radovan jelasic : educating consumers of financial services in serbia speech by mr radovan jelasic, governor of the national bank of serbia, on the promotion of the brochure “ how to talk to banks ” issued by procredit bank, belgrade, 12 october 2007. * * * ladies and gentlemen, the developed world pays special attention to consumer education, particularly in the aftermath of major crises, with the aim of not only ensuring necessary prerequisites for economically feasible decision - making, but also with a view to strengthening confidence of the general public in the banking system. worldwide practice shows that that there can be no efficient financial sector unless consumers of financial services are sufficiently knowledgeable in their use. in the long last, it is the level of public trust that both profits and long - term positioning of financial institutions in a particular market depend upon. for this particular reason, financial institutions should be aware that it is in their best medium - and long - term interest to make the information about their products transparent, accessible and formulated in a language that can be easily comprehended by the general public. this line of reasoning is particularly important in serbia since our citizens were deprived for quite some time of more sophisticated commercial bank services, as they were reduced to the most fundamental ones in the course of the past decade and a half. amid a tide of countless marketing campaigns and fast expansion of financial services, the national bank of serbia recognized on time the need to provide the citizens with fair and objective information on all aspects of the use of money! hence, our first step was to set up a free - of - charge call centre in october 2005. however, we soon became aware of the need to broaden education of the public in a systematic and well organized fashion, and ultimately decided to set up of a centre for financial services consumer protection and market supervision in early 2007. the purpose of this centre is to spread information and improve education of users of financial services, as well as to increase transparency of terms under which such services are offered. the centre has so far prepared and published a number of leaflets and brochures aiming to draw attention of citizens to the particular features of financial products they should pay special attention to when making decision on the purchase of a financial product. the centre aims not to decide for the client, but to help the bank customers make informed decisions. the ultimate goal of the national bank of serbia is to encourage banks to invest more in client education and to further improve

( by 4. 8 per cent, against 2. 2 ) and a slower recovery in 2021 ( 7. 5 versus 10. 1 per cent ). the exceptional support provided to us households is particularly evident when comparing the dynamics of gdp and disposable income ( fig. 2 ) : in 2020, just as the former recorded its sharpest collapse in real terms in the entire post - world war ii period ( - 3. 4 per cent ), real disposable personal income grew by over 6 per cent, its largest rise since the mid - 1980s. in the euro area, instead, household real disposable income declined, even though by a smaller extent than gdp ( - 0. 6 versus - 6. 4 per cent ). second, the different dynamics of household disposable income across the two economic areas translated into very diverse effects on demand. in the us, gdp returned to its pre ‑ crisis trend at the end of 2021, but aggregate data hid an elevated degree of heterogeneity between sectors : while demand in the service sector was restrained by pandemic - related factors, the goods sector increasingly showed signs of overheating ( fig. 3 ). in the spring of 2021, for example, personal consumption expenditure in the durable goods sector was already more than 30 per cent higher than its pre - crisis level. the fast recovery in us demand, in a phase in which supply elsewhere was still constrained due to the pandemic waves, caused bottlenecks in the global value chains to drove up the prices of intermediate goods everywhere. in the euro area, demand for both goods and services remained below pre - pandemic trends up until the end of 2021. third, the labour market appears to be much tighter in the united states than in the euro area. the us unemployment rate still stands at just 3. 4 per cent, a value last seen only in the late 1960s and about half the level of the euro area ( 6. 6 per cent ). more importantly, the difference between the number of vacancies in the us non - farm sector and the number of people who are unemployed is, today, over 5 million, i. e. there are many more jobs available than there are people looking for them, while in the euro area the opposite is true, with the number of unemployed exceeding the number of job vacancies by about 6 million. unsurprisingly, the annual change of us nominal wages