ASIC: National Financial Capability Strategy

Cover of ASIC National Financial Capability strategy research report In 2018, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) released the National Financial Capability Strategy aimed at helping all Australians control their financial lives.  This vision requires a collaboration across government. business, community and education research centres.

These organisations engage in this work because they believe it makes a difference to the wellbeing of people and communities. But when asked ‘what impact did your work have?’, it can often be hard to explain. There was a clear need for a common language to describe the changes being made by the activities of these organisations.

The project (icon)
The project

In 2019-2020, ASIC worked with SVA Consulting to develop a shared impact (or outcomes) framework to support the monitoring and evaluation of financial capability initiatives. This would enable organisations to better understand the outcomes of their work, provide them with tools and resources to consistently measure impact, and contribute to the broader knowledge base of what works in improving financial capability across Australia.

The objective (icon)
The objective

To develop a national monitoring and evaluation framework, that would enable ASIC and over 150 partner organisations to use common financial capability outcomes as a shared approach to understanding impact.

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The role we played

Working collaboratively with ASIC, we:

  • Undertook a literature review of how to deliver successful national shared outcomes frameworks
  • Facilitated five national workshops that built sector capacity, fostered shared ownership of the framework and ensured outcomes were developed collaboratively
  • Created a shared outcomes framework that integrated international research and the experience of diverse organisations across sectors to distill significant complexity into user-friendly tools.

The monitoring and evaluation framework includes theories of change, a library of common outcomes and resources to support people to evaluate the impact of programs or other interventions.

Our impact (icon)
Project impact

ASIC and its partners have a much greater clarity and framework for articulating how research, advocacy, financial products and financial capability programs contribute to improve the financial capability of Australians, and have tools and resources to more simply measure and report their individual and shared effectiveness.

Read the report.