With rising inflation, economic slowdown and geopolitics impacting the cost of living across the globe, it is a critical time to support local communities and provide access to high-quality financial education.
Financial Literacy Network
The Financial Literacy Network (FLN) is a collection of international finance professionals organized to support the CFA Society® community globally with their financial literacy activities and to work with like-minded organizations.
The FLN’s vision is to build strong communities where people make informed financial decisions, take control of their financial future, gain financial resiliency, and ultimately achieve financial well-being. In particular, the FLN strives to advance equitable and inclusive access to financial programs, resources, and opportunities while working to address any systemic barriers.
The board of the FLN is made up of a number of society leader members, selected not only for their insights to help manage and expand the group but also because each has significant experience creating and managing a financial literacy or investor education program. This expertise allows the board to act as an advisory committee available to all members. Members can inquire about the board's experience and knowledge about different aspects of designing, implementing, and managing financial education programs.
Dr. Greg Filbeck, CFA, founding member of the FLN said: “As the Eastern US Region Presidents Council Representative and former president of CFA Society Pittsburgh, I am aware of the huge efforts the CFA Society network goes to to improve the financial futures of people in local communities. The primary goal of the FLN is to facilitate information between societies so they can share their experiences and best practices, and develop effective education programs. The FLN is grateful to CFA Institute for launching a recent financial literacy survey, which allowed society leaders from across the world to dialogue with each other about ways to start or enhance financial literacy efforts."
Impactful Resources
The FLN aims to provide usable and valuable information incorporated into new or existing financial literacy and investor education programs. Unique local society interests, programs, and partner relationships have made creating consistent and usable content or resources quite challenging. The organization contends that the most impactful resources are those oriented around the discovery and sharing of:
- Principles and best practices in financial literacy programming and partnership development
- Content and resources created by other local societies
- Community or regional opportunities to educate target audiences
- Information distilled from successful and impactful society programs and partner relationships
Sharing Expertise
The CFA Society network has created excellent financial literacy and investor education programming, and the FLN wants to ensure information on these activities and resources is shared. On 12 September, CFA Institute opened a survey to the global CFA Society network asking about the activities each society sponsors to promote financial literacy in their local markets. The survey closed on 10 October and received more than 40 responses. Thank you to those societies who helped to update the database of activities, which you can view on the FLN website and read about in this article.
Any local society member involved in managing or interested in starting a financial literacy or investor education program can be a member of the FLN at no cost. Membership is also open to other organizations involved with local societies or the FLN, focused on developing better methods to design, implement, and manage financial education for people in their local communities. Since the purpose of these communication channels is to provide a valuable information sharing, it will also highlight partners that the CFA Society network has worked with and vetted.
In addition to the website, the FLN has created other channels to inform and communicate with members.
The FLN’s LinkedIn group communicates FLN activities to motivate discussions on relevant programming design and management issues and allows members to discuss the principles and best practices in program structure and execution.
The FLN’s YouTube Channel shares multimedia content on financial literacy and investor education, including podcasts with notable guests that discuss their expertise on topics such as program structure, using partners, and volunteerism.
How Your Local Society Can Engage with the FLN
For the FLN to further the interests of the CFA Society community in financial literacy and investor education, it encourages society leaders to engage with its content on the website, join the LinkedIn group, and watch the YouTube content.
The FLN also highlights local society financial literacy and investor education initiatives in its regular communications to members.
The organization hopes that the CFA Society network will become members of the FLN, share their experiences of forming financial literacy and investor education programs, and communicate the benefits and risks of their management decisions as a resource to other FLN members. Those societies interested in implementing a financial literacy or investor education program that join the FLN can take advantage of the resources and case studies presented by the FLN.
The CFA Society community around the globe has shown increasing interest in pursuing financial literacy and investor education initiatives for various reasons, including a combination of altruism, building brand awareness, member engagement, and mission orientation. According to recent Society Partnership Effectiveness Surveys, financial literacy has been an important focus area for many societies.
As societies continue to engage with the FLN, it is possible to provide each other with the support needed to design, build, and manage valuable financial education programs for audiences in our local communities.
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