EU Strategy on financial education: how to show measurable results

From activities to results

For years, financial education has been measured by counting: how many webinars, how many guides downloaded, how many people in the room. On 30 September 2025 the European Commission published its Financial Literacy Strategy, and one of its four pillars is precisely about monitoring and evaluation.

The message for anyone working in financial education, banks and insurers included, is simple. It is no longer enough to say how many initiatives were run. You need to be able to show that people, afterwards, know more and manage their money better.

In this article we look at where Italy starts from, what the Strategy asks for and how to build a programme that produces data, not just participants.

Where Italy starts from

Italian adults score 10.7 points out of 20 in the latest Bank of Italy survey on financial literacy, carried out with the OECD/INFE methodology and published in July 2023. In 2020 the score was 10.2: a step forward, but the level remains low.

• Overall score: from 10.2 to 10.7 out of 20
• Knowledge: from 3.9 to 3.7 out of 7
• Behaviour: from 4.2 to 4.7 out of 9
• Attitudes: from 2.0 to 2.3 out of 4

Knowledge actually fell slightly, while behaviour and attitudes improved. Digital finance skills, measured for the first time, stop at 4.6 out of 10, with a gap to the disadvantage of women. Scores are also lower among younger people and among those with a lower level of education.

The European picture is not very different: according to the 2023 Eurobarometer, only 18% of EU citizens have a high level of financial literacy.

What the European Strategy asks for

The Strategy is part of the Savings and Investments Union project. Its stated goal is to make citizens more independent and confident in their financial choices, and at the same time to bring more savings into investment. It rests on four pillars:

1. Coordination and best practice, with a voluntary EU code of conduct for private and non-profit organisations offering financial education initiatives.
2. Communication, with a European campaign on budgeting, pensions, debt, risk and fraud.
3. Funding, with no new funds but a more targeted use of existing ones and of the OECD competence frameworks.
4. Monitoring and evaluation, with evaluation tools developed together with Member States and a new dedicated Eurobarometer in 2027.

The fourth pillar is the most relevant for anyone designing programmes. Each Member State will be responsible for evaluating how it applies best practice, and results will be measured periodically. Anyone designing a financial education programme will therefore increasingly have to answer one question: what has changed for the people involved?

For banks and insurers it is also an opportunity. The code of conduct will concern private players, and a programme that can demonstrate its results starts at an advantage over one that only brings participation figures.

Why information alone is not enough

Most financial education programmes are still based on content to be consumed: PDFs, guides, webinars, articles. They are useful, but they have two limits. They are quickly forgotten, as shown by the forgetting curve studied in the psychology of learning. And above all, they say nothing about what the person has understood or changed.

The Bank of Italy data confirm this in their own way: theoretical knowledge stagnates, while it is behaviour and attitudes that move. That is where financial wellbeing is decided, in everyday habits: keeping a budget, setting something aside every month, protecting yourself against the unexpected.

Getting there takes three steps:

• Information: understanding the basic concepts, such as inflation, compound interest, diversification.
• Engagement: short lessons, quizzes, simulations and challenges that bring the person back to the path.

• Habit: small reminders and goals that turn what has been learned into repeated behaviour.

A programme that stops at the first step produces participants. One that reaches the third produces changes that can be measured.

How financial wellbeing is measured

To demonstrate an improvement you need a starting point and an index that can be repeated over time. This is the approach of the Financial Wellbeing Score that AWorld uses in its financial education programmes on Evolve: a score from 0 to 100 built on the frameworks of OECD/INFE, CFPB (the US agency for the protection of financial consumers), Melbourne Institute and FCA.

• Resilience (0-35 points): savings, debt, liquidity, protection. Self-reported or from banking data.
• Perception (0-25 points): sense of control, stress, ability to handle the unexpected. 5 questions adapted from the CFPB.
• Knowledge (0-20 points): inflation, compound interest, diversification. Questions aligned with OECD/INFE.
• Behaviour (0-20 points): budgeting, saving, planning. Self-reported and verifiable with banking data.

The initial profiling gives each person a starting point and a path suited to their level. From then on, every lesson, quiz or mission updates the picture. Whoever manages the programme sees in real time the trend of engagement, learning and score across the whole user base, with reports ready for the board and for ESG reporting.

In this way, the EU Strategy's question is answered with a number: by how many points the financial wellbeing of the people involved has grown.

Two concrete examples

Think Financial Wellbeing with HSBC. Since October 2025, HSBC has been offering its customers a digital academy built with AWorld and run by the bank's Sustainability and Inclusion team. The first version is live in the United Arab Emirates, in two languages. Each user starts from profiling on the 0-100 index and is assigned to one of four levels, from "Getting Started" to advanced. From there they access 56 paths on money management, budgeting and saving, protection, retirement planning and women's empowerment, plus content dedicated to life moments such as buying a home, getting married or retiring. The bank follows progress from a dedicated dashboard.

Scelte Future. The programme, promoted by Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Intesa Sanpaolo and Fondazione Ufficio Pio with Intesa Sanpaolo Assicurazioni, combines incentivised saving and financial education for families with an ISEE of up to 15,000 euros and children aged 0 to 6. Every euro paid in by the family is doubled and accumulated for the children's higher education. AWorld built the web app that supports families with learning paths, nudging and savings tracking. The pilot starts in Piedmont in the second half of 2026 and involves around 2,000 children.

In both cases, measurement is planned from the design stage.

Where to start

The EU Strategy does not impose direct obligations on banks, but it clearly sets the direction: financial education will be judged by its results. Those who want to be ready can start from three questions.

1. Do we know our customers' starting level?
2. Does our programme bring people back, or does it run out after the first piece of content?
3. A year from now, what number will we be able to show the board, the regulator and the local community?

With Evolve, AWorld helps banks and insurers build personalised, engaging and measurable financial education paths, starting from the Financial Wellbeing Score. Discover AWorld's financial education solution or request a demo.

Sources

• Bank of Italy, Survey on adult financial literacy 2023
• European Commission, Financial literacy
• Regulation Tomorrow, European Commission publishes Financial Literacy Strategy
• Scelte Future