Finance Literacy, Finance Trust and Finance Fraud

Abstract

Improving finance literacy of the population is a tool of the state struggle against finance fraud. However, the real goal of programs of finance literacy of the population is, as a rule an objective need to control finance behavior of the population by offering people certain ways of keeping money, its investing and such spending, which can turn the process of private consumption into the process of profit gaining and increase the involvement of all layers of the population that depend on goals and values of global capital into debt relations. The authors analyze interrelations between finance literacy of the population and a rise in trust, confidence to finance science, practice and to professional participants of finance market. They found the dependence of the level of finance trust in professionals of finance markets on the level of finance literacy of the population. At the same time it was pointed out that the growth in finance trust in society can become a nutrient medium for finance fraud, which in its turn affects the population irrespective of the level of people’s finance literacy. The authors underline, that though the rise in finance literacy of the population is a positive phenomenon, it is always accompanied by the growth in finance fraud.