Institute for Financial Literacy: Empowering Singaporeans with Personal Finance Knowledge

World Investor Week 2022

The Birth Of The Institute For Financial Literacy (IFL) And Its Dedication To Promoting Personal Finance Education

On 16 October 2003 then DPM and Chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, announced the launch of a national financial education program called MoneySense, to bring initiatives in financial education for “a long-term, sustainable program” to enhance the basic financial literacy of Singaporeans. IFL was formed later in 2012 as the outreach arm of MoneySense, to conduct free and unbiased financial literacy training and workshops at companies and organizations.

The Collaborative Journey: MoneySense And Singapore Polytechnic’s Partnership Leading To IFL’s Establishment

Money Sense Campaign FHC

“Leveraging on Singapore Polytechnic’s (SP) Professional & Adult Continuing Education (PACE) Academy for their experience and outreach to Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians (PMETs) and on SP Business School for its domain knowledge and expertise, SP responded to MoneySense’s invitation to submit a proposal to set up IFL in 2011, which was accepted and led IFL to where we are today.”

Mastering The Four Pillars

“Our approach covers these 4 aspects – or vertical pillars. Horizontally across these 4 pillars we deliver content and training on how these 4 core aspects impact a person over his/her entire life stage – from youth and early working years, to starting a family/buying first home, imparting good financial habits for their children and into pre-retirement/retirement planning.”

Inclusive Learning

“Our workshops and talks are free and anyone from youth and above who are able to follow the trainings (usually in English but we do have some Mandarin modules) are very welcome. We deliver our sessions both virtually as well as in person. We also have content via our electronic learning management system called FinLearn@Academy – https://finlearnacademy.sg – for self-directed learning. This year we also launched our webinar workshop series on Facebook Live.”

Adapting To Unprecedented Challenges

“The pandemic closed off the option for physical face-to-face training and many organizations which were doing this struggled to continue providing training for their staff. We also could not provide public physical sessions. In time as we saw more people working from home and getting more adept to engaging via various digital platforms, for different purposes, we decided to pivot our content and training using similar digital platforms for delivery.

This required modifications to content such as how activities are done during a typical financial literacy programme (e.g., utilizing Kahoot! and Mentimeter), getting trainers to be able to host and manage virtual training while using various edu-tech applications. Eventually, over time and with the support of our pool of dedicated trainers and determined organizational partners we were able to offer all our sessions today both in person as well as over commonly used digital platforms.”

Empowering Confidence: IFL’s Unbiased Approach To Boosting Financial Planning Skills

“All our training is free and unbiased. They know we are not driven directly or indirectly by any commercial agenda, so the information provided is both objective and impartial. This reputation has enabled Singaporeans over the years to trust in IFL’s agenda which in turn enables Singaporeans to have confidence in relying on our training and recommendations in managing their own financial planning needs.”