ILO approach and experience in

financial education

Yousra HAMED
Technical expert - Social Finance

International Labour Organisation

International Labour Organization
 Specialized Agency of the UN founded in 1919
 Tripartite structure: Government, employers’ and workers’
organizations
 Promotion of decent work
 4 pillars: Promoting fundamental rights at work, creating
decent jobs, improving social protection, strengthening
social dialogue
ILO and financial inclusion
 Innovative finance for social justice
 Promoting inclusive finance on 3 levels: policies, institutions
and clients
ILO’s Financial education (FE) intervention model

DEVELOPMENT
WHAT DO WE DO? EXPECTED OUTCOMES
OBJECTIVE
Enhancing financial capabilities of target groups
Contributing to
•Workers, entrepreneurs,
migrant workers & their Financial inclusion
• Development / adaptation of FE
families, farmers, families for social justice
materials addressing needs of with working children,
diverse target groups and contexts youth •Workers,
•Training of trainers entrepreneurs, migrant
•make informed decisions
about
workers & their
•Training/counseling or (mass)media families, farmers,
campaigns to equip target groups •earning, spending, savings, families with working
with financial knowledge, skills and borrowing, using insurance, children , youth... have:
tools money transfers and other
services •built their assets
•Impact assessments to refine models
• engaged into and
In parallel strengthening the provision of financial services taken advantage of
income generating
•Technical assistance to Financial activities; or invested
Service Providers (FSPs) for them to their wages
assess needs of clientele/target •FSPs offer credit, savings,
groups and develop relevant products insurance, money transfers •protected themselves
and other products that against risks (i.e.
• Capacity building of FSPs to improve meet the needs of target health, accident,
their performances and better groups disaster, over-
manage products diversification indebtedness…)

Possibly combined with other support services (skills, BDS, migration) for a greater impact
The ILO and financial education….
The story certainly started with….

then… and…

And then… it got more and more diversified….

With also videos, music, radio programmes , …

Examples of training materials

Trainer's Manual (North Africa)

Part 1: Presentation (context, objectives, strategy) and proposal of
tools to help trainers organize and facilitate training
Part 2: core curriculum: 7 modules each contains 2 to 4 training
sessions - total of 24 sessions in 37 hours
Part 3: Toolkit - 13 training sessions targeting workers, migrants,
homeworkers and entrepreneurs

Learner Handbook (Tunisia)

Adapted to the target audience (women, youth and migrants and
their families)
Uses personal stories of characters (comics, case studies, practice)
Process for FE programme development
Example: Morocco in the framework of the project Youth at Work
 Identification of needs (regional mapping, BAM meetings, CMS, AMC ...)
 Development of the strategy (adaptation of tools, validation workshop, ToT, integration with other project
activities)
 First adaptation of the material by an international trainer with experience in Morocco: cultural and target group.

Workshop on the adaptation and validation of training materials

for young people in Morocco (November 2013 in partnership
with the Central Bank of Morocco and CMS)

Training of trainers, testing of material and development of institutional

dissemination strategies: Agadir 17-21 February 2014
Finalization of training materials: End 2014 – Common national Moroccan
FE material
Roll out of trainings and accreditation of trainers
Dissemination phase and potential declination of tools in other formats
Challenges and opportunities
 Integrated approach
 Monitoring
 Quality Accreditation system
 Outreach
International database

 Adaptation to the context and target groups

Locally and target
adapted manuals +
 Limited scope with classroom trainings yet itGeneric
gives anmanual available
opportunity to have a common basis to use other channels.

Mass media, soap operas, theatres, flyers, brochures, e-learning…

 Evaluation and impact measurment
 Going beyond training of trainers and building a programme for
experts, policy makers and broader development professionals
Tentative programme for the NEW training
programme for policy makers and development
practitioners

Day 1 Key concepts Financial sectors Responsible finance:

consumer protection, financial education and financial
institutions’ regulations - Current trends (global) Financial
services typology and financial education for improved use
Day 2 Macro level and policies - Financial education country
framework - Establishing institutional and governing
arrangements
Day 3 Designing specific strategies to address needs of various
segments - Profiling the consumer market segments - Review
of various delivery examples - Creating an outreach strategy
for different segments
Day 4 Implementation- Designing partnerships - Action planning
Day 5 Market place
Some lessons learnt to foster impact of FE
initiatives
– Adapt curriculum and delivery channel to target group needs

– Build on existing local financial education initiatives

– Define common standards for a recognition of different financial

literacy curriculum/levels
– Strengthen impact assessment mechanisms

– Institutionalize financial education curriculum in government

programme
– Identify relevant partners and build strong partnerships

– Further explore innovative approaches for up scaling

– Combine financial education with other services

 Thank you!

Yousra HAMED
Social Finance Programme
www.ilo.org/socialfinance

hamed@ilo.org
 Outreach and impact
 Outreach
The program covers some 20 countries in Asia, Africa and Europe
  Asia: 10,675 trained
  Africa: 400 trainers and 2000 trained
 Latin America: 150 trainers and 12.000 trained (2018)
  Europe: 30 consultants and trainers and thousands of trained bank clients
 Impact :
Fasecolda - Colombia - Risk Management and Insurance Education
Intervention: Campaign mass media (radio-300,000) + workshops (15,000)
Results:
Participation in workshops + exposure to media campaigns helped to better
identify risks, including risk management strategies and use of insurance
No evidence of changes in attitudes
http://www.impactinsurance.org/projects/lessons/risks-and-insurance-literacy
Impact - Microfinance for decent work

AMK – Cambodia
Innovation: Implemented an indirect training approach to
improve financial literacy and staff skills by bringing
important messages to group meetings throughout the loan
cycle.
Result:
Most positive impact on customer repayment behavior: 3.4%
reduction in payment delays

Positive and significant impacts on: • asset accumulation at 10%

increase, • financial behavior with an 8% reduction in the
idea that it is impossible to save, an increase 1% of the
associating savings with safer and better management of the
indebtedness and a change of attitude towards the loan.
Impact - Microfinance for decent work

Vision Fund– Cambodia

Innovation: Classroom training for clients
Results:
Some impact on financial behavior and risk management
10% decrease in the negative perception of insurance • Partial improvement of
the provision towards savings • 9% increase in the amount set aside in the
event of an emergency • 22% increase in the capacity to set money aside for
use in case of emergency

Little data on asset accumulation

Many mitigated and intuitive results regarding multiple borrowing / over-

indebtedness and vulnerability