Govt, businesses promote adult financial education, investment

Hoping to facilitate a shift from saving to investing, the public and private sectors are becoming increasingly active in providing financial education to working adults in their prime, many of whom have acquired such knowledge only through work or self-study, while the younger generation has recently started learning about the subject in high school.

The government is focusing on expanding opportunities for adults to learn about the topic in a bid to prevent investment-related problems and improve the investment environment.

“The keys to asset building are ‘diversify,’ ‘long term’ and ‘accumulate,’” a lecturer stressed during an investment seminar held by the Tokyo Stock Exchange in March, as young employees of Hitachi Solutions Create, Ltd. in Tokyo listened.

The TSE has been receiving an increasing number of requests for these financial education programs for working people. It got about 130 such requests in the past fiscal year, an increase of more than 20% from the previous year.

The seminars also cover such matters as the new Nippon Individual Savings Account (NISA) tax exemption program for small investments and tips on how to avoid the pitfalls of investment.

“I appreciate the opportunity to learn from the basics,” said Kosei Ishida, 25, who attended the seminar.

Since fiscal 2022, Ajinomoto Co. in Tokyo has had similar seminars online 10 or more times each year for employees who are interested in the topic.

ONLY 7% TAUGHT

With the government encouraging the public to make greater use of their personal assets, an increasing number of people are starting to invest.

According to the TSE and other sources, the number of individual shareholders reached a record high of about 70 million in fiscal 2022. The figure increased each year from 2015 to 2022.

However, some say that in Japan there are fewer opportunities for people to receive financial education compared to other developed countries.

According to a survey of 30,000 people ages 18 to 79 conducted in 2022 by the Central Council for Financial Services Information, of which the secretariat is the Bank of Japan, only 7% of the respondents said they had received financial education at school or elsewhere, far less than 20% in the United States.

“People who easily get into trouble with investments are those who rely on information that they happen to have, such as ‘hearing that foreign exchange margin trading is profitable,’ or ‘a YouTuber’s video says that making such and such an amount of investment will be good enough,’ and they don’t have the proper knowledge,” said Sayaka Furukawa, 34, a certified financial planner. “With asset management, it’s essential to be able to think and make decisions on your own,” Furukawa added.

Yusuke Kinari, a professor at Konan University and specialist in behavioral economics, said: “Whether you have financial knowledge or not can cause economic disparity. It’s important to create opportunities for

as many people as possible to receive financial education.”

The government intends to increase the percentage of people who acknowledge that they have received financial education to 20% by the end of fiscal 2028.

Students today have more opportunities to learn about finance at school than earlier generations did. In addition to providing basic knowledge such as the role of financial institutions and the flow of money,

high schools have taught asset building since fiscal 2022.

The key is to focus on working people, who are busy with their daily jobs and have few opportunities to receive financial education.

The Yomiuri Shimbun Young employees who work for Hitachi Solutions Create learn about asset building and other financial matters at the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Chuo Ward, Tokyo, on March 12.