Digital investment platform, Wealthify, is today launching a groundbreaking campaign aimed at tackling low financial literacy levels in young people. Partnering with financial and enterprise education charity, Young Enterprise, Future Skills provides free resources to help teachers equip 16 to 18-year-olds with essential money skills, just as they approach financial independence.
In what the charity say is a first for them, the campaign enlists the help of viral TikTok sensations, Kyron Hamilton and Maddie Grace Jepson (who co-star in the four-part educational video series), and is designed specially to engage young people with financial education topics. The campaign has been launched in response to findings from Wealthify’s research with independent think tank, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The research, which benchmarked UK financial literacy levels, found that young people (aged 16-18) were only able to answer 20% of the questions about everyday finance.
The campaign is also deliberately timed to coincide with the maturation of Child Trust Funds. Over the next seven years, more than 6 million UK children will gain access to a government-funded Child Trust Fund (CTF) — worth an average of £2,100 when they turn 18. However, less than half of children aged 16-18 (49%) are aware of CTFs, with the Public Accounts Committee estimating that £1.7bn’s worth currently remains unclaimed.
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