Banco Santander and Plena Inclusión Spain have launched the ‘Finance for Mortals’ guide for all those who have any type of difficulty in understanding. This is a finance guide developed using the easy read method, a process for creating documents that are easier to understand, through text, image, design and layout.
Thanks to this method, the new ‘Finance for Mortals’ guide will improve access to financial knowledge both for people with intellectual disabilities, such as older people with cognitive impairment due to age, and for other groups, such as immigrants with low language proficiency, people without education or who cannot read or write, as explained in the book Lectura Fácil (Easy Reading) by journalist and universal accessibility expert Oscar García.
The publication addresses issues such as how best to manage money using a budget, how to open a bank account or what are basic banking products and services such as credits, loans and mortgages. It also explains what a payslip is, how an invoice is broken down, taxes, what social security is and how digital banking works.
For Enrique Galván, Director of Plena Inclusión Spain, “this is a useful guide that illustrates how we can achieve easier access to information, while helping people with difficulties in understanding to be more autonomous.”
Banco Santander has emphasised that it is firmly committed to financial inclusion in all the countries in which it operates, within the framework of its Responsible Banking agenda and its commitment to the United Nations SDGs, and they have stated that “this guide now being launched, together with the Finance for Mortals financial education programme, is a further step on the road to achieving the financial empowerment of 10 million people by 2025.”
In addition to the guide, two easy-to-understand videos are available: ‘What is finance?’ and ‘What is digital banking?’
Finance for Mortals (FxM) is a financial education project that Banco Santander has been promoting for 9 years, developed in collaboration with the Santander Financial Institute (SANFI) and the University of Cantabria. The programme, recognised as one of the most important financial education programmes in the country by the Bank of Spain and the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), is delivered by Santander’s volunteer employees and is aimed primarily at the most financially vulnerable groups
such as children and young people, the elderly, social entrepreneurs and groups at risk of exclusion due to various circumstances.
Plena Inclusión Spain is a confederation of 935 associations working for the rights of persons with intellectual or developmental disabilities (Down’s syndrome, autism and cerebral palsy) and their families, throughout the country.
