Good morning. I am delighted to be invited to speak this morning and to be able to take part in this conference, both as a member of the Transact Advisory Board and in my capacity as the Director of the Financial Services Authority with responsibility for financial capability.
I'd like to spend a few minutes running through three main themes: the progress of the National Strategy for Financial Capability, which is led by the FSA; the strategy's links with Transact's work to increase financial inclusion; and the organisations the FSA has chosen to fund as part of this year's Financial Capability Innovation Fund Awards.
The National Strategy's work to improve the nation’s confidence, knowledge and understanding of personal finance is making good progress. But you don't need me to tell you that this is very early days and that we will need to stick at it for many years if we are to deliver the step change we need to see. But there is much over which to be optimistic, particularly the place that this issue now occupies on the political and social agenda, and the range of partnerships that are delivering real benefits to consumers. Government, industry, education professionals, voluntary sector, trades unions and media have all been deeply involved in the planning, testing and trialling of initiatives and are now, I'm delighted to say, also central to delivery.
The ground breaking research we published last year helped us to make informed decisions about which groups of consumers the strategy should target, when and with what. This has allowed us to design a carefully targeted programme that will reach at least 10 million consumers in the period to 2011.
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