" In today's fast-paced consumer society, monetary literacy is a vital daily life ability. It means being able to understand and work out the financial landscape, handle loan and financial threats efficiently and prevent financial pitfalls," ASIC states. "Improving monetary literacy can benefit anyone, regardless of age, earnings or background."
I completely support the effort to raise the level of Australians' financial literacy. As a financial advisor I get to see first-hand the, in some cases large, holes in financial understanding in the Australian community.
Cynics may argue that the financial literacy space really matches the advisory industry. But from my viewpoint, the much better the grounding our customers have in financial principles, the more effective and efficient the advisory relationship.
With a financially-literate population, consultants can cut straight to the real issues instead of training financing 101.
Our money-smart 15-year olds augur well for the future. (Incidentally, while PISA deemed it as "not significantly different", Australia had a mean score of 526 in the finance test compared with 520 for NZ, which we can take as a win.).
Most buyers often opt for life insurance quote based on what their agents want to sell along with the premium they can possible afford, which is the primary reason why they cant get the most out of their life insurance. To know whether or not the coverage is right for you, you must look into varying factors including the repayments of your overall outstanding debt. To know whether or not the coverage is right for you, you must look into varying factors including the repayments of your overall outstanding debt. After all the financial responsibilities, do you have financial sources to generate enough income to pay the premiums? Can the coverage meet your future financial obligations?
Picking the cheapest insurance policy
It is inevitable that for practicality reasons, you want to buy cheap policies. But this is just another grave mistake. Cheap policy will just be useless particularly if the insurance company cannot entirely guarantee that they can fulfill your claim in the event of death. Sometimes, they fulfill insurance claims, but take a longer duration in the process. So before buying cheap insurance, you must first assess and review each of your prospect insurance companys performance in terms of fulfilling claims.
Considering life insurance as investment and purchasing the wrong plan
Insurance buyers typically buy life insurance quote because they think its a good retirement solution. Life insurance should be viewed as a solid financial protection for your loved ones, particularly in the event of an unanticipated death. Taking this in mind, you will be much cautious about your options.
Buying Insurance for tax planning
Having insurance plan often saves users from taxes. This is true. However, buying life insurance quote for the sake of saving tax is a worst reason you can ever have. If you want to save tax, insurance plan is never for you. There are other options for this purpose. You must keep in mind that life insurance should be about providing life coverage and not for investment return.
Withdrawing life insurance before its maturity
Doing so can compromise your familys financial security in case of unfortunate incident. Also, it is quite expensive to be withdrawn outside its real purpose.
Life insurance is paramount so insurance buyers should take thoughtful considerations and exercise prudence when choosing life insurance quote.
Governments all over the world regulate the financial sector. This could be due to a number of reasons. These regulations affect investment and even performance of the sector.
In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, the banking sector in the United States became subject to a number of new regulations established by government legislation. These bank regulations continue to impact the administration and operations of banks and other ancillary financial entities. They also call for increased vigilance and safeguards to protect the government, financial institutions and most importantly, the people.
The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 was the first in a series of regulatory laws designed to strengthen the U.S. economy. This act was created to prevent home foreclosures through debt counseling and community development programs. This act also required mortgage lenders and other banking institutions to register with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) while broadening the scope of the good faith estimate document to cover a wider group of loan products. Consequently, banks and lenders are required to conduct business with greater transparency towards their customers.
To most people, government regulations are unnecessary as far as any business is concerned. There is also the question of what would happen when fraud or misrepresentation was committed? Every business even financial institutions know that and illegal matters would drag them down so why the regulation?
In the absence of regulation, virtually every industry would do the same thing, because legitimate enterprises know that being known for selling faulty products would ruin their reputation and put them out of business. Unfortunately, as a result of ceaseless propaganda from pro-government interest groups, most Americans have been brainwashed into thinking they need regulatory agencies to protect them.
A most provocative paper has just been published by the American Enterprise Institute, written by former U.S. Treasury General Counsel Peter Wallison, entitled “Why Do We Regulate Banks?” Mr. Wallison argues that “it is difficult to identify a sound policy reason for regulating banks. Most of the conventional explanations — inherent bank instability, deposit insurance, the Federal Reserve’s role as lender of last resort, or the Fed’s role in the large-dollar payment system — turn out on examination to be either unfounded or based on risks that the government need not take in order to foster growth of the economy.” Mr. Wallison goes on to detail “the huge costs to the taxpayers and the economy” caused by bank and S&L; failures that have been due to regulation. Finally, Mr. Wallison, who has had major regulatory responsibility, concludes as to the question, “Why do we regulate banks? That we do so because we want to, not because we must.”
Financial institutions have no problem with being regulated. The only problem they have is the expense that accompanies the regulations. There is also increase in workload and thus need to hire more workforce to see the regulations implemented.
Regulatory compliance challenges are widely expected to create heavier workloads and spur hiring in the financial services industry, according to a new survey of executives in seven countries.
Governments, regulators and accounting standard setters have enacted and implemented numerous new rules in recent years in response to the recent financial crisis. The financial services industry has been a target of many of these new regulations, which executives report difficulty managing.
Almost nine in 10 respondents (88%) said they are challenged in managing regulatory change, according to a survey of 1,100 financial services executives conducted by staffing services firm Robert Half International. Executives from Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK, and the United States participated in the survey.