Mauritius’ Financial Services Commission (FSC) unveiled the latest developments under its Consumer Education and Financial Literacy Programme with the theme ‘Be wise with your money and protect your finances’, yesterday, November 24, 2014, at the FSC House in Ebene.
These developments consist of the launch of the FSC Mauritius consumer education website, a Financial Literacy Snake and Ladders Game, and unveiling of the FSC’s fourth poster under the consumer education series.
The launch of the consumer education website, called ProtectYourFinance.com, is aimed at reaching out to the current and potential consumers of financial services of all ages and income groups, through a technology-rich medium that is becoming more popular with Mauritian consumers day by day.
The consumer education website has been launched officially in the English language today and the French version will be launched shortly.
“We believe that the website’s simplicity, ease of use and most importantly, the fact that it prominently features our friendly mascot whom we refer to by the initials O.W.L., will appeal vastly to the public,” said Clairette Ah-Hen, Chief Executive Officer at FSC.
She went on explaining that O.W.L. stands for One Who Learns, in keeping with the website’s intent of providing general guidance so that consumers can make informed decisions about their finances.
In addition, the O.W.L. mascot features on FSC’s posters, bookmarks, banners, key rings and games.
Some of the features which add to the website’s user-friendly appeal are: visual and appealing colours, dual language, videos, e-brochures, gallery of all FSC’s consumer education initiatives, financial tips to print and download, guidelines and advice to avoid financial scams, regulatory framework, and question and answers.
The second initiative is to customise the Snake and Ladders game concept in order to pass on key messages about financial terms and the do’s and the don’ts, particularly in respect of investments.
Finally, the launch of FSC’s fourth poster is in Creole as the chosen language, so as to make it simpler for people of all ages to understand. The theme of the fourth poster in the FSC’s consumer education series it, ‘How to deal with Insurance Complaints’.
Given that many people were victim to Ponzi schemes last year, the first of these series of posters was launched on December 12, 2013, and depicted information on how consumers can protect themselves against financial scams.
The teams behind these initiatives are: Niven Rayapoulle from Aeris, Suyash Sumaroo from Code Vigor, Laval Ng who is the artist, the content and editing team of FSC, the technical team of FSC and the web developers of FSC.
“Today, consumers need to have a better understanding of key financial concepts to better comprehend and evaluate the choices available to them, as well as to avoid falling prey to fraudulent schemes,” said Clairette Ah-Hen.
The aim behind these initiatives is to create an enabling environment to simplify the on-boarding process of all consumers of financial services and products, as well as to help inform consumers so that they can make better financial decisions.
Hence, the financial education programmes must be innovative, dynamic, flexible and have tremendous power of recall for consumers.
Consequently, FSC Mauritius will continue to enhance these initiatives and ensure that it delivers on its objective of better consumer education and protection.
– By Marie-Lorry Coret and Cecilia Samoisi – Image: Cecilia Samoisi
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