Well-educated financial consumers are the cornerstone underpinning the stability of the financial market. In order to accurately grasp consumers’ level of financial knowledge and weak links in the field of financial consumer education, evaluate the effectiveness of financial consumer education and further promote the spread of financial knowledge, the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau (FCPB) of the People’s Bank of China (PBC) conducted two nationwide trial surveys on consumer financial literacy in 2013 and 2015 respectively, which produced desirable results.
With the efforts of the FCPB, the General Administration Department of the PBC issued the Notice on Establishing the System of Questionnaire Survey on Consumer Financial Literacy (Trial) (Yinbanfa No. 8 [2016]), through which the system of questionnaire survey on consumer financial literacy was officially established. Since 2017, a wide-ranging questionnaire survey on consumer financial literacy has been conducted biennially in the 31 provincial administrative units across the nation (except Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). The first questionnaire survey was carried out in 2017, when 600 financial consumers were randomly selected from each provincial administrative unit, generating a sample pool totaling 18,600.
The survey set out to comprehensively and qualitatively analyze the financial literacy of Chinese consumers from a variety of perspectives, including consumers’ attitudes, behaviors, knowledge and skills. In terms of consumers’ attitudes, consumers hold a positive attitude towards financial consumer education and the promotion of financial knowledge on campus. They tend to have a rational attitude towards consumption, savings and credit, but their awareness of responsibilities and risks is yet to be enhanced. With regard to consumers’ behaviors, consumers have plans for their future spendings to some extent, could apply for loans, pay off credit cards and use ATMs in a relatively rational way, and have some knowledge about the access to financial knowledge and channels of lodging complaint in the case of financial disputes. Nevertheless, consumers still need to improve the planning and implementation of their household expenditure. In the meantime, they can not make the best of the contracts and bank statements of financial products or services. In terms of financial knowledge of consumers, the overall financial knowledge level of consumers still need to improve, and there is a pronounced gap between different types of financial knowledge as well as imbalances between urban and rural areas and between different regions. As to financial skills of consumers, they are able to identify and dispose of counterfeit money to some extent and are good at selecting financial products or services. However, there is still room for improvement in their ability to use bank cards and make inquiries based on serial numbers on banknotes. Regarding consumers’ demand for financial knowledge, the financial knowledge about how to preserve and increase the value of their assets is on top of their priority list. Most consumers think they lack the knowledge about stock and funds investment, housing loans, bank’s wealth management products and bond investment. Attention is also paid to the resolution of financial disputes. At the same time, differences in urban and rural areas, regions, professions, income, and education background also result in divergence of consumers’ demand for financial knowledge.
Furthermore, the report develops the index of consumer financial literacy to grade the national consumer financial literacy, and uses multiple linear regression (MLR) to quantitatively examine key factors influencing consumer financial literacy. The analysis results show that the national index of consumer financial literacy averages 63.71 with a standard deviation of 15.03 and a median of 65.74. The index of consumer financial literacy shows an approximately normal distribution. There is significant correlation between the score of consumer financial literacy and five factors, namely education, income, region, age and profession. Gender only has a limited influence on the score of financial literacy.
Conclusions of this survey are as follows. The questionnaire survey on consumer financial literacy is a fundamental and institutional work that should be continuously carried out in the long run. Equal attention should be paid to disseminating financial knowledge and improving financial attitudes, behaviors and skills. And importance should be attached to the lower-net-worth population to advance the popularization of financial knowledge in a targeted manner and push for the integration of financial knowledge into the national education system, so as to disseminate financial knowledge to people at an early age.
