Over 170,000 Students Get Financial Education in Fifth Third’s One Million Teens Initiative

The financial literacy industry was buzzing over Fifth Third Bank’s announcement that it is sponsoring 170,000 students to receive financial education during this 2015-2016 school year, underwriting the deployment of Dave Ramsey’s Foundations in Personal Finance course throughout 1,637 high schools in communities in which the Bank has a presence. The move comes on the heels of the Bank’s milestone of educating over 800,000 students in financial literacy as part of its goal of providing financial education to one million students by 2017.

Fifth Third Bank has long supported financial literacy. The bank’s L.I.F.E. (Lives Improved through Financial Empowerment) programs are the focal point of their financial education programming, which is focused primarily on high school aged children. The bank believes that high school students are at a critical stage in their lives for which financial education is central to their ability to manage effectively their post-high school lives.

One of the attributes of the Foundations in Personal Finance curriculum is that it is designed to be taught by the teacher in school, while the materials and videos from Dave Ramsey supplement that instruction. As such, many have contended that the program also has been highly effective in training teachers to incorporate to a greater extent various financial literacy topics into the traditional curriculum.

Given the substantial number of students who will be educated by this initiative, the Fifth Third program is being hailed as a great example financial education programming on a more widespread basis. Other banks are watching closely and are widely anticipated to follow suit with their own financial literacy solutions in the regions in which they operate on a location, statewide and, in some cases, national basis.