How the OECD could help shape UK financial education policy

By Julia Kukiewicz. Today’s post is by Julia Kukiewicz, Editor and Lyndsey Burton, Founder of Choose, a consumer information site that’s been covering personal finance in the UK since 2003. 
As world leaders traded notes on the financial services that will shape consumers’ lives at the G20 in September, OECD head Angel Gurría had a few thoughts for the consumers themselves. “Individuals are increasingly responsible for taking key financial decisions in a complex and volatile environment,” he told reporters. In most developed countries, public welfare is shrinking and the products growing up to replace it are complicated, Gurría added. The speech underlined the OECD’s continuing support for financial education, even as critics of government and private consumer education projects grow louder. Such criticisms threaten to derail the project of widespread financial education before it even gets off the ground in countries like the UK. But OECD support can and should help. In this post, we’ll look at the challenges the UK project is facing and how policymakers could overcome them. More...