Staff Reporter
Windhoek
Financial literacy can make a real difference in equipping Namibians with the knowledge and skills necessary to take control of their lives and build a secure future for themselves and their families.
This is one of the reasons that Old Mutual, says it supports financial literacy as a long-term investment in human capital when it recently contributed N$200,000 to the Financial Literacy Initiative (FLI).
Old Mutual has been a platform partner and supporter of FLI for the past 3 years while the FLI itself was launched in 2012 to enhance financial education for individuals and micro, small and medium sized enterprises.
In supporting this initiative, Old Mutual, enables FLI to ensure that Namibians are better financially educated and capacitated to make informed financial decisions throughout their lives.
The initiative also enables Namibians to choose and appropriately use the best financial products and/or services for their specific needs while ensuring they understand and act upon their rights and responsibilities within the financial sector and know and make use of the appropriate recourse mechanisms.
Handing over the annual contribution, Old Mutual executive: marketing, transformation and customer strategy Ndangi Katoma said: “Old Mutual supports financial education because it is linked to positive outcomes such as wealth creation, retirement planning and responsible borrowing amongst others”.
Receiving the Old Mutual annual contribution, Francois Brand, Financial Literacy Initiative (FLI) secretariat manager: stated that “supporting financial literacy should be viewed as a long-term investment by public, private and civil institutions”.
He commended Old Mutual for being a trusted partner in financial education and cited the fact that according to the Financial Literacy Baseline Survey, 62 percent of Namibians have difficulty in keeping their financial commitments and that only 32 percent stick to their budget.