01 December 2020

A recent survey by UniCredit and Skuola.net has identified a deficit in financial literacy among young Italians

2:00 min

A new survey from UniCredit and Skuola.net has exposed the challenges facing university students in Italy when managing their money and defending themselves from scams and online fraud.

The Observatory on Financial Education – created by UniCredit and Skuola.net, with the support of EbiCo, an academic spin-off of the University of Florence – interviewed 2,500 young people under 30 who currently attend the University.

On average, only half have mastered the basic concepts of savings, interest and the purchasing power of money. And despite being ‘digital natives’, a similar share confess to having experienced at least once an online scam or identity theft.

Only 38% claim to be able to recognise the most common scams and another 54% say they know only part of them. Almost 1 in 10 say they are completely unprepared on the subject.

About 6 of 10 do not know that phishing is attempted through an e-mail and less than 4 out of 10 know that vishing is a scam that involves a phone call, or that smishing uses SMS.

“Young people and their approach to the banking and savings world are topics of great interest for UniCredit and this is why we launched our Save4Young programme in collaboration with Skuola.net,” explains Remo Taricani, UniCredit Co-CEO Commercial Banking Italy. 

“Save4Young is part of our Banking Academy, which has been supporting financial education initiatives for more than 10 years. We organise initiatives for young people because our idea of a sustainable future must look primarily to them.”

He adds, “UniCredit has been investing heavily in digital development, including our new mobile App and the activation of payment tools such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. We also launched buddybank more than two years ago, a new banking model designed exclusively for smartphones.”