UNICREDIT AND SKUOLA.NET TEAM UP FOR YOUTH

Did you know that one out of every two students are a victim of online scams? It may seem a bit surprising, but the overconfidence that comes naturally from being born digital can lead students to underestimate the importance of some basic information.

For this reason, UniCredit and the digital platform Skuola.net have launched a new financial education initiative as part of the Save4Young project. The awareness campaign is addressed to under-30 university students and is intended to explain basic concepts such as savings, payments, investments and supplementary pensions on which many young people in school are still not informed. To effectively communicate with young people, it is necessary to speak their language and more importantly to reach them in those virtual places they visit.

The Skuola.net website has launched a series of activities on YouTube, where research, education and entertainment are all presented in modern language. And the statistics on popularity confirm this: more than 1 million total video views, more than 50,000 article readers, with an average reading time of 3 minutes, and over 2,500 university students who attended the Osservatorio sull'Educazione Finanziaria (Financial Education Observatory), answering a comprehensive questionnaire to test their financial literacy.

To stick to the world of young people, there was also a touch of irony. YouTuber Nikolais, the creative soul of the portal, has realised three sketch comedies by putting financial literacy into a storyline of jokes and parodies.

Daniele Grassucci, co-founder and director of Skuola.net, states that "...the entire project has been very positively welcomed by the target audience. All the contents have exceeded the average response rate usually recorded by this format, with significant interaction and in-depth analysis. The same can be said for media: the results of Osservatorio sull'Educazione Finanziaria generated dozens of mentions in national newspapers. Perhaps this is because it was the first extensive research on the financial literacy of university students in Italy, and it revealed an unprecedented, and not very encouraging picture, of the financial literacy skills among student, which was expected to be far higher”

Stefano Gallo, Head of Territorial Development Relations at UniCredit, says: "Being familiar with some of the basics of financial management, such as budgets, savings and investments is important to building a secure future. But understanding how to effectively and safely use the various banking and financial products and services is also key. A financial education project must choose a popular channel and appropriate language as well as reliable sources. With our Banking Academy, we design our offering by working with partners who know the target audience inside out.”

The Bank's commitment to the younger generations is always strong, the UniCredit Banking Academy launched the Save4Young programme some time ago and its partnership with Skuola.net is an integrated part of it. For the Students' Portal this is a new topic in the framework of action taken to improve the life skills of Italian students.