Greater efforts needed to enhance financial literacy during COVID-19

KUALA LUMPUR – Greater continuous efforts are needed to improve financial literacy among Malaysians, particularly in light of the current circumstances, in which the pandemic has brought economic hardship, reported Bernama.

The Economic Action Council previously reported that more than 600,00 households from the middle 40% (M40) income group have slipped into the bottom 40% (B40) category due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The founder and chief executive office of Money Compass and ULearnMONEY, Amy Seok, said Malaysian have faced economic difficulties and some have lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic. This, combined with a lack of financial awareness, has exacerbated the situation.

ULearnMONEY is an online portal financial literacy platform that provides financial education to the public and communities to respond to immediate financial challenges, questions and doubts, especially curated for university and college students.

“Due to low financial literacy, they don’t have so much savings, but at the same time, they have commitments such as house and car loans.”

After announcing the winners of the ULearnMONEY Financial Literacy Video Contest, she said, “It is important for us to encourage Malaysian to involve themselves in online marketing and so on. We should try to do something more than what we are doing now and multitask to survive and sustain amid the current situation.”

Seok also emphasised that the government should have effective communication with the communities in creating a better solution for enhancing financial literacy.

“We also understand that young adults started to feel that financial stress and they are among the M40 group. We can also see that they are among those who raised white flags,” she said.

She explained that cultivating good financial habits in the younger generation is more important than giving them a lot o money. Many Malaysians are still constantly trying to overcome financial challenges in life and lacking financial literacy is the root of all financial problems.

Meanwhile, a total of 40 Malaysians across all ages participated in the ULearnMONEY Financial Literacy Video Contest, where they had created informational and creative videos with the given financial literacy themes.

All participants would be given access to a ULearnMONEY course worth RM300 for free as a token of appreciation upon their participation.

The champion of the video contest received a RM2,000 reward, which consist of RM1,000 cash and RM1,000 e-gold and the first runner-up a RM1,000 cash reward, which consisted of RM500 cash and RM500 e-gold.