Despite the changes in the current learning set-up, the Department of Education (DepEd) remains eager to promote financial literacy among young students, parents, and teachers.

In order to increase awareness on the importance of digital savings and financial literacy among its stakeholders, DepEd, in a statement issued Wednesday, March 10, said that it has partnered with the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) for its digital savings campaign.

DepEd said that it will work with RCBC for its “Ipon Galing initiative” which is a massive digital financial education awareness campaign. It is expected to be done nationwide to further encourage students - as well as teachers and parents - to save using digital saving platforms.

The RCBC, DepEd said, has recently launched an incentives promotion for those who will begin their savings journey using the “DiskarTech, RCBC’s Taglish” finance super app.

DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones noted that after integrating financial literacy into the K to 12 curriculum, partnership programs like “DiskarTech” of RCBC will “allow our teachers and learners to experience how technology works for us while we are securing our finances and save for the most important and unanticipated events such as the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Citing the results of the 2019 Financial Inclusion Survey of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), 53% of adult Filipinos are savers but 51% of them save at home. The same survey showed that while account ownership has improved in the last two years, more than two-thirds of Filipinos still lack access to a formal account.

“In this time of pandemic, having a transaction account has proved crucial to social protection and financial resilience,” BSP Center for Learning and Inclusion Advocacy Director Ellen Joyce Suficiencia said. She added account owners had also been found to have a higher rate of savings, access to digital financial services, and less debt.

Meanwhile, DepEd Legislative Affairs, External Partnerships and Project Management Service Undersecretary Tonisito M.C. Umali, Esq. explained that the agency finds a “shared value” with the RCBC to “not only survive but thrive in this new normal by being agile and innovative.”

Umali added that the partnership also “hopes to equip our learners, as well as our teachers and parents, nationwide with more skills towards their financial well-being.”

RCBC President and Chief Executive Officer Eugene Acevedo, on the other hand, pledged their commitment to make sure this project is an unqualified success. “Let us work together to encourage more Filipinos to save especially the young ones,” he added.