Financial Literacy for All™ – A movement towards creating a financially intelligent India

Not many are aware that financial mismanagement is responsible for most business failures the world over. Perhaps as high as nine out of 10 businesses that fail, fail not because they had an inferior product, nor because their marketing was inefficient and also not due to labour problems, but because of bad financial management.

And this happens due to a widely held belief that finance management is the job of the finance department alone.

The truth is that finance management or mismanagement is happening in every action of every individual across the organisation. Almost every decision taken by various so-called ‘non-finance’ managers/executives are in fact financial decisions. A decision taken by a salesperson, who is offered a large order provided he can cut price, to accept or to refuse the offer is a financial decision. A decision as to the levels of inventory to be maintained by the stores manager has a financial implication. An HR decision as to the size of the ‘bench’ to be maintained is also a financial decision. 

In fact, what happens in the finance department is largely accounting related. Finance management, or lack of it, take place in all the other departments. Every manager is a finance manager.

For over twenty years, Lamcon Training, a division of Lamcon Finance and Management Services Pvt Ltd,  has provided financial education to several corporate houses at the senior-most levels of management, within India and internationally. While this has been very successful, in order to have a more meaningful impact, it is important that India, as a nation, is  financially more literate. All people, across all social boundaries, should know how their actions affect their work places financially as well as have the ability to handle their own finances better.

In order to achieve this, Lamcon has launched a ‘Financial Literacy for All™’ campaign. This is an ambitious effort to create a financially intelligent India.

It is widely recognised that anyone who is not financially literate pays a price for this ignorance. Today, when India is growing at a rapid pace and with newer opportunities and avenues emerging every other day, this knowledge and understanding becomes  even more vital.

It is our belief that for India to continue its phenomenal growth rate it is important that each and every individual in this country is financially literate.

While large corporations recognise the importance of educating their executives and invest their time and money in doing so, the small entrepreneurs and individuals often do not do so, either on account of the relatively high costs or because they may not have felt the need. The objective of the Finance Literacy for All campaign is to make this segment financially intelligent.

The campaign proposes to address six target groups:

1. Non-managerial cadre employees and workers within corporations

2. Small businessmen/traders and professionals

3. School children

4. NGOs

5. Housewives

6. Other low income earners like slum dwellers, house maids, vegetable vendors et al.

To achieve this objective:

a)   Lamcon conducts free seminars on finance management for those who cannot afford to educate themselves. In this way, of course, our reach is extremely limited, both, in terms of numbers as well as geography.

b) To expand our reach, we plan to mobilise volunteers  as facilitators under a ‘train the trainer’ programme. We expect the volunteers to train somebody from the target audience groups and help in mobilising more volunteers, leading to an exponential growth in the number of trainers.

To take this campaign across the length and breadth of the country and to reach out to millions of citizens will require the participation of a large number of individuals and the support of corporations.

Since the cause is both social and beneficial, this project could fit into any organisation’s Corporate Social Responsibility.

Those wishing to participate in the movement in any capacity can contact Lamcon by sending them an email on [email protected]