be extremely important to build and preserve confidence in the use of digital financial services. learning how to use digital financial services safely is just one dimension. an important goal of improving digital financial literacy is also to help individuals make better use of digital financial services to improve their financial well - being. with an explosion of digital tools that can help individuals plan and manage their finances better, a much wider range of financial solutions, and easier access to financial advice - financial literacy, including digital financial literacy, is critical to help individuals navigate the complexity that comes with more choice. faced with the same set of choices, individuals armed with the knowledge and skills to make good choices and good use of facilities available to them could significantly improve their standard of living, while others who make poor financial choices could be plunged into personal financial hardship. 15. the financial literacy month this year aims to amplify the importance of digital financial literacy in helping malaysians build financial resilience, and enable them to participate fully in the digital economy with confidence. our efforts should reduce the digital divide, expand accessibility, and strengthen individual skills to manage money wisely. 16. it would be a mistake, however, to think that we can hope to provide all the knowledge and information needed, at exactly the right times, for individuals to successfully navigate the digital financial landscape. rather, our job as a financial education community is to help people become comfortable with the language and ways of digital financial services - much like learning how to get around and get things done in a new city. then individuals will be far better able to adapt to the continual changes brought about by new technologies and empowered to know what to look for, where to look, and how to make sense and use what they find to their best advantage. this is not achieved in one month or over the few days that our teams will be spending in each location on the roadshow. it requires sustained efforts on our collective part to help your customers, the schools and organisations that you work with, and the public at large, build greater confidence in using financial services effectively. 17. financial education is absolutely central to the goal of making sure that finance works for the people. today, more than at any time before, our society needs the right 3 / 4 bis - central bankers'speeches knowledge and skills to manage their finances. saving for retirement, borrowing responsibly, investing wisely, and protecting against financial harm will build resilient households. resilient households, in turn,

at the height of the global financial crisis, the total leverage in the major industrial economies increased significantly. in the us, private sector leverage alone had reached over 200 percent of gdp in 2008. other reports place the average debt level to gdp of major advanced economies at over 300 percent in 2010. the current process of deleveraging in the private sector remains incomplete, while pressures on fiscal sustainability in these economies also continue to weigh on confidence and growth. significant challenges continue to be faced in the implementation of the structural adjustments which in turn is affecting the process of fiscal consolidation. this has further restrained the policy flexibility to support growth. the extraordinary and exceptional monetary measures taken by central banks in these economies have provided support to their economies, but they have also come at a cost to savers with growing risks of market distortions and financial imbalances the longer these measures are held in place. bis central bankers ’ speeches in efforts to build stronger defences against a repeat of the events that precipitated the 2008 global financial crisis, the global regulatory reform agenda has placed significant focus on addressing elements of the regulatory and supervisory systems that allowed the build - up of excessive leverage. these elements include the unfettered innovation by financial institutions and the prevailing incentive system. financial engineering had led bankers and investors to lose focus on their risk exposures when they failed to understand the increasingly complex products that purported to reduce the risks. the weak regulatory regime and supervision also failed to rein in such unbridled innovation. misaligned incentives then fuelled excessive risk taking both at the institutional and individual levels. the inadequate financial buffers held by banking institutions against risk, a growing disconnect between the creation of credit and its use for productive economic activity and a highly interconnected system of financial intermediation ultimately combined to give rise to risks that disrupted credit flows to the economy. over time, these trends were substantially amplified. the global reform agenda has made important progress in efforts to reduce the fragility of the financial system and to strengthen its resilience. substantial work has already been advanced and largely completed on the development of global liquidity standards, the adoption of leverage ratios, and the significantly strengthened capital regulations which are important components of the reform effort. greater focus has also been placed on strong supervision, effective resolution regimes and arrangements for the oversight of systemically important financial institutions. while the effective implementation of these reforms is crucial, the world continues to seek more enduring solutions that will place financial institutions firmly back in the service of