Citizens Advice has welcomed many of the Government’s initiatives as outlined in the recently published financial regulation White Paper.

The Citizens Advice service – a network of independent charities that helps people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing information and advice and by influencing policymakers – applauds plans to invest in financial education as a way of coping with the impact of the recession on many communities.

Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker said:
“Sessions with tips on how to budget, borrow and save creates more savvy consumers and helps people to help themselves.”

It also strongly welcomed the white paper’s determination to protect consumers more effectively from financial institutions, many of whom are not regulated as thoroughly as they might be.

Mr Harker added:
“We welcome a review of mortgage lending and the regulation of second-charge mortgages, where we would like to see a single regulatory regime that builds on the best elements of both the Consumer Credit Act and Financial Services and Markets Act.”

Citizens Advice also agreed that a speedy resolution to the bank charges debacle, still proceeding slowly through the courts, would be in the best interest of both the banks and the consumer. Mr Harker was keen to point out that banks should not be allowed to almost ignore their own codes of conduct when it came charging those in debt more for their banking services.

It also had praise for the Government’s plan to encourage the introduction of more accessible financial products.

Citizens Advice is very active in financial matters and has expanded its Financial Skills for Life financial capability programme which now reaches over 100,000 consumers a year. It operates via 200 bureaux and leads a national network of 14 regional capability forums. The programme is supported by the Prudential, and receives substantial support for associated programmes from a range of funders including Barclaycard, Nationwide Building Society and the Bank of America Foundation.

Guest Article by Neil Camp

As adults, never mind children, try to work out how many billions make a trillion, there is a growing clamour in schools, especially those across the pond, to start teaching personal finance as part of the curriculum.

And this is a trend which is set to hop across the water. Kids could suddenly find that religious education is out of the window, and personal finance lessons are in.

The reasoning behind such moves in the States, and here, is compelling of course. The argument goes that the near collapse of the U.K. sector was not only due to the amount of toxic assets floating around, but also due to the fact that the banks were giving tonnes of money to people who just couldn’t be trusted.

Now, this argument doesn’t play that well in the media of course, because the majority of the population do not want to blame themselves for the mess they now find themselves in. No, best to blame the financial institutions who were stupid enough to hand over the dosh in the first place.

But, nonetheless, the theory goes that if everyone was trained in school how to balance the cheque book, calculate the APR on a personal loan, or how to pick the correct credit card, then maybe the crisis wouldn’t have happened at all.

Right. Now, that all sounds great in theory, but that would suggest that we as children never had a biology lesson and never learnt that smoking, drinking and lack of exercise was all bad for us.

Now, back to the facts. Unlike the U.K., the U.S already does teach quite a lot of financial education in their schools. And some 28 states of the union legally require that a degree of financial education is taught. Which, again, somewhat weakens the argument for dropping double woodwork and taking up calculator operation instead. The U.S. has copped it worse than most, so it’s possible that the financial savvy population maybe wasn’t that savvy after all.

And research has found the financial education lessons in the U.S. hasn’t really helped. It was discovered that some retention of information was held for a short while after the classes, but that long term, there was little benefit.

The simple problem appears to be that the financial products sector is so sophisticated and complex, that comparatively few people have the ability, or indeed the inclination, to bother to learn enough to make a noticeable difference.

And the research outlined the fact that only a limited number of people, when it comes to a personal loan say, can calculate the total interest due, given the loan amount, number of monthly payments and the duration of the loan.

So, in many respects, educating the younger generation in the basics of personal finance might not seem such a good idea.

Yet there is of course a counter opinion and in the U.S. there is an organisation called the Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg) which strongly advocates that children must learn some personal finance basics whilst at school. They warn that if no attempt is made to properly educate school leavers on how to conduct their finances, then they will continue to make the kind of mistakes seen over the last decade, when personal debt levels have got out of control.

And this is the view being extolled in the U.K. schools at the moment, although many think this will be a flash in the pan and once the financial crisis eases, then it will be forgotten along with a number of other well meaning ideas that never get off the ground.

Guest Article by Neil Camp