The 2009 ANZ-Retirement Commission Financial Knowledge survey shows an overall improvement in New Zealanders’ financial knowledge since 2006.
As it's only three years since the previous survey, major change was not expected.
There is no one simple explanation for the improvement, but the following are likely to have had an impact:
- The economic environment has changed.
- Basic numeracy skills, as tested in this survey, have improved.
- KiwiSaver has been introduced, with accompanying information and discussion.
- More media coverage of personal finance.
- Information and advice is more widely available.
- More awareness of where to find information as a result of the Retirement Commission’s Sorted resources.
More people have a high level of knowledge.
To measure financial knowledge, the people surveyed were scored on their answers to 42 financial knowledge questions. Their score determined whether they fell into the low, medium or high knowledge group. The threshold scores that defined each group were the same as the previous survey.
The following chart shows the distribution of financial knowledge scores for the 2006 and 2009 data.
Distribution of knowledge scores
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