OLYMPIA – The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions is pleased to announce today that it is bringing to Washington a major workplace investor education program with a proven record of accomplishment documented in field-testing on about 8,500 employees in hundreds of workplaces in other states.
Investor Education in Your Workplace® (IEiYW) is a project of the nonprofit Investor Protection Institute (IPI) with support provided through the Investor Protection Trust (IPT). It is carried out jointly with state securities agencies, Washington’s DFI Division of Credit Unions and the National Credit Union Foundation (NCUF). After its initial testing phase in three states, IEiYW is now expanding to the District of Columbia and seven additional states: Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Washington.
“We need workplace savings/investing programs that work for employees and employers in Washington,” DFI Division of Securities Director Bill Beatty said. “The real plus of the ‘Investor Education in Your Workplace’ program is that it is a proven product with measured and fully quantified empirical data spanning thousands of employees in three states. This is an excellent example of how DFI and other state securities agencies are once again taking the lead in delivering important and effective investor education at the grassroots level in the U.S.”
“The answer to the question of how to get more employees to participate in workplace saving and investing programs is much sought after in the world of investor education,” IPI President and CEO Don Blandin said. “The good news here is that we now have a much better handle on what works.”
“Credit unions are the perfect crucible for testing what works when it comes to investor education designed to spur more saving and investing,” NCUF National Program Manager Lois Kitsch said. “That is why credit unions have taken a very active role in this effort by the Investor Protection Institute and state securities regulators to find a way get more people off the dime when it comes to planning for their financial futures. The strong results we already have seen with this program make us very eager to be part of the new phase of the campaign in which it is going national.”
The 10-week online IEiYW training program is producing groundbreaking results as seen here:
- Up to 50 percent increases in short- and long-term saving and investing activities;
- Up to 40 percent improvement in investment knowledge measured through pre- and post-testing;
- Up to 50 percent improvement in participant attitudes and behaviors including increased financial well-being, setting investment goals, implementing a budget, and starting/increasing contributions to 401(k), IRA, or equivalent plans;
- 88 percent of participants complete the program; and
- 96 percent say they would like to participate in additional programs.
With financial support from the Investor Protection Trust in 2009, the University of Wisconsin, Madison (U of W Madison), and the Educated Investor (EI) collaborated to develop a workplace-centered, online financial education program with the goal of providing employees with unbiased instruction in personal finance and investing fundamentals. The first program was rolled out in Wisconsin in 2010. The Educated Investor (published by Precision Information, LLC) provides the content, technology and program management for IEiYW.
For more information about Investor Education in Your Workplace, go to www.investoreducationinyourworkplace.org.