Empowering people to confidently face an increasingly complex financial environment. This is the objective with which the new Chair of Financial Health and Education has emerged, a pioneer at the state level, hand in hand with the Caixa Enginyers Foundation, the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Institut d'Estudis Financers. All with one premise: education is the key to achieving good financial health and well-being in this regard. And, as has been reiterated during the presentation at the UOC, financial health also impacts physical and emotional health.
To delve into the objectives and tools of the new chair, the general director of Grup Caixa Enginyers, Juanjo Llopis, and the director of the Caixa Enginyers Foundation, Iñaki Irisarri, address the initiative from the entity's desire to humanize finance.
— What does this commitment to humanize finance mean?
— J. Llopis: When we talk about humanizing finance, we talk about putting people at the center. It is the purpose of taking care of the financial health of our members.
— What does the entity understand by financial health?
— I. Irisarri: Good financial health is a pillar of well-being. For this reason, financial health and education are one of the three axes of the foundation. In this sense, we work, above all, to contribute to improving the financial health of people in vulnerable situations.
— How does the foundation do it?
— I.Irisarri: We focus on improving the financial education of these groups, and even more so at a time when the trends of new finance and digitalization can negatively impact the most vulnerable groups. In the end, education is the tool to achieve good financial health.
"Financial health is a pillar of well-being"— And what role does the new professorship play?
— I.Irisarri: The professorship is precisely a way to promote research and knowledge in this field. To analyze what is positive and what is negative, what is being done well and what is not. In short, to identify good practices that improve financial health.
— How will they do it?
— I.Irisarri: The professorship aims to focus on financial literacy, education, and these best practices, and to design itineraries that work and have a positive impact on people.
— How will this work be concretized?
— I.Irisarri: We will conduct a first diagnosis of financial education and identify these good practices for these itineraries, considering the various profiles in vulnerable situations. A young person without financial education is not the same as an elderly person or a migrant person.
— How will these itineraries reach society?
— I.Irisarri: Currently, there are several initiatives that already promote financial education, and what we seek is for the professorship to complement them. The will is for us to be able to transfer all this knowledge to the current initiatives, such as Finanzas para Todos, so that they can benefit from all this knowledge and research.
— What does the professorship aim to change?
— I.Irisarri: The ultimate goal is to raise awareness in society, and for the administration to take into account the importance of incorporating financial education content into schools and into more regulated content. We want to demonstrate the importance of these resources.
— J. Llopis: For more than 58 years, at Caixa Enginyers, we have wanted to offer a local service, now to the more than 216,000 members who are part of our cooperative. What we want is to be faithful to cooperative values, of shared value and of returning the value we generate to society.
— What are these values?
— J. Llopis: Integrity, excellence, ingenuity, passion, and clarity. We work for financial culture, so that everyone can have access to knowledge and tools that allow them to better manage their economy and, with this, take care of their personal and family health. Ultimately, it is the way to do different banking, one that represents humanizing finance. It is our purpose.