By Njabulo Ngcobo, Daily Sun – 13 July 2010
Several organisations are coming together to motivate South Africans to turn round "the country's poor savings record.
Old Mutual South Africa, the savings and investments group, has joined up with the South African Savings Institute (SASI) on the National Savings campaign, which will be launched next week.
The National Savings Month is the Institute's main event for a savings awareness campaign that runs throughout the year.
It focuses on creating a financially educated society and promoting a culture of saving in South Africa.
This year, because of the Soccer World Cup tournament, the National Savings Month theme will be "Save for the Goal - the Path to Recovery".
With Old Mutual's involvement, the campaign wants all South Africans to focus on financial recovery as the goal for the year. Considering Old Mutual's knowledge and experience around financial education programmes, together with the Institute's successful savings campaigns, the partnership is set to sort out some of the issues relating to the poor savings habits of South Africans.
Last year Old Mutual started the Old Mutual Savings Monitor which gives information around savings behaviours and trends in working metro households.
That information will benefit the different savings campaigns set out for this year.
Old Mutual and the Institute will be involved in a range of financial education campaigns aimed at the sports world, university students and the Teach Children to Save campaign.
The highlight of the National Savings Month's activities will be the SASI-Old Mutual Savings Workshop, which is set to take place on 2 September at the Reserve Bank Conference Centre.
Old Mutual's Director of Corporate Affairs. Crispin Sonn, said the partnership is a valuable confirmation of their existing financial education efforts. "It also validates our view that no single organisation can hope to tackle the country's urgent need to address its savings habits, for the benefit not only of the individual, but of the economic future of South Africa," said Sonn.
The Old Mutual Savings Monitor, which is due on 15 July, is set to clearly show the depth of the country's poor savings. Debt is becoming a huge factor, and more workers are resigning from their jobs to use their pensions to pay off their debts. Another part of the research shows that the majority of employees understand less than half of the financial advice and information that is given to them and that leads to bad savings trends.
The Institute's CEO Elizabeth Lwanga-Nanziri said the partnership speeds up the long-term goal of making sure South Africans are financially independent. "It will help us produce more South Africans who can make informed financial decisions." said Lwanga-Nanziri.