Now, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair wants Filipino students to learn much earlier, pushing to make financial literacy a core subject in high school.
“Truth to tell, I did not know anything about the stock market even after I graduated from college,” Lim said during an interview with reporters on Monday.
The corporate lawyer and University of Santo Tomas philosophy graduate would later lead the Philippine Stock Exchange, becoming its longest-serving president at the time.
At the PSE, Lim worked with then Education Secretary Jesli Lapus on a plan to make stock market education mandatory for college students majoring in finance.
“It was a good plan, but I thought, why don’t we make it general, or better, make it part of secondary education?” Lim said.
The stakes are high in a country where studies have put financial literacy at just 25 percent, among the lowest rates globally. This leaves millions of Filipinos vulnerable to bad investment decisions and scams.
Lim said on Monday a bill has already gone through a congressional committee hearing, with a technical working group finishing work on a substitute measure that would make financial literacy a core subject for secondary students.
“That will also address our problems with scams because, for us, the best defense against scams is a financially literate population,” Lim said.
Miguel R. Camus has been a reporter covering various domestic business topics since 2009.
