Durmuş Yilmaz: Financial education and awareness – challenges, opportunities and strategies Speech by Mr Durmuş Yilmaz, Governor of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, at the International Conference on Financial Education and Financial Awareness: Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies, Istanbul, 10 March 2011. *  *  *  Distinguished Minister, Esteemed Participants, Esteemed Guests and Members of the Press, Welcome to our conference on financial education and financial awareness. As you know, these concepts have progressively come into prominence in both developed and developing countries in recent years. After a brief conceptual introduction, I will continue my speech by talking about the financial education in Turkey and efforts of the Central Bank in this respect. Distinguished Participants, Financial education has always been an important concept in terms of allowing individuals to manage their budgets, arrange incomes and expenditures, manage their investments and savings effectively, and protect themselves from possible losses. With the increased variety and complexity of financial products in today’s world, this issue is becoming even more important for both individuals and the financial system. On the back of globalization, the liberalization trend in economies, the easing of restrictive regulations in the financial sector and the liberalization of capital flows at international level since the early 1980s, more and more individuals participate in financial markets as investors in many countries, primarily in developing ones. In this framework, financial education assumes greater importance in terms of minimizing financial risks for those who do not have sufficient experience of capital market instruments.

Then we will move on to the impact of the recent global financial crisis on the rising issue of financial education and financial awareness. Taking into account the importance of benefiting from other countries’ experiences while formulating national financial education strategies and programs, in the second session we will focus on financial education practices around the world. I believe that this session will yield very useful inferences. In the third session, we will listen to experiences of those countries that have made significant progress in designing their national financial education strategies and we will learn their methods, challenges and suggestions for solutions as well as the outcomes they obtained. On the second day of the Conference, we will elaborate the current efforts on financial education in Turkey and the roles and responsibilities of all relevant stakeholders. At this point, the cooperation between institutions will play an instrumental role in designing national strategies. The implementation of education programs is as important as designing financial education strategies and this issue will be thoroughly discussed in the sixth and last session of the Conference. As the Central Bank of Turkey, we strongly believe that the significance of financial education is far beyond its conceptual meaning and we attach great importance to collaborating with national and international institutions in this area. We believe that this Conference with the valuable contribution of the Capital Markets Board will be a milestone. I wish the Conference every success and thank everyone who has made a contribution. 2  BIS central bankers’ speeches