KNOWLEDGE IS RESPONSIBILITY. FINANCIAL EDUCATION IN ROMANIA

Radu Șimandan
Lecturer Dr., University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, radu.simandan@upb.ro

Abstract

Financial literacy issues have become more stringent in Romania in the wake of the financial crisis. A few banking products and practices have emerged as a point of contention between banks and consumer groups and the public’s modest level of financial education has been portrayed as an enabling factor to the suspected unethical behavior from the part of banks.

This paper gives an account on the development of financial education in Romania in its complex transformation from an autarchic socialist economy to an open, market-oriented capitalist system. We place this analysis in the broader framework of societal transformation, a phenomenon that Romania has experienced from the early 1990s and argue that society’s fluid evaluations, perceptions, and expectations in relation to the behavior of financial organizations are only one side of a multifaceted process of societal change. The government, civil society organizations and private enterprises played a role in shaping this financial side of the process of transformation. We further describe and analyze a few typical cases of publicly and privately funded financial education programs recently implemented.

One particular aspect of the growing involvement of financial corporations – both banks and non-baking intermediaries – in financial education activities is the claim that it is their ethical responsibility to do so. We critically examine this claim and argue that in the Romanian context the main drive for this development was the profit motive. Private financial entities in search of profit maximization had to adapt to rapidly changing societal expectations in relation to their business behavior and initiating, financing and implementing such programs was one way they deemed appropriate to react.

Keywords: financial education, financial literacy, societal transformation, Romania.