Sector unions will give life to the ‘financial university’

Next Wednesday, at the end of the first day of the Cartagena banking conventionorganized by Asobancariathe launch of the Financial Education Foundationan effort of the unions and their affiliated entities.

Initially, it will be financed with local resources and later it will also have international aid.

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The creation of the foundation, according to sector spokespersons, It was an exercise led by Asobancaria to unify efforts in financial educationsince several have been carried out, but in a dispersed manner and with different types of results.

When consulted on the subject, Gustavo Morales, president of Fasecolda, He told Portafolio that “The unification exercise should not sacrifice other individual efforts that have been successful, such as that of Fasecolda, which together with Asobancaria and the Ministry of Education, have developed the Nueva Pangea tool for secondary schools.”.

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“The seed capital of the Financial Education Foundation comes from the sector’s own unions and they will subsequently seek national and international cooperation resources, as well as from the financial entities themselves.“, assured the union leader.

Leading the initiative in the process of designing and putting together the Foundation’s financial education model, which is expected to be national in scope and in all regions, is Edna Bonilla, who was Secretary of Education in Bogotá in the previous administration.

To bring financial education to the entire country, the Foundation will seek to prevent it from being identified as a commercial exercise by banks and the Colombian financial systemwhich is sometimes not well identified by a part of the population.

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“The important effort is for everyone to row in the same direction and focus on where the entities believe it can serve and is not associated with a commercial strategy. There they take away the commercial“said a spokesperson for the financial system.

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Furthermore, he said, the Foundation “can achieve better levels of financial education, which in the end allows for more financial well-being so that people know how to get into debt and know the risks to insure themselves.”.

It must be remembered that the Document Conpes (National Council for Economic and Social Policy) 4005 September 2020 formulated the national policy for the inclusion and economic and financial education.

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This policy “Its objective is to integrate financial services into the daily activities of citizens and micro, small and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs), meeting their needs and generating economic opportunities to contribute to the growth and financial inclusion of the country.”.

He Government Nationallocal governments and the private sector have made efforts to increase inclusion and financial education.

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Additionally, it has improved the financial and digital infrastructure to bring these services to the greatest number of Colombians. However, there are still incomplete credit markets for MSMEs and people in rural territories and special groups such as indigenous, mining, informal and migrant communities; Furthermore, there is asymmetric information between banking entities and potential users due in part to the impossibility of making the traceability of transactions visible.

On the other hand, the Financial Supervision develops a financial education strategy aimed at creating knowledge and skills that allow citizens to transform their relationship with the financial system and the management of their money. In 2023, it carried out 216 activities in 91 municipalities throughout the country, in which 27,934 attendees participated..

HOLMAN RODRÍGUEZ MARTÍNEZ
Portfolio Journalist