Financial literacy push targets young borrowers

The association has drafted educational material that banks can distribute at branches or across social media under a campaign named Train Nee.
In particular, the material will alert customers to the need for their debt to monthly to income to stay below 40 per cent.
The promotion of financial literacy comes under the TBA’s five-year plan for 2014-18.
 The association says the need to encourage responsible attitudes towards debt is particularly pressing among younger bank customers. 
New graduates are seen as being more vulnerable to the risk of taking on higher debt, relative to their incomes, than other groups in society, said Boontuck Wungcharoen, chief executive of TMB Bank, who is a leading figure in the debt education campaign.
“The Train Nee campaign is designed to help Thai people who belong to generations X, Y and Z to become more aware of healthy debt management and the need to build up savings for retirement,” Boontuck said.
“Debt creation is not bad but we want to educate Thai people who have debt that they should know how to manage their debt in a healthy way in order to prevent problems,.
“If they fail to manage their debts, the national household debt could become a challenging problem for the country.”
The TBA hopes that, with the collaboration of its bank members, the Train Nee campaign will help boost Thailand’s ranking in financial literacy to levels close to that of Hong Kong and South Korea within five years.
Thailand ranked 17th in the 2016 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Financial Literacy Score. The OECD compiles the rankings every two years.
Thailand scored 12.8 points out of 21, trailing the average of 13.2 points among the 30 assessed countries.
The rankings take into account people’s behaviour, knowledge and perception. The next financial literacy survey will be announced in 2018. Hong Kong and South Korea were ranked fifth and seventh in the last survey.