Assessing financial awareness towards financial products and services: A comparative analysis based on gender, age, and locality

Abstract

Individuals face an increasing variety of financial products, services, risks, including those linked to their future planning. Everybody concern with knowing financial products/services, managing households’ finance and the well-being of the public must be financially aware. However, it's possible that the general public lacks literacy, information, and skills regarding insurance and private pensions issues and products, as well as a low level of awareness of the hazards to which they are exposed. This paper addresses these topical and unexplored issues as part of the ongoing OECD project on financial awareness. The analysis of financial awareness level of financial consumers on the basis of their locality is examined in this study. The data were collected in a field study from 610 respondents from Haryana, India using a non-probability purposive sampling approach. The study infers from the data the level of financial awareness among financial consumers is low and there is a significant difference between rural and urban, and male and female financial consumers’ level of financial awareness. After a comprehensive analysis of the main challenges and presentation of practical solutions, the paper highlights good practice, endorsed by Indian government, to enhance financial awareness and education on financial products, services, risks, insurance and other financial schemes.