Financial education on line: does it works?

The low level of financial literacy of consumers has been highlighted by the literature. Results from the most of the analyzed Countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, etc) show that consumers knowledge is dramatically low. Even if both Governments and private institutions provide different financial education curricula, empirical data suggest that the financial literacy of the population is still far to be appropriate in order to take financial decisions in a fully responsible manner. So, some doubts on the effectiveness of financial education arisen. In this paper the author analyse data from an assessment procedure of an on-line tools aimed to Italian adult potential consumer credit customers. A questionnaire on consumer credit topics (instalments, APR, etc) has been proposed prior and after the use of a financial education on line tool. If the pre-post test assessment procedure has been frequently adopted in the evaluation of financial education initiatives, the studies on Internet based curricula are just a few. Results suggest an overall effectiveness of the tools, but the most interesting results concern data from education subgroups. Evaluating the improvement in correct answers between pre and post test for people with different education (from primary school to PhD) huge differences in the effectiveness of the tool arise. Data suggest the need to take into account the initial level of education of recipients in an assessment procedure in order to avoid problems related to the presence of a strong bias in the sample and come to wrong conclusions.