Discussion on "Adult financial literacy and households’ financial assets: the role of bank information policies by Margherita Fort, Francesco Manaresi and Serena Trucchi"

The paper investigates the effect of financial literacy on households’ financial asset holdings by exploiting banks’ participation in the PattiChiari Consortium in Italy. The idea behind this experiment is that banks belonging to PattiChiari offer better and more transparent information to their clients, thus improving their financial literacy and potentially affecting their financial decisions. The analysis shows that financial literacy does matter for asset holdings, especially for households of age 60 years and above with low-educated household heads. The results support the importance of improving financial literacy and of the role that banks can have in fostering it.