NCBA Bank’s Junior Banking promotes early financial literacy, helping children build money skills and values from a young age.
I’m a big fan of NCBA’s Financial Clinics in partnership with Family Media, and one of the most endearing ones I’ve watched recently is Financial Literacy for Children, which aired around two weeks ago.
Imparting knowledge about money is one of the most valuable skills that parents and guardians can offer their children, so they can grow up with healthy relationships with money and carry these principles through adulthood. By healthy, I mean they see money as a tool to grow themselves and not something to be irrationally afraid of.
Though it goes deeper, financial literacy can be described simply as the ability to understand and apply various financial skills, including earning, saving, investing, and borrowing. All these can be taught to children in varying degrees depending on age.
In the NCBA Financial Clinic, which you can watch here, the bank emphasizes the importance of early financial education. Kids as young as five can start grasping the basics of money, including simple counting, and graduate to deeper concepts as they grow. After all, financial literacy is not just about money, but also about values like financial discipline, responsibility, and patience.
The program aired courtesy of the Gold Banking segment of NCBA Bank, and the expert speaker of the day was Hebsiba Orunda – Head of Gold Banking at NCBA. This segment manages middle to affluent customers who have young families, making it just the wing to have children under.
Viewers got to learn that children can start learning about money as early as 2-3 years old when they start grasping basic concepts like what a coin looks like and maybe do simple counting. At around ages 5-10, they can start understanding the relationship between working and earning. This could be through getting allowances for simple household chores like making their beds. At this point, parents can also introduce piggy banks, and therefore the concept of saving for expenditures like church offerings or for buying toys.
Ages 10 years and above, they can be able to handle more advanced concepts like bank savings, different types of accounts and to some extent even cards. For high schoolers and University students, parents can discuss deeper elements like the power of compound interest and get deeper into saving, earning, spending, and borrowing.
After 18 they are able to open their own student accounts, which can then transition into a savings account as they grow older and start their own job and businesses.
When they get to the banking stages, NCBA Bank is there to play the important role of providing different facilities for different age groups and supporting parents in educating their children about finances through different initiatives.
For instance, the bank has Junior Savings accounts where parents and children open joint accounts. Parents are encouraged to have their children accompany them to the bank so they can spark their curiosity and interest in saving. Studies show that when a parent is involved in financial matters as opposed to teachers only, the message gets home better.
NCBA also offers the Go Educator Plan. A custom-tailored savings plan designed to help parents save for their children’s education. This product is curated based on the age of the child. The bank also runs educational forums like webinars and physical sessions to discuss financial matters with parents and children.
Children also need to know at an early age the difference between needs and wants as well as delayed gratification as a way of saving for the future, especially now in an era when instant gratification is gaining hold. NCBA’s financial literacy does not stop at urban areas, rather spreads throughout the thanks to the bank’s wide branch coverage and partnerships with organizations for outreach even to kids in rural areas or out of school.
