financial management. And in Kofi Annan’s words, we need to build a bridge to hope for every Malaysian who has been affected by the pandemic crisis – not just to tide over the immediate challenges that they face, but to provide for their future financial security. With this in view, this Community of Practice aims to help FEN members and the broader financial education community develop effective responses to meet the challenge of delivering lasting and impactful financial education to society. The Community of Practice agenda today focuses on two key areas.
The first is the measurement and evaluation of financial education and its effectiveness. Strengthening measurement and evaluation is a key pillar of FEN’s strategies to increase the impact of initiatives implemented by FEN and its members. This would enable FEN members to design more effective and tailored financial education programmes, that also optimises resources, to achieve sustainable behavioural change. By strengthening the focus on outcomes and impact, we can reinforce effective practices and support the continuous improvement of programmes. With this in view, FEN is committed to develop and execute an annual measurement and evaluation process for financial education programmes that support the National Strategy for Financial Literacy – to be implemented from 2022. 2/3  BIS central bankers' speeches  The second area of focus today is on opportunities to make better use of data and behavioural insights to advance smarter financial education. A key challenge that we face today is the misalignment between information and resources made available to financial consumers, and the way in which they consume, process and act on such information. Behavioural insights can help us close this gap to make better use of the tools at our disposal to bring about positive change. Advances in technology are also opening up new opportunities to leverage on behavioural insights to achieve more effective financial education interventions. The ability to gain much deeper and richer insights into consumer behaviour are now possible, and could completely change the way we think about and deliver financial education interventions.