“I think that a huge problem is our understanding of ethics has not kept up with tech,” she said.
Singletary beat the drum for practicality.
“People [are] not broke because they don’t have some online tool to watch their money,” she said. Instead, she said, they’re broke because they think the things they have are not good enough and want to buy more.
Collins added that financial services companies once waited for clients to come to them with their assets, but now technology has made it possible to speed up client acquisition.
“Companies have become a lot smarter about using tech to get to their customers first,” said Collins.
The fourth panelist, Lauren Willis, a professor of law and author of the book The Financial Education Fallacy, complained about the credit system. Willis said children are taught that the price of credit depends on the cost to the lender and risk to the borrower.
So, “if you are offered high priced credit, you are a bad risk,” she said. But she added that that notion was not practiced in the credit industry, stating that lenders charge the consumer on what they can get them to pay.
Willis feels this has contributed to consumers failing to comparison shop because their financial literacy education is not realistic.
Throughout the discussion, most panelists were pushing for financial literacy programs to go beyond a bank account and teach children and adults how to be skeptical about who and what they are giving their finances to.