Mutuals and financial education

Financial Mutuals are committed to working with their customers to make sure they have a good experience of the financial services industry.  This approach means understanding the needs of their customers, developing the right products, providing high standards of service and support; and giving something back to the communities in which they operate.

They also want to help their customers understand financial services – after all people often have to make long term decisions that can affect their future. Mutuals often employ their own advisers to help, or encourage people to talk to an independent financial adviser.  

Mutuals also support financial education. This takes many forms, such as:  support to the government-run Money Advice Service, information provided on their website, and visiting schools to teach lessons on finance.  Over the last few years the Association of Financial Mutuals has been working with pfeg (the Personal Finance Education Group) to develop online training services for young children.  We have developed two websites, called ‘Fun to Save’ and ‘Saving Squad’, which are used by thousands of young children every month, to provide an enjoyable way of learning more about money.

We also support the proposal for financial education to have a fixed placed on the school curriculum, and urge all parents to sign the No. 10 petition: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/8903.  The petition already has the 100,000 signatories required to ensure the issue is debated in parliament- but more signatures are always welcome.

As we continue to work on financial education, we will feature more of that work on this page.