BBVA sets its sights on financial education research
José Manuel González-Páramo, BBVA Executive Board Director and Head of the Advisory Board of the Center for Financial Education and Capability, and Antonio Ballabriga, Global Head of Responsible Business at BBVA, go over what the Center has been up to in its first year of existence amid as the Global Money Week event takes place.
In the course of their exchange, González-Páramo pointed out that the initiative to start up the Center was BBVA’s response to two very important realities: the need to push ahead with financial literacy as an essential element of sustainable economic growth, and secondly, the need to come to terms with the shift in the paradigm imposed by the digital revolution, which opens many doors and advances inclusion but at the same time requires a greater degree of financial capability.
The BBVA executive director says the creation of the Center for Financial Education and Capability represents an important step forward in BBVA Group’s financial education strategy, which started over a decade ago and has now invested 73 million euros in training and inclusion programs to the benefit of 11 million people.
During his face-to-face with Antoni Ballabriga, José Manuel González-Páramo called for greater involvement on the part of public administrations in financial education. But he also focused on the important steps taken over the past few years as a result of the engagement of key global organizations and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the OECD, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, which “have understood that financial education is essential to protect customers and consumers and ensure financial stability”.
González-Páramo also flagged the next lines of research by the center, which are: digitalization as driving force behind financial education, financial health – how to measure it and how to improve it through the right savings and investment products – and research on the financial behavior of people to determine the influence of not only cognitive but also environmental factors, and on that basis, to contribute to improving financial education and inclusion.