The news comes with the formal launch of the Business School's new centre of excellence in financial literacy, called the True Potential Centre for the Public Understanding of Finance (PUFin), on 14 November.
Personal Finance: Understanding the Basics, the first of the Centre’s three open access modules, will cover household budgeting, borrowing and debt management, managing savings and investments, and how to arrange insurance cover and organise a pension.
It will be followed by modules on investment management and risks, and understanding the financial services industry and your rights. For more details see the PUFin website.
The Centre will use its research expertise to develop courses relevant to the needs of individuals managing their personal finances and looking to invest in their future," said Professor Rebecca Taylor, Dean of The Open University Business School. "The research findings will also help organisations reach and understand the behaviours of such individuals in the future.”
PUFin brings together OU academics with expertise in: regulation of the financial services industry; investment, pension funds and mis-selling; consumer behaviour and customer relationship management;and the role of emotion in financial decision-making and taxation.
The Centre’s development has been supported by financial services organisation True Potential LLP whose Managing Partner, David Harrison, is an MBA graduate from the OU Business School.
“Investing and finance is a potentially very simple-to-understand subject that is frequently made very complicated and inaccessible, " he said. "We have set up this centre to democratise finance and make financial education more readily available.”
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