Heritage Bank Engages Young People on Sound Financial Decisions

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Heritage Bank Plc recently engaged over 10,000 teens and youths across the 36 states of the federation, improving their capabilities to make sound financial decisions in order to secure their futures.

This was done to commemorate 2022 Global Money Week themed Build Your Future, be Smart About Money held between March 21 and 27. It is also in alignment with the Financial Literacy Day of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

One of the activities to herald this year’s GMW was the partnership with the Heart-to-Heart Foundation on building successful families by educating married couples, counselling teens and young adults and holding awareness campaigns to enlighten them on financial literacy.

The Executive Director, Jude Monye reiterated Heritage Banks’ commitments to further entrench financial inclusion, seeing financial literacy as a key enabler in the bank’s quest to drive financial inclusion, which could also be achieved when young Nigerians are properly educated on the importance of making sound decisions on money matters.

Speaking at the Heart-to-Heart conference titled The Cheating Mind, Ms Ozena Utulu, Acting Group Head, Corporate Communications of Heritage Bank, stressed the importance of financial intelligence, as this would aid in securing the future of the young ones, enable them to make better financial choices, create a sense of responsibility with money which would, in turn, finance their skills in the future.

She added that to make money, time management is imperative and should be well understood, advising them to “start saving now, make the right choices while spending money by creating a budget, identify the needs and wants and also imbibe the culture of savings, be smart about how money is spent and spend money wisely.”

Ms Utulu disclosed to the youths that money was exchanged in the past by trade by barter, which today cash, cheque books, Automated Money transfer, Automated Teller Machine (ATM) Card amongst others in use today.

She disclosed that Heritage Bank as part of engendering saving culture would assist commence saving with the various account opening packages like the Bud account for students and Tier 1 account for young adults.

Also speaking at the event, the co-convener, Heart-to-Heart Foundation, Dr Stephine Oarhe commended Heritage Bank for being at the forefront to instil financial knowledge and saving culture amongst the young generation.

She admonished parents not to entrust their responsibilities to children and allow them to grow before assuming adult responsibilities, urging them to focus on themselves as they ensure they are better than who they were yesterday.