In 2019, Finance Finland (FFI) organised insurance knowledge workshops to young people across Finland, reaching about 2,200 students in total. The workshops looked into the Finnish public and private insurance systems. Feedback from schools has been only positive, describing the contents as tangible and relatable to the students. Encouraged by these good experiences, FFI decided to fund 50 more workshops.
A total of 100 workshops were organised in middle schools, upper secondary schools and vocational schools in 15 different locations in Finland. The workshops were 90 minutes long, free of charge, and hosted by the Youth Academy. Feedback from teachers was extremely positive: the workshops received plenty of praise and an average score of 4.2 on a scale of 1 to 5.
”The real-life examples were great, and could be even more prominent in future workshops. They left the students with many new thoughts to mull over”, said one of the comments in the open feedback section.
”Insurance fits the upper secondary school economics very well. The official syllabus is more geared towards macro economy topics, but micro economy is closer to the students’ real lives. The workshops were clearly customised for the target audience, which is excellent”, another comment reads.
More development and 50 more workshops
”The feedback we got shows a demand for insurance knowledge. Our experiences were so positive that we will fund 50 more workshops in the coming year. They will be available to all middle schools, upper secondary schools and vocational schools”, says FFI Adviser Jussi Karhunen, one of the designers of the workshops.
Positive reception does not mean the workshops cannot be improved. During the sessions it became evident parts of the material would benefit from more straightforward language and a concise insurance glossary. This would be especially useful for immigrant students. The Youth Academy aims to collect more feedback by interviewing the teachers who decided not to have the workshops in their schools.
”The Youth Academy had lots of marketing work laid out for them. The workshops were very well received at the schools they went to, but they had to make it there first. For some people insurance can feel like a distant topic at first”, Karhunen explains.
(Video subtitles available in English.)
One of the main goals of the workshops is to increase awareness of what we are automatically insured for and which types of insurance we must know how to handle ourselves. The workshops also discuss the principle of insurance in general, and related topics like insurance fraud. The workshops are hosted by young instructors who are trained by the Youth Academy.
The workshops can be booked on the Youth Academy workshop website (in Finnish). All the workshop materials are also freely available here (in Finnish). The material is produced by FFI, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland (Kela) and the Finnish Financial Ombudsman Bureau. The workshops are Funded entirely by FFI.
