Responsible budgeting: The new generation of financial education.

As a consumer credit institution, we know that budget management is a key skill. According to the OECD’s latest PISA study which measures the financial knowledge of young people in 20 participating countries, only 1 out of 4 young people is able to take simple decisions about everyday spending. Contributing to young people’s financial education is therefore a key issue for BNP Paribas Personal Finance.

Deployed in 3 countries (Italy, France and Belgium), Budget Responsible is an innovative educational programme created by BNP Paribas Personal Finance with the support of Fabbrica, an agency specialising in educational content.

This programme, which is both virtual and physical, is an impactful teaching tool that adopts the conventions of gamification. The online platform is built around 3 courses with videos and quizzes and has a serious game that enables learners to get to grips with the key notions of budget management, saving, credit and banking.  

This programme is aimed at young people aged 14 to 20 years and is deployed by teachers or trainers with a session for parents as well. 

During the COVID-19 lockdown period, the Budgetresponsible.com online platform was of clear benefit. Parents who had to homeschool found it a useful tool for opening up a dialogue with their children surrounding budgeting issues. 

Tiziano Quarta, an employee of Alpha Credit, the Belgian BNP Paribas Personal Finance entity, was able to use the platform with his son Adriano during lockdown. It was an intelligent way to occupy his time while sharing some quality father-son time. 

Teachers and trainers were also able to take advantage of online webinars to familiarise themselves with the tool and introduce it to their pupils remotely. 

Pupils were able to follow the online training course and attend virtual workshops with BNP Paribas Personal Finance. Christophe Dureau, in charge of the platform deployment in France, explains how it happened in the country.

In Italy, Mario Manera and Renzo Braggio, two Findomestic employees, are particularly involved in the Percorsi Young program, the Italian version of Budget Responsible. They explain to us in video the challenges and benefits of this financial education program.

Renzo focuses more specificaly on the implementation of exceptional formats during lockdown with the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, a webinar was notably launched with the participation of university professor Luciano Canova, Economist and specialist in behavioral economics, in front of more than 300 remote participants.

Student feedback is very positive and pushes the Corporate Engagement teams to innovate and offer new formats!