On 26 March 2025, the FSCA published a conduct standard on financial education initiatives. The conduct standard sets out various requirements with which financial institutions must comply from 25 March 2026. Here’s a summary of what will need to happen.
A financial institution must have appropriate governance arrangements in place to oversee the design and implementation of financial education initiatives.
- All retirement funds and financial institution boards should include this as a standing agenda item at each of their quarterly meetings.
Financial education initiatives provided by a financial institution should aim to enable members to make more informed financial decisions.
- Retirement funds must adopt an approach that is easy to understand and that ensures a transfer of knowledge. Creating communication in other languages will go a long way to simplify difficult concepts for different target audiences.
A financial institution providing virtual financial education initiatives must ensure that the virtual platform is appropriate for this purpose to ensure that the financial education initiative is effective.
- All members must be reachable on the chosen medium. In today’s world, your members expect instant answers. If they can’t find clear, simple information about their retirement benefits and options, they’ll be left feeling uncertain, and ultimately, disconnected. An open website that is not behind a login is a possible option. You can use WhatsApp, SMS, email or even publish posters with links to the relevant educational materials and videos on your website.
The outcomes of financial education initiatives must be measurable in order to demonstrate effectiveness and measure impact.
- Retirement funds will need to run surveys to measure these aspects and to identify where there is room for improvement. You can do this telephonically, via WhatsApp, USSD or a competition, using flyers or on your website.
Using small incentives such as complimentary vouchers for those who watch and complete the survey online has proven very effective.
- Tracking website visits with tools like Google Analytics to monitor members’ geographical areas, devices and browsers is tremendously useful when creating campaigns. The electronic link to the online survey can be supplemented with a hard-copy option available at HR, workshops or distributed during member sessions or annual general meetings, if needed.
A financial institution must report information relating to the provision of financial education initiatives to the FSCA.
- Whatever form the member surveys take, there needs to be a clear and auditable report trail.
Troubleshooting 1. Reaching members to educate them
Funds should consider a compulsory item in their member onboarding welcome packs – namely, that all new joiners attend an induction session and provide feedback to a presenter. This can be a hard-copy, SMS or online survey or a combination of these to reach all members.
If in-person onboarding is not feasible, then recorded webinars can be made available at HR, perhaps along with a dedicated laptop that members can access, for those employees who do not have a workstation or personal laptop/computer.
Graphic posters with QR codes that link to recorded webinars can be placed in pause areas. Keep these short and in low resolution to allow viewing on smartphones.
Retirement funds must adopt an approach that is easy to understand.
Troubleshooting 2. How often do you need to communicate?
Communication needs to be delivered where possible as a series; it is no longer sufficient to publish just one article on a topic. Communication should guide a member from having very little or no understanding to becoming comfortable with the topic. For example, a series on credit could include: What is credit? What items should you NOT use credit to buy? How to obtain credit, how to maintain a good credit score, what to do if you have too much debt and debt versus savings, etc.
It’s always been good practice to educate members, but from March 2026, it will become a requirement. Retirement funds and financial institutions now have both the opportunity and the obligation to ensure their members are informed, empowered and confident in their financial decisions.
