Growing interest of young people in economic and financial topics

Interest in financial education is growing by 12% by 2021. Young people, in particular, are showing increasing interest in economic and financial issues, with over 40% of the sample wishing to increase their level of financial knowledge. These are the findings of the Edufin Pictet AM 2024 Observatory: Educating for the future, produced by Pictet under the direction of Nicola Ronchetti, founder and ceo of Finer Finance Explorer, now in its fourth edition, to monitor the level of economic and financial culture in Italy.

The main objective of the initiative is to understand the needs and difficulties of Italians in approaching financial matters, in order to help them make informed investment choices. To do this, the study monitors the trend of interest in the subject each year, with a particular focus on young people. In particular, it ascertains the difficulties encountered in the search for content and in identifying authoritative referents, the evolution of the media diet in the financial sphere, where the social network component is increasingly marked, and the attitudes of the different generations towards savings and social security.

The research involved 5,000 individuals, of which 2,500 final investors subdivided by type and size of financial assets 1,000 mass market (with financial assets from €10,000 to less than €50,000), 1,000 affluent (500 from €50,000 to €250,000 + 500 upper from €250,000 to €500,000), 500 private (400 from €500,000 to €5 million + 100 Hnwi over €5 million) and 2.500 non-investors, distributed as follows: 600 high school/university students (aged 18 to 29), 400 secondary school students (aged 16 to 18), 1,500 Italian savers (over 25) who have not invested their savings.

Social networks remain among the main channels of financial information, with a growth of around 10% in three years. In particular, Instagram is increasingly winning over young people, who in about 35% of cases use it both to get information and to seek advice. In contrast, finding suitable content and/or referrals remains the main obstacle for 39% of the sample.

The short-term horizon dominates the choices, due to the complexity of the macro scenario and the difficulty of saving. 70% of the population claims to suffer from financial anxiety, fuelled in turn by widespread risk aversion and insufficient financial knowledge. Among investors, 47% of the Italian sample invest in bonds and 22% in real estate. While young savers, who are more likely to invest in equities with a view to the long term, continue to show little interest in and little knowledge of instruments that are more suited to them, such as Pacs or supplementary pensions.