Russia’s first Financial Literacy Centre has marked its sixth anniversary. Since its establishment in 2014, the Centre has helped over 300,000 people improve their financial knowledge. Users include schoolchildren, students, teachers, entrepreneurs and pensioners.

Center-invest Bank opened Russia’s first Financial Literacy Centre in April 2014, in partnership with Southern Federal University. Another four Financial Literacy Centres have since been opened as part of this socio-educational project (in Taganrog, Krasnodar, Volgograd and Volgodonsk). The Centres’ services, which include consultations, talks and lectures, are available to all and provided free of charge. Users learn about the modern financial world and about risks and returns. They acquire the skills to make financial decisions with an understanding of the potential consequences for themselves and others.

In the last six years, experts and volunteers from the Centre have:

• organised 3,877 events;
• advised 304,000 people on managing their personal finances;
• trained 2,150 volunteers to promote financial literacy throughout Russia and beyond;
• helped 830 start-ups to get off the ground;
• held the largest online financial literacy class for schoolchildren, in which 280 educational institutions took part.

"With the new distance economy, we have had to change the way we operate, moving all our seminars online," says Vladislav Soleny, head of the Financial Literacy Centre. "But it is not only our service that is being transformed; our users are already transforming their existing and proposed businesses in response to the new economic reality. And we are ready to help them grow and develop. It is really important now to be informed about remote banking, financial literacy, rational consumption and household budgeting. We are confident that everyone who attends our seminars, classes and courses, or who just follows us on social media, will navigate the new financial challenges competently. Thanks to everyone who has been in contact with the Financial Literacy Centre, be that in person or online — together we will keep moving forward!"

All of the Centres hold classes for schoolchildren on budgeting and personal financial security, while for students there are talks on the main financial instruments, the rules of debt management, and cybersecurity.

For the working population, there are courses on the basics of investing, cybersecurity and borrowing wisely, and also on responsible consumption.

The Centres also run Center-invest Bank’s business accelerator programme, which was created to help new businesses start up and existing businesses to grow (acc.centrinvest.ru).

The Financial Literacy Centres are an important part of Center-invest Bank’s ecosystem. The bank’s socio-educational programmes reflect its responsible attitude to social development and to improving financial literacy in the regions in which it operates. This is in line with ESG principles.