Financial literacy in adults consumers: attitude, experiences and what else?

The lack of financial knowledge and the need of financial education for both young and adults consumers have been already analysed by the literature. The possibility to enhance consumers knowledge by financial education has been studied too. If financial education is considered a useful tool, more emphasis should be given to its recipients. A one-size-fits-all approach, where the ability of a specific FE curricula to enhance consumers knowledge is tested under the assumption that the recipients are an homogenous group, could be misleading. Some curricula could be a fit and useful for some recipients, while others could reject it as useless because too easy or too difficult. This implies that an analysis of the recipient characteristics should be done prior to deliver any curricula. This paper tries to identify some consumers characteristics in order to describe their financial literacy. Using data from a survey on the Italian credit market a regression has been done. Results highlight that higher levels of financial literacy are typical of consumers (1) with previous financial experiences (mortgages, loans, etc.) (2) that show a stronger attitude to personal finance management (use of credit cards, bank account management skills, etc.). At the same time variables as school education and self-perception seems to be relevant in order to predict consumers financial literacy. These results may be relevant to identify some target recipients within a consumers population, in order to maximize the returns from the investment in financial education initiatives.