Thirty Two Questions and Supporting Evidence    Submission Letter to Royal Commission April-2018   Defined Terms & Documents  

13th Question

Will the Royal Commission ask the Chair of ASIC that is bound by Part 1-Preliminary Division 1 Objects of the ASIC Act 2001 to -

*       "improve the performance of the financial system and entities in it; and

*         "receive, process and store, efficiently and quickly, information that is given to us",

to inform what action ASIC took to protect Financially Uneducated And Vulnerable Credit Cardholders that have poor Financial Literacy Capacity, after it published ASIC Report 224 "Access to financial advice in Australia" in Dec 2010?

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Supporting Documented Evidence re 13th Question

 

See 'Supporting Documented Evidence re 12th Question', specifically ASIC Report 224 "Access to financial advice in Australia" - December 2010 includes:

51 These results, when considered together with Australian Bureau of Statistics‘ research into Australians‘ general document literacy and numeracy,15 in particular their ability to meet the complex demands of a knowledge-based economy, suggest that about one in two Australians do not have the skills required to make informed choices in their interactions with the financial services sector.16 There is also an identifiable age link, with document proficiency tending to decrease with age.

14 For example the 2008 ANZ study of financial literacy found that ‗67% of respondents said that they understood the principle of compound interest, but only 28% were rated with a good level‘ of comprehension when they solved the problem‘, ANZ Banking Group Limited, ANZ survey of adult financial literacy in Australia, (The Social Research Centre) ANZ Banking Group, Melbourne, 2008, p. 19.

15 As part of an international study, the ABS measured skills in document literacy, prose literacy, numeracy and problem solving and found that approximately 7 million (46%) of Australians (and 7.9 million (53%) of Australians aged 15 to 74) had proficiency less than the minimum required for individuals to meet the complex demands of everyday life and work emerging in the knowledge-based economy‘ for document literacy and numeracy respectively‘, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Adult literacy and life skills survey results, cat. no. 4228.0, ABS, Canberra, 2006, p. 5.

16 These findings have implications for our regulatory regime, which relies upon disclosure as a critical element of our consumer protection system.