Stanbic IBTC Offers Youth Practical Lessons on Financial Knowledge

Nume Ekeghe

Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc recently commemorated this year’s Financial Literacy Day 2018 as part of activities lined up to mark the Global Money Week 2018.

In order to effectively pass the message to the students, a statement revealed that the bank moved the full apparatus of its mobile ATM van from Lagos to Ibadan Grammar School, one of the 31 allocated schools across the country where senior executives of the bank, including its chief executive, made presentations to students on financial literacy.

The Chief Executive, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Dr. Demola Sogunle, while making a presentation entitled ‘Money Matters, Matter,’ at Ibadan Grammar School, Molete, Ibadan, Oyo State, stated that exhibiting exemplary financial discipline and independence as adults can only be possible if students and young adults inculcate the indispensable fundamentals in financial knowledge while still in the mouldable stage of life.

He said the importance of financial literacy cannot be overemphasised and went further to advise the students on the need to have a good understanding of basic money management skills such as living within a budget and to always define and differentiate their needs and their wants, which undoubtedly will put them in good stead for better management of finances and future success.

The session touched on topics like how to start saving, benefits of saving, knowledge and planning skills. Some of the students who answered questions correctly during the question and answer session were presented with different ranges of prizes. Amongst them were 10 lucky students who received Automated Teller Machine (ATM) enabled Stanbic IBTC Gift Cards preloaded with cash and who experienced first-hand financial services offered by the bank through the instant activation of their cards and cash withdrawals on Stanbic IBTC Bank mobile ATM van.

“This initiative is meant to positively impact the lives of these students as what you experience and feel for yourself as compared to what you are told often stay with you for a lifetime and you tend to continue to relive those moments. Many of these children see bank ATMs located across the city but have never operated one, so the mobile ATM van here on ground gives them a rare opportunity to experience financial service.

“More importantly, we recognise that practical knowledge always outweighs theoretical knowledge,” Sogunle stated, adding, “Our intension is to equip these students to be able to make smarter, more informed decisions than the generations before them. The knowledge that we have impacted in them today will surely place them ahead in the learning curve.”

In his remarks, principal of the senior school, Mr. Oyeade Francis Ajani, commended Stanbic IBTC for going far and above the basic requirements for the Financial Literacy Day in organising what he described as the best the school has hosted, describing it as a priceless gesture. “We need more corporate organisations to follow the lead of Stanbic IBTC Bank and if possible raise the standard set by the bank. We are optimistic that the knowledge impacted today will stay with the students through their lives.”

The Financial Literacy Day is an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) aimed at teaching children and young adults in junior and senior secondary schools to understand quite early in life the rudiments of money and its uses.

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