MoneySENSE - Continued Efforts to Bring Financial Education to the Community

Bringing financial education to various segments of the community continued to be the focus of MoneySENSE. MoneySENSE and the Association of Banks in Singapore (ABS) commissioned a two-year financial education initiative for primary schools in 2011. The interactive "Save & Spend Wisely" skit, produced and presented by local drama group Act 3 Theatrics, highlights the virtues of saving, budgeting as well as the concern for the less fortunate. Students also receive a guide featuring suggestions on what they and their family members can do together to save and spend money wisely. "Save & Spend Wisely" is a sequel to the MoneySENSE-ABS "Saving - the Sensible Habit" programme which has been brought to more than 160 primary schools since 2007.

In partnership with Mediacorp, MoneySENSE launched the "Mind Your Money" series of seminars, which continued to feature celebrities and MoneySENSE speakers sharing their money management habits and actions that consumers can take to manage their finances prudently. Following the positive feedback on the English seminars, a Mandarin seminar was held at the end of 2010. MoneySENSE messages were also broadcast in various languages in several radio segments. MoneySENSE has also published info-advertorials in our four national language newspapers, and contributed articles to several magazines.

Enhancing consumers' understanding of financial products

In partnership with Business Times, MoneySENSE introduced the "Smart Money" column in 2010, which seeks to educate investors about the features, structures and key risks of common, new or soon-to-be launched financial products. To extend the outreach, selected topics will also be featured in The Sunday Times and Lianhe Zaobao. These complement the ongoing MoneySENSE-ABS "MyMoney" series which continued to receive positive feedback, with more than 80% of participants rating the seminars as good or excellent. Since its launch in 2009, the series has covered many financial products ranging from bank deposits to insurance and investments.

As part of a longer term approach to bring financial education to Singaporeans, MoneySENSE is also working to partner an Institute of Higher Learning to set up a financial literacy institute. The financial literacy institute will take the lead in the development and running of financial education programmes to complement MoneySENSE's initiatives.

In the past year, MoneySENSE events saw over 98,000 attendees while media initiatives reached over 2 million consumers. These would not have been possible without the strong support and commitment from the various MoneySENSE partners, comprising the Financial Education Steering Committee1, industry associations2, community bodies and the media.

1		The MoneySENSE Financial Education Steering Committee consists of the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports; the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of Manpower; the Central Provident Fund Board; the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the National Library Board and the People's Association.
2		The industry partners that work closely on MoneySENSE include the Association of Banks in Singapore; the Association of Financial Advisers Singapore; the Consumers Association of Singapore; the Financial Planning Association of Singapore; the General Insurance Association of Singapore; the Insurance& Financial Practitioners Association of Singapore; the Investment Management Association of Singapore; the Life Insurance Association of Singapore; the Securities Investors Association (Singapore); and the Singapore Exchange Ltd.