Doctor

Pablo Martinez

Financial Education Helps Employees

Credit Cards, clothing, jewelry, etc. are offered in companies. The employees’ contract debts and organizations cannot avoid this. Companies mustteach financial education.
IVANNA ZAZUICH
LIDERES
Credit Card purchases in Ecuador bordered $3,600 million last year, according to the Banking and Insurance Supervisory Agency.
More than a revealingfigure, it shows market´s high liquidity and a consumer that responds to this environment. Credit Cards ceased to be exclusive for financial entities, since airlines, supermarkets, stores, restaurantsare also granting them, as financial advisor Ricardo Varas stated.
This offer reaches companies, where bank entity account executives offer this service to employees, according to Human Resourcesconsultant, Fransisco Paez. From his experience, only few organizations worry about the indebtedness of their associates. They don´t screen the approval of these loans. For this consultant, the HumanResources area should not limit an employee´s purchases.
What it is actually a company´s responsibility is to conduct workshops about financial education to teach the importance of savings andinvestments, Paez emphasizes.
Martha Ruiz is a Management assistant in a textile company. Every two months she receives a visit from jewelry, cosmetic, sellers or credit card offers with credit available forpurchasing in clothing stores. He says that he assigns a 15% of his monthly income to this type of purchases. Besides, he has three credit cards which he also uses, and generate interest. He´s unawareof what financial education is and he would like to save in order to secure his future.
Ruiz´ case is common, according to Carla Martinez, Director of Human Talent of Softronica. Employees contractdebt because they purchase products to 6 months or one year.
“In Softronica we do not have a policy to avoid these purchases, but we do publish newsletters on the internal network about the...