Understanding Financial Education Needs in Myanmar

Financial education in Myanmar can be a difficult process since there are varying needs for different groups. Most Importantly, if the content is not relatable to the intended audience, the likelihood of engagement and knowledge retention is significantly reduced.

In early January 2021, Monkiri ran a workshop focusing on financial planning. Over 900 participants completed the signup survey for the event that asked questions about financial education needs and preferences. The need to improve financial education in Myanmar can be easily seen from the participants’ self-reported financial literacy skills.

With 1 being the lowest skill and 5 being the highest

The results created 4 distinct cohorts, with each cohort showing a significant distinction from the others. The primary distinction was age, but additional factors such as occupation and location had a correlation with preferred topics and learning methods.

Cohort A — Under 18

• Financial Skills: Was the lowest self-reported group, with the vast majority reporting their skills as a 1/5.
• Common Occupation(s): High School Students
• Location: Yangon and Mandalay
• Interests: Spending and Savings tips that could be immediately applied to daily life.
• Education Needs: A strong desire for easily digestible content and straightforward concepts. Higher emphasis on learning that is fun, fast-paced and can be immediately applied to daily life.
• Strategies: Creating content that covers core basics. Early lessons should avoid nuance and focus on clearly outlined skills, tips and concepts, with later lessons incrementally adding nuance. For best results, content that is fun and engaging is likely to perform better, including animations, graphics, activities and other aspects are likely to have a dramatic increase in both willing to learn and behaviour change.

Cohort B — 18 to 25

• Financial Skills: Slightly higher than the under 18 cohort but still had the average self-reporting of 1/5 for financial skills.
• Common Occupation(s): University Students, entry-level jobs
• Location: Yangon, Mandalay, Ayeyarwady
• Interests: Financial Independence and debt management.
• Education Needs: This group had the largest desire for personal growth and professional development. Obtaining certificates that could be used for job applications was commonly cited as something they wanted, most likely to share with potential employers.
• Strategies: Focusing on early career topics and financial planning. This group has an emphasis on growing their careers and having competitive applications when applying for jobs. Having certificates or other assets that could be added to a resume seemed to be important. This cohort is still looking for immediate action items but is more willing to explore long term financial planning than the younger cohort.

Cohort C — 25 to 40

• Financial Skills: Average self-reported score of 1.5/5
• Common Occupation(s): Had the largest variance in occupation and included high-status jobs such as government workers, engineers, managers as well as lower-status positions such as entry-level roles, shop attendants, or farmers.
• Location: Yangon and Mandalay
• Interests: General financial management, financial mapping, long-term financial planning.
• Education Needs: This group had the largest interest in long-term financial planning. This group is approachable to nuance but would benefit from having clear guidelines when creating plans.
• Strategies: Creating succinct long-term action plans to help this group plan for their futures. Lessons can have increased complexity and were more open to considering nuance than previous cohorts. However, there is still a strong desire to have clear plans. Financial tools focusing on long-term saving and long-term goal setting seem to be of high interest to this group.

Cohort D — Above 40

• Financial Skills: Had the highest self-reported scores with an average of 2.5/5
• Common Occupation(s): Business Management, self-employed
• Location: Yangon and Mandalay
• Interests: Applying financial concepts in the workplace, investing.
• Education Needs: A strong emphasis on practical and strategic information that could be applied immediately. This group had the lowest interest in engaging content and are more willing to consume text-heavy content. Want substantial and actionable instructions on how to apply concepts.
• Strategies: This cohort prefers content with clear and actionable instructions. They are willing to spend additional time to explore nuance and complete more detailed steps. The need for ‘engaging’ content such as graphics, animations or others was not as important as action lists or financial tools.

Occupation Findings

The strongest variable explaining a person’s financial education preferences was age but the second explanation was occupation status.

• Students preferred actionable content that could be applied to daily life and preferred topics on budgeting, saving and tracking spending.
• Creative industries and high-status positions preferred content around financial management.
• Business owners prioritize content around business finance over personal finance.
• Housewives seemed to have the lowest interest in financial management and stronger preference around spending topics such as online shopping, paying fees or general spending.
• The majority of people who put unemployed as their occupation indicated they are interested in entrepreneurship and are looking for content to help support them.

Other Findings

Outside of these 4 common cohorts were some additional niches, notably:

• As a person became older, their interest in debt management decreases and their interest in investing increases.
• Individuals with finance backgrounds are actively searching for resources they could apply to the workplace and were looking for advice they could give clients.
• 50% of respondents listed improving general financial management skills such as personal bank accounts and how to properly manage their income as a key interest area.

Future Improvements

This research study was not without flaws. These are some areas we identified on how to improve.

1. Asking for the birth year instead of which grouping participants fell under. Age has a strong correlation with learning preference and more precise measurement is likely to lead to better results.
2. Asking for gender identity. Collecting gender information is likely to lead to a better understanding of needs.
3. Improved geographic tracking to better understand regional preferences or preferences between urban and rural learners.
4. There was also an over-representation of urban participants, so conducting attracting additional rural participants would create a more balanced report.
5. The participants for this research study were attendees of a financial education workshop about financial planning hosted by Monkiri. The results are skewed towards people who are willing to take a financial planning workshop and does not encompass everyone in Myanmar.

About Monkiri

Monkiri is a mobile app focusing on financial education and inclusion that educates users on core financial concepts and provides transparent info on relevant financial service providers. Our goal is to empower informed financial decision making. Monkiri is currently active in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Canada. Monkiri provides a Learning Management System that makes it easy to create scalable lessons that can easily be localized for different countries.