It is once again my pleasure to welcome you to the CEO’s Corner of the Consumer Education Bulletin. Allow me to also express my gratitude and appre-ciation to you for the continuous feedback that you continue to provide on various issues of consumer education and about NAMFISA in general.
When we decided to publish an educational pub-lication, our purpose was to create a platform for interaction with the consumers of financial services and products, to publish educational articles about a variety of issues in the financial sector and to ensure that we collectively improve the ability of consum-ers to make sound financial decisions.
I am happy to state that we are meeting that objective through the NAMFISA Consumer Education Bulle-tin. This quarterly publication is a testament to the continued commitment of NAMFISA to financial education as a complement to the regulated entities to act responsibly and in the interest of consumers. Possessing key financial skills provides consumers with a solid foundation to take the right borrowing decisions and can further contribute to the preven-tion of over-indebtedness. It is essential that borrow-ers have basic financial skills such as the ability to budget and save, the knowledge of how credit works and an ability to understand the conditions contained within a credit agreement.
“John Dewey once said “education is a social pro-cess; education is growth; education is not a prepa-ration for life but is life itself.”
This quote ties in very well with NAMFISA’s con-sumer financial education objectives of empower-ing citizens to be in full control of their financial lives.
We take cognisance of the fact that education is a lifelong experience that is only accomplished over time. We therefore do not leave our role as the regulator of the financial industry to chance. Once citizens are fully empowered through education on financial services and products, they are able to carve their own destiny.
We do acknowledge, however, that consumer finan-cial education is not as easy in practice as it sounds nor can it be achieved overnight. In our quest to en-sure that we stay abreast of consumer educational needs, we have piloted an SMS campaign in the past three months. This was intended to get a bett perspective of consumers’ understanding of NAM-FISA, its mandate and purpose and the entities it regulates, amongst many other issues.
Our analysis of the feedback we have received thus far gives us an indication that some consumers have an appreciation and understanding for NAMFISA role in the Namibian economic spectrum. Unfortu-nately, there are many more that we need to engage actively to ensure that they first of all understand NAMFISA’s mandate – what it does; why and how it performs the regulation; supervision and advi functions, which are core to its existence.
As a result of the feedback we have received from you, the consumer, we have decided on a featu about “Who is NAMFISA”, through which we will
highlight the Authority’s purpose of existence, its activities, milestones and a brief synopsis of the regulated entities. We will also highlight the issues that NAMFISA does not deal with which we unfor-tunately receive many queries for. These include, for instance, that we do not engage in debt management, regulating premiums or product design, as well as a few other issues of pertinence to the consumers. Our first installment in this edition talks about who NAMFISA is and what its mandate is in respect of the financial sector and the economy in general.
As usual, I invite you to kindly contact our Corpo-rate Communication and Consumer Education col-leagues with any useful tip or even queries or con-cerns that can be addressed in successive editions of the Bulletin.
I wish you all a happy reading.
Mr. Phillip Shiimi
NAMFiSA CEO