Banking, budgeting, saving, debt and investing underpin many important financial decisions we make in our lives and ‘financial literacy’ is the ability to understand and make use of a variety of financial skills to make informed decisions and help us avoid making poor financial decisions, and thus achieve financial stability. And making informed financial decisions is more important than ever with individuals today more responsible for their personal finances and with financial services and markets rapidly changing, with developments in technology and new and more complex financial products. But indications are that widespread financial literacy is still lagging. A 2020 survey by the OECD’s International Network on Financial Education, for example, indicated that about half of the EU adult population does not have a good enough understanding of basic financial concepts. In this Story Scanner podcast, Annamaria Lusardi, a Bocconi alumna, Professor of Economics at George Washington University and director of Italy’s Financial Education Committee and Francesco Saita, professor of Financial Markets and Institutions at Bocconi, talk about the state of financial literacy around the world, why today knowing the ABC of finance is as important as knowing how to read and write, the most efficient measures and actions to help raise and promote financial literacy and how to close the financial literacy gender gap.