Canadians Lack Basic Financial Knowledge

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Majority of Canadians do not understand the basic principles of financial risk and there are not many taking the necessary steps to educate themselves either.

A global survey released on Thursday found that only 13% of Canadians could answer three basic questions about financial risk, and the results match the average across other countries which were studied as well.

16% of men and 9% of women who surveyed answered all questions correctly. Education did play a crucial role in people’s ability to answer the questions correctly, 8% of high school graduates got all the questions right, compared to 20% of those with a university degree.

The president of the Canadian Foundation of Economic Education, Gary Rabbior has noted that there are many Canadians who feel that they need to have a lot of money in order to get educated on financial matters, however in fact the opposite is true.

Among the 13 countries polled for financial risk awareness, Canada came in 9th.

Canadians are not taking the steps to improve their financial knowledge; there is just 10% who have increased their financial matters since the start of the economic crisis, compared to 19% of consumers surveyed across all countries.

In order to correct this, it is believed that Canada should first figure out why Canadians are reluctant to get educated on financial matters and come up with incentives to push them to learn.

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