OSC announces Financial Literacy Month activities

For Immediate Release OSC

TORONTO – The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) will mark Financial Literacy Month this November with a variety of activities designed to build the financial knowledge of Ontarians and highlight the importance of financial literacy.

“Improving people’s financial knowledge, skills, confidence and behaviours is a key area of focus of the OSC,” said Tyler Fleming, Director of the Investor Office at the Ontario Securities Commission. “People need the tools to make informed financial decisions, and through our financial literacy and investor education activities we’re helping millions of people get smarter about money.”

During Financial Literacy Month, the OSC will connect with people across Ontario in-person, online, over the phone and on social media through various activities.  Among its initiatives, the OSC will be rolling out a new financial literacy video series, expanding its suite of multilingual resources, and publishing new financial literacy research.

Additional activities include:

GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca: The OSC will be publishing new tools, articles and resources on its award-winning consumer website GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca, including a new emergency fund calculator and a new resource hub for Canadian Armed Forces members and veterans.

InvestingIntroduction.ca: The OSC will be rolling out 16 additional language resources on its multilingual website InvestingIntroduction.ca including, Farsi, Arabic, Portuguese, Korean and Russian. These resources include information on investment products, registered plans and tips on protecting against investment frauds and scams.

Telephone Townhall: Ontarians are invited to register for a free telephone townhall on November 19, 2019. Telephone townhalls are a way for the OSC to connect with Ontarians across the province in the comfort of their own home. The OSC will be joined by special guests from the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA), and the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI). Visit the OSC’s website to register for the upcoming telephone townhall.

OSC in the Community Seminars: Ontarians are invited to attend community seminars on preventing fraud and making informed financial decisions, taking place in Markham, Scarborough, Oshawa, North York, and Toronto. OSC in the Community is an outreach program that takes the OSC’s regulatory mandate from Bay Street to Main Street. Please visit the OSC’s website for more information about attending or registering for these events.

Social Media: People are encouraged to follow @GetSmarterAboutMoney on Facebook or @smarter_money on Twitter for helpful financial tips and information.

Other activities this month include several publications of our popular Investor News newsletter, and the launch of a new website on investing fundamentals to promote the basics of smart investing.

Over the past year the OSC has also collaborated with the Ministry of Education on enhancing the financial literacy curriculum in Ontario’s schools.

Additional information on the full scope of Investor Office activities can be found at InvestorOffice.ca.

The OSC’s consumer website GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca is one of Canada’s most visited financial literacy websites and provides hundreds of free tools and resources for people to help them get smarter about money. It, along with other educational resources such as our digital question and answer website Re: Investing, had over 5.7 million visits in the past 12 months.

The mandate of the OSC is to provide protection to investors from unfair, improper or fraudulent practices, to foster fair and efficient capital markets and confidence in the capital markets, and to contribute to the stability of the financial system and the reduction of systemic risk.  Investors are urged to check the registration of any persons or company offering an investment opportunity and to review the OSC investor materials available at www.osc.ca

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