Dear Readers: The Introduction to the Bermuda Island Financial Literacy Perspectives YouTube channel is real and live.

If you click on the YouTube link below, you will see a video that presents an overview of the financial and related topics, specific to Bermuda’s financial environment, that we hope and need to cover in the next financial year.

It’s an ambitious non-profit, voluntary project to develop, and present specific-to-Bermuda financial information. Wonderfully, some of Bermuda’s luminary experts in finance and photography have volunteered to help build the list of easily accessible videocasts.

We are now at the end of April 2023 for Bermuda’s National Financial Literacy Month; while originally proclaimed by the US, we just adopted their schedule.

However, there are still several goals to accomplish in the next Bermuda Island Financial Education Year 2023-2024:

• Focus on the components of financial education relative to Bermuda islanders’ everyday life interspersed with other relevant categories

• Change the name from financial literacy (because it implies people are financially illiterate, not the case!) to financial education

Another way to look at financial education is to consider it an adults’ financial tune-up, while emphasising money management early in life to children.

And a few more very valid reasons to illuminate financial education.

Bermuda is one of the most complex financial jurisdiction on the planet.

I’ve been comparing the Bermuda economy for quite a while to a composite small-town USA with approximately the same community population.

There is no comparison!

We’ll take a walk-through a shortlist of Bermuda’s attributes and infrastructures that one would almost never see in a small community in the US, UK, or Canada.

• A Premier, domestic and internationally connected across the globe

• A 400-year-old sitting Parliament

• Bermuda finite court system

• Government and civil service

• Monetary authority

• Bermuda Country specific tax system

• More than 100 tax and related treaties with other countries

• Customs and immigration services

• Four traditional banks, with both local and international business, and a digital-focus bank

• Independent major financial institutions with Bermuda and international proprietary investment products

• Our own currency

• Access to Canadian, UK and European Union currencies, and other currencies on a demand basis

• Bermuda Stock Exchange with international and locally traded public companies, as well as listed securities, both local and international

• Bermuda Regiment

• Independent electricity grid

• Independent water supply infrastructure

• Internet access for an estimated 98 per cent of the population

• Airport with international flight services

• Public bus and ferry transportation

• Two shipping lines and container ships

• Community college with international links

• Major conservation operation with international recognition for an endangered species (the cahow)

• Ocean Research and Climate Change organisation, now more than 100 years old (Bios)

• Major international risk and insurance industries, the businesses of which are still relatively unknown to us regular people. How do you assess the risk of insuring a satellite launching, operating, or heaven forbid, crashing, or the impact of a major hurricane on a densely-populated area, or understanding the international demand for reinsuring a major country’s property mortgages.

So, the question is.

What and how much do we really know about our own financial community?

Articial intelligence has entered the financial domain. It may be the biggest threat to your financial security.

We’ve become complacent, way too trusting and we take too many digital amenities for granted.

Artificial intelligence already has the capability to clone/copy you, your face, your body, your voice almost completely and authentically.

And why not, there is so much available information on almost all of us, on numerous social media sites.

We’ve put it out there freely.

We talk about ourselves, our families, our aspirations, we display gatherings, our choices in clothing, food, entertainment, travel, acquisitions, etc.

We are so intent on gathering those likes and followers that we forget that this information is being stored, analysed, categorised legitimately, but in nefarious cases, is manipulated by fraudsters and organisations for their own benefit.

Fraudsters are cloning individuals’ voices to gain access to finances.

How will you have the instinctive financial knowledge to realise when you open a video call from your financial adviser suggesting you sell some investment, buy some other obscure product, transfer money, or open another account – that it is not him or her, but an AI clone?

When your relative calls needing a loan for some medical emergency – that needs to be transferred ASAP?

It sounds like him or her, but is it?

Or is it a cloned voice? How will you know?

Does this sound far-fetched? Possibly, but it is more than conjecture, it is a serious concern in finance sectors.

There have been many reported instances of successful fraud sabotages of individuals’ funds (including some CEOs), credit ratings, pension access, phoney technical help situations, and more.

Fintech Weekly asks why finance is important to live.

The answer is that finance is needed basically for everything. From managing personal finances to managing business finances and reading news, financial literacy is something to take into high consideration to avoid unnecessary risks and to better understand the world that surrounds us.

One question: when a population is financially educated, is it able to navigate everyday life even when economic and financial conditions are adverse?

Upgrading your financial knowledge is a must.

Staying financially capable in this millennium is the most important goal for your financially-secure life – as I advocated in my January 2023 New Year’s message.

This is why I am issuing the challenge to come together – to implement national legislation for financial literacy in Education.

When children learn new concepts and become financially capable, their parents will have to upgrade, too!

Let’s go!

Bermuda financial literacy in education initiative

Readers, I’m still hoping to find a volunteer who is a Canva/YouTube expert to help me streamline and polish up the Bermuda Island Financial Literacy Perspectives video presentations.

My financial literacy mission is completely self-funded. The Royal Gazette has supported my work, several photographers have generously allowed displays of their art, and financial professionals are volunteering their expertise.

But I need technical help.

Please contact me at martha.myron@gmail.com

Click here to see the Bermuda Islander Financial Literacy Perspectives YouTube channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7zcsot535g

• Martha Harris Myron, is a native Bermudian with US connections, an author, financial columnist, and former qualified international financial planner