Financial Education for Entrepreneurs: How to Get it Right?

Looking at the importance of entrepreneurs’ part in making European economy better, ACCA and Barclays have organized a debate session recently in Brussels with the assistance of OthmarKaras(MEP)on how to deliver financial education and entrepreneurial skills knowledge. This roundtable ended with a conclusion that all the finance officials need to coordinate with one another (also along with other stakeholders) in order to develop entrepreneurial culture in Europe. According to the EC 2013 Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan, Europe can make best use of its investments by investing in the business of entrepreneurshipeducation.

The discussion indicated that entrepreneurs lack relevant financial knowledge required to make decisions on daily basis. Therefore, the financial ecosystem requires contribution from all the financial institutes and accountants in order to achieve the aim of effectively delivering the financial education at a very early stage. In addition to a suitable regulatory environment, some modifications to the attitudes of entrepreneurs are required emergently to establish a true entrepreneurial culture in Europe.

In the conference, OthmarKarasstated that basic economic and entrepreneurship knowledge needs to be inserted in minds of students and children.The earlier they have understanding ofcredit, savings, anddebtthe better they can perform their role in future.

The head of SMEs Affairs at ACCA, Manos Schizas said that the doing business planning is themost effective learning experience and having good financial knowledgealong with that certainly can help SMEs. Accountants are deemed to be the most trusted financial education providers and actually the accountancy profession accepts the responsibility to deliver effective and beneficial financial education.

The Managing Director at Barclays, Richard Phelps said that teaching entrepreneurship (which is in surroundings) is distinct from making entrepreneurs financially knowledgeable. He also emphasized on culture factor. According to research developing economies have higher patience for failure than developed ones. The situation is different in Europe where about half of new businesses fail during initial 5 years. Banks can play an important role is assisting those businesses beyond just simply lending.

OthmarKaras identified that there is a need to focus on making society financially educated.He said that we need to observe the global situation, only the local regulation cannot be depended upon and we need to understand the regulation outside the Europe to find out the solutions of some problems.