Cenie launches a test to understand and improve the financial capability of the elderly

The International Centre on Ageing, CENIE, is launching a financial personality test based on financial habits to understand, evaluate and improve the financial capacity and health of the elderly. A capacity, as decisive as the physical condition of people linked to the maintenance of healthy lifestyle habits. Thus, financial health involves maintaining healthy financial habits in order to avoid indebtedness or difficulties when facing expenses and unforeseen events in retirement.

The hexagonal architecture of the test is based on six pillars of financial health: daily management; emergencies without financial impact; short- and medium-term goals; flexibility; future goals; and smart debt.

Given that each person has different motivations and problems, knowing the diagnosis is the first step towards healthy financial habits. CENIE encourages adults of all age ranges to take the test, as older and younger people use different decision-making strategies.

This test is part of an extensive research on financial decision-making focused on how these choices about our finances throughout our lives determine and condition our quality of financial life in retirement. Both the research and the test have been developed at the request of CENIE within the framework of its Programme for a Longevity Society by two teams of experts: Novaster, the first independent Spanish group of comprehensive pension consultancy and BeWay, an institution devoted to research, dissemination and application of behavioural sciences in the social, insurance, economic, financial and educational environment. It is a choral work, under the direction of Diego Valero, professor at the University of Barcelona. Novaster will focus on issues related to pensions and financing, and BeWay on financial education and the application of behavioural economics.

Three types of skills

The three types of capabilities that determine the quality of life of long-lived people are physical, cognitive and financial capabilities. The research, to be carried out by Novaster and BeWay and promoted by CENIE, aims to improve the financial management of the elderly by first shedding light on people's perception of their own financial management and empowering them through the design of an ad hoc tool that will enable them to improve their financial management in view of their retirement.

Financial capability is therefore crucial to ensure a smooth retirement. It is this capacity that allows them to maintain their autonomy as individuals, the possibility of continuing to contribute to society, and to live in the desired conditions once the formal employment stage comes to an end. 

This initiative arises in an environment of constantly increasing longevity, where the financial capacity of the elderly and therefore their financial health is the result of the decisions they have made throughout their active working life with regard to planning for this last stage.

About CENIE

CENIE, International Centre on Ageing, is a joint initiative of Spain and Portugal and is promoted by the General Foundation of the University of Salamanca together with the General Foundation of the Spanish National Research Council, the University of the Algarve and the Portuguese General Directorate of Health, with the support of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the INTERREG V-A Programme, Spain-Portugal, (POCTEP), 2014-2020. 

CENIE's vocation is to promote a debate in society that transcends the usual approach to this issue, based on pejorative apriorisms associated with the health and dependency costs associated with the elderly, as well as the maintenance of the fragile pension system.

CENIE aims to highlight one of the most relevant achievements of modern societies which, thanks to scientific advances and the universalisation of health care, together with improvements in hygiene and nutrition, open up a range of opportunities for present and future society, which demonstrates the need to implement appropriate policies that take these aspects into account.

CENIE seeks to respond to this generalised phenomenon that involves, from a social and economic point of view, the gradual lengthening of people's lives to around a hundred years. A debate that, sooner or later, will have to be addressed given the pressure exerted by demographics on society, as has previously happened with climate change or gender equality, among others.

CENIE considers it necessary to promote a change of focus, as in practice the social and economic advantages of longevity are not yet recognised, neither in the business world nor, in general, in society itself.