Financial regulators in many states recently have obtained statutory mandates to enhance consumer financial literacy. This paper investigates the development of policy pursuant to such mandates in the UK and Canada to identify how national regulators represent the role of the literate consumer in the financial market place. It finds that regulators in both countries represent financial education as empowering consumers but that each embeds in its policy an implicit normative ordering of responsible consumer behavior. The paper relates the tension between empowerment and responsibilization aspects of literacy enhancement to policy goals of expanding financial markets and assisting financial regulators to manage consumers’ expectations of protection. It raises questions about regulators’ use of consumer education to responsibilize consumption of financial products and calls for further research on the international growth of financial literacy education as a regulatory project.

Following the recent financial crisis, consumer behavior was framed as central in contributing to financial instability. To heighten the financial responsibility of consumers, programs to increase the financial literacy of the general population are being administered by the OECD and other national and international, public and private organizations. Far from presenting a balanced view of economics or encouraging civic engagement in financial regulation, such programs focus on correcting what is viewed as consumer misconduct. In the process, economic topics are naturalized and become reified. We oppose this “mainstream” financial literacy, by proposing a critical financial literacy (CFL) program that empowers citizens to question the role of finance in society, and that underscores the importance of representing civil society interests in financial regulation. Hence, we call on civil society organizations and other stakeholders in civil society to contribute to the content of these programs and promote a CFL.

Given the recent and ongoing economic crisis and high levels of consumer debt, the teaching of financial literacy in elementary and secondary schools has received widespread support. Too often, however, financial literacy education policy documents promote the individualization of economic risk and privilege the autonomy of the consumer or consumer-citizen over that of the critical citizen. This article argues for the necessity of a critical financial literacy education aimed at supporting critical citizens by providing a Marxist critique of the dominant liberal and neoliberal notions of freedom and responsibility reproduced in financial literacy education policy documents. The choice highlighted here is not between financial illiteracy and financial literacy but between accommodating oneself to neoliberal capitalism’s needs so as to remain in perpetual competition with others or understanding and collectively altering an economic system that promotes alienation, insecurity and exploitation.

In the absence of critical inquiry, traditional financial literacy education risks socialising economically marginalised groups into an acceptance of the very power structures that created their marginalisation in the first place. The instructor-facilitator seeking to confront the challenge of promoting critical thinking about a subject widely accepted to be factual and esoteric faces considerable obstacles. Adoption of inclusive pedagogies in the design and delivery of financial literacy workshops offers a means of challenging positivist notions of ‘authentic knowledge’ in finance. This paper brings the socially constructed nature of finance to the forefront and offers reflections on our experience with a series of student-led workshops intended to advance financial literacy and a critical financial consciousness in economically marginalised youth, some of whom have been marginalised by the formal education system as well.

Empirical research suggests that financial inclusion initiatives - such as facilitating access to financial resources or providing microcredit - are alone not enough to lower socioeconomic disparities. In this article, we adopt a critical stance as a guide for our empirical investigation. Our aim is to propose a financial education framework, tailored to low-income micro-entrepreneurs, that embraces new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and seeks to improve financial inclusion and social emancipation. This empirical study was conducted in an Amazonian municipality in Brazil where recent access to ICTs has brought about important and varied socioeconomic changes. Results show that ICT-supported and tailored critical financial education can play a dual role: on the one hand, access to financial education might decrease the effects of generative mechanisms on global/local tensions, triggered by standardized ICT applications; on the other hand, such access might increase financial inclusion and social transformation through the integration of guiding principles into financial education programs.