Financial matters can be hard to understand-Opinion
Information about financial matters can seem like another language, even if the information is provided in our home language.Financial education has become accepted as a tool to empower individuals to make good financial decisions. For this to work, financial education should preferably start young and continue into working age for individuals. It’s been shown that financial education can translate into financial literacy, leading to good financial behaviour and improved wellbeing for individuals and their families.
Financial literacy is a problem across the globe, even in highly developed countries. It is estimated that billions of working-age adults worldwide don’t have access to bank accounts with formal financial institutions. Access to appropriate financial products help people improve their lives through being able to transact, by sending and receiving money, making savings, investing money, borrowing money to finance projects and insuring assets and lives against shocks, such as medical emergencies, death of a breadwinner or losses due to a natural disaster.
It’s important for members of retirement funds to understand how their fund works and the benefits they are entitled to. Learning about financial matters, and your retirement fund specifically, can feel like you are learning a new language. Members need access to the relevant, correct information, then needing to take time to interact and become familiar with the information.
Second language
When you communicate with someone in their second language, even on topics they are familiar with, there is a risk that words and concepts may not be familiar to the recipient of the information. It’s been shown that reading and learning how to think in a second language are skills that are difficult to develop to a high level of proficiency and require time, hard work, and dedication.
When you communicate about already potentially complicated financial information, in a member’s second language, this can be extremely difficult for the member to understand, particularly for detailed and complex material. It’s important that the retirement fund considers the audience when communicating with members. In a country like Namibia with a rich linguistic diversity, the language profile of the members is a key element in the fund’s communication strategy. This can be done through, for example, surveying members and employers to determine the home language of members.
It's worth considering whether your retirement fund can provide booklets and information in the predominant language of the members, or whether the members can access assistance from someone speaking their home language. This will ultimately improve engagement and awareness of the retirement fund’s offering, benefiting the financial knowledge of the membership.