Luigi Federico Signorini: The impact of digitalization on financial education and inclusion

Speech by Mr Luigi Federico Signorini, Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Federation of Finance Museums, Rome, 4 October 2022.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

I am delighted to welcome you to the Tenth Annual Meeting of the International Federation of Finance Museums, hosted this year by the Bank of Italy together with the Museum of Saving.

The theme for this year's meeting is the impact of digitalisation on financial outreach, education and inclusion. Digitalisation in finance has spawned a host of innovative products and channels, and is a new challenge for financial education; at the same time, it offers new tools for making education more effective. Our common goal is to rise to the challenge, and to make good use of the tools.

As a challenge, digitalisation perhaps only exacerbates certain inherent difficulties in financial education that those involved in it know well. I would like to take this opportunity to share with you a few thoughts on why these difficulties exist, and what can be done to overcome them. In so doing, I shall make reference to the experience of the natural sciences, and the recent specialised subject of 'Science of Science Communication'. This discipline looks for the factors that may undermine the effectiveness of scientific information and education and proposes methods to mitigate these effects.3 Most of its contributions relate to physics, chemistry, biology and medicine; however, there is little doubt that similar issues are also relevant for the economy and finance.