Speech by the President of the Financial Supervisory Authority, Mr Nicu Marcu, on the occasion of the first edition of the "Financial Education Forum"

Your Excellency, President Klaus Werner Iohannis,

Governor Mugur Isărescu

Your Honour, Rector Nicolae Istudor

Mr President of ARB Bogdan Neacșu,

Ministers,

Honoured audience, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The financial health of a nation is always of strategic importance because it relates to the level of well-being of its citizens. The need for financial health and stability is critical for every citizen, and it is financial education that can provide the foundation for better financial protection and resilience.  This is why I would like to thank you, President Iohannis, for enacting the law that, starting this year, Financial Education Day will be celebrated on 11 April.

Financial education is not a luxury. It has been a necessity for many decades. A famous American entrepreneur put it somewhat bluntly: "A person either gets his finances in order or his finances will discipline him". The way each of us relates to financial success often causes us to ignore the suggestive force of such a maxim. Unfortunately, the consumerist temptations to which we are exposed on a daily basis can make us easy victims of our own financial literacy prejudices. I do not deny that free-market mechanisms can discipline financial behaviour that exposes itself to risk too freely. But the price of such discipline can often be more dramatic than we dare to imagine.

The sustained efforts that the Financial Supervisory Authority is making in regulating and controlling the financial markets, with all determination and in as transparent a manner as possible, whether we are talking about punctual and urgently needed legislative initiatives or measures that are less comfortable in certain circumstances, but which - I am convinced - are legal, fair and sustainable for the health of the non-banking financial markets, are visible.

Macroeconomic developments in our world make financial education a social imperative. The recent crises culminating in the turmoil in the world economy, triggered by the war in Ukraine, show that economic and financial globalisation comes with its challenges. Negative growth, inflation and food insecurity are becoming increasingly common concepts in today's economic vocabulary.

On the other hand, we cannot fail to recognise that the globalisation of capital flows and the digitisation of financial services and products have opened up new horizons for sustainable prosperity. Unfortunately, however, these horizons continue to bring not only new opportunities but also new risks.

We live by our own financial choices. The increasing complexity of financial products, the volatility of financial markets, the proliferation of blockchain technology or the asymmetric digitisation of financial services are consequences of a global macroeconomic evolution. These developments impose financial risk as an unavoidable part of everyday life.

More and more everyday decisions have more or less conscious financial implications. Every day can bring investment opportunities but also the risk of falling victim to transactions whose implications can compromise the economic health of our families.

For example, not insuring assets, investing in the stock market or investing in crypto-currencies can become just a few risk-generating situations that the lack of basic financial education makes us unable to understand and evaluate. In practice, financial autonomy of citizens also implies an asymmetric shift of responsibility for financial decisions from financial institutions to individuals. This process of progressive risk transfer cannot leave an institution such as the Financial Supervisory Authority indifferent. I would like to stress here the consistent efforts aimed at ensuring the financial health of the domestic capital, insurance and pension markets.

The Authority aims - through the development of citizens' financial skills - not only to align itself with recent trends in this area in OECD countries, but also to contribute to the implementation of the Educated Romania project, initiated and promoted by the President of Romania.

Will we succeed, through financial education, in rapidly closing the gap in economic behaviour between Romanian citizens and those of advanced democracies? Although in the statistics on the financial literacy of Romanian citizens, our country does not reach the level of the leading OECD countries, I am convinced that the initiatives that the Romanian government, civil society, financial partners and especially our institution have taken in this regard will soon generate the expected results.

All of the Authority's financial education actions aim to develop a proactive attitude towards responsible financial behaviour. Paraphrasing Nicholas Taleb, who contrasts the idea of resilience with the concept of anti-fragility, I could say that the financial education strategy of the FSA is about more than just financial resilience. Through all the signals that our institution is constantly sending out, we aim to increase citizens' ability to detect, assess and eventually exploit the riskiness of all financial products and services for individual prosperity.

The ideal of developing proactive and sustainable responsible financial behaviour can only be achieved when financial education becomes a societal project. Through a series of partnerships with 20 Romanian universities, our institution has already started to materialize this project, organizing with the Institute of Financial Studies almost 70 seminars attended by over 5,000 students. More than 500 teachers have also been trained in financial education to transfer knowledge to secondary school students.

The Financial Education Forum is becoming an important national project that creates the necessary context for the implementation of programmes, their evaluation and the development of a constructive and cooperative dialogue in the field of financial education.

Your Excellency, Mr. President Klaus Johannis, I would like to thank you for all the support you have given to the Authority since the beginning of my mandate and assure you of our full openness to continue working together. The high patronage - granted to this forum by the President of Romania - honours us and obliges us to remain faithful to our strategic mission.

I thank you and wish you success now and in the future for all the financial education programmes that will come under the umbrella of this Forum.

Nicu Marcu,

President of the Financial Supervisory Authority

9 June 2022