Posted Sep 27, 2022, 5:57 PM
How to effectively manage your savings and investments? This is the question that will occupy for three weeks, at the rate of approximately one hour and fifteen minutes per week, very particular students. These are voluntary Internet users who have registered for the free online training session offered by the Financial Markets Authority (AMF) and the National Consumer Institute (INC), which publishes the magazine 60 Millions de consommateurs.
The educational team includes the director of relations with savers and their protection of the AMF, Claire Castanet, and her assistant Florence Corne.
30,000 attendees
Registration has been open since July 29 and classes will begin on October 3, during World Investor Week. This is the third edition of this training open to all, without prerequisites. The first session was launched in 2020. During the first two editions, 30,000 savers participated, indicates the Autorité des marchés financiers.
This training covers four main themes: the role of the investor, his profile and his objectives, the main concepts related to stock market investment (such as the investment horizon, diversification, the risk-return ratio), the operation of the main investments and a module to learn how to spot scams.
“Each module is made up of several videos and complementary documents. It can be completed in one to two hours and concludes with a self-correcting quiz that determines the success of the course,” emphasizes the AMF. At the end, students who have answered at least 50% of the questions correctly receive a follow-up certificate, which can be added to a curriculum vitae for example.
French people unhappy with their financial culture
This initiative responds to a problem considered important, even worrying, by the public authorities: the lack of financial education. According to a study released in December 2021 by the Banque de France, nearly 7 out of 10 French people consider their financial culture to be average or weak. Among the concepts least well mastered are inflation and interest rates, two indicators which have nevertheless been at the center of the concerns of leaders and monetary authorities since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
In its study on the behavior and choice of investors, the second part of which was unveiled on September 27(1), the international asset manager Schroders also highlights the lack of financial knowledge, including on the part of wealthy clients. Indeed, the particularity of this survey is to focus on investors with at least 10,000 euros to invest in the next 12 months.
Overconfidence
This study thus demonstrates that investors who consider themselves to have an intermediate level of financial knowledge are mistaken about their abilities. In the test submitted to them as part of the Schroders survey, they actually do little better than savers who consider themselves novices. In detail, 89% of the answers of French respondents self-assessed as “intermediate” are false, against 90% of people categorizing themselves as “beginners”. Regardless of nationality, this excess of confidence is also confirmed.
“Finance, however, is not rocket science,” says Yves Desjardins, Managing Director France of Schroders. We only invest savings in companies or in state debt”. According to him, “we could start by giving an hour of lessons in primary and secondary school to introduce children to basic financial mechanisms, in order to create a base of common knowledge”, calls Yves Desjardins.
(1) Schroders appointed alan. agency and iResearch to conduct its independent online survey of 23,950 investors (including 21,131 active and 2,819 retired) in 33 locations around the world between February 18 and April 7, 2022. As part of this study, an “investor » corresponds to anyone planning to invest at least 10,000 euros (or an equivalent sum) over the next 12 months and having changed their investments during the last ten years. These people are considered to be representative of the investor population of each location in which the survey was conducted.
