Did you know that Romania has the lowest level of financial literacy in the EU, where only 22% of population are considered literate?

Almost 3 out of 4 romanians are financially illiterate according to 2015 S&P Global survey on financial literacy, presented by Lucian Anghel and Ludwik Sobolewski inside an event organised by Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).

About “Fantastic Five”

In Europe, only 4 countries scored lower than Romania when it comes to financial literacy: Albania (14%), Armenia (18%), Kosovo (20%) and Macedonia (21%).

• Only 35% of adults in Romania with a formal loan understand interest compounding
• 15% of adults save for old age and only 21% of them are financially literate

“Fantastic Five” is a sum of projects with the help of which BVB is trying to draw attention on the importance of these numbers.

And, of course, to generate an increased level of financial literacy.

The pillars of “Fantastic Five”

1. Fluent in Finance: launched in July 2015, this is a project created by BVB to support the financial education in Romania.

• 3500 persons from 8 cities attended the project
• There were 61 seminaries with 28 companies

2. Fluent in IPOs: A free of charge project that will provide the top decision makers and employees an opportunity to learn from top industry experts in order to find out how to develop and innovate their company’s financing and boost their businesses’ profile

• A project for Startups, SMEs and Corporates
• An interested company fills in a simple application form on a dedicated website, where it provides further information about their business model, development strategy, latest financial results as well as indicates the topics/modules of interest

3. Led by randament (condusderandament.ro): BVB will hold a contest in the real trading environment and reward with a Dacia Duster car the investor with the greatest return after 4 months of competition (September 2016 – February 2017)

4. BVB Investors’ Draw: BVB organises a program dedicated to individual/ potential investors who executed trades on one of its markets

• End of August 2016: launch of the programme
• September 2016: first month with trades participating in the draw
• October: first draw of prizes for September trades

5. The Universal Platform (fluentinfinante.ro): the platform will focus on capital markets only and the information there provided will encompass educational and informative materials from BVB, Brokers, Asset Managers and Pension Funds

Time will tell if BVB’s involvement in activating investors is going to be a success. And, maybe at #ICEEfest 2017 we’ll see if those numbers will rise…