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World Savings Day 2012
by The Ovi Team
2012-10-31 04:04:09 |
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October 31st; wealth begins with the first coin in the piggy bank. What sounds like a banal commonplace is today as true as ever. Traditional forms of savings still are among the most popular in the world – partly due to the recent crisis – but the concept of saving has changed.
World Savings Day, or World Thrift Day as it was formerly called, was established by the WSBI in order to inform people all around the world about the idea of saving their money in a bank rather than keeping it under their mattress. Starting in 1925 it soon became an annual tradition in several countries going along with celebrations and campaigns to encourage savings.
The classic bank book is still in use and, due to the crisis, currently seeing a renaissance since it is considered to be the most solid form of saving. But contrary to former times savings are no longer mainly about putting away a penny from time to time and depositing it into an account. Nowadays the focus is more and more on earmarked savings such as pension or building-saving.
What is seemingly a simple idea – setting aside small sums in a savings account – actually has profound consequences on economic development and on personal financial well-being. Savings guard against risks like illness, unemployment, and other economic hardship. And they are crucial for the economy enabling banks to allow credits.
And, keeping the financial crisis in mind, savings are a sustainable way to satisfy the needs of today in a way that future generations find themselves in an environment that is socially and economically intact. Recent research has noted that, while access to micro-credit is important, access to general financial services such as savings accounts is also instrumental in alleviating poverty and stimulating economic growth.
World Savings Day – the History of Teaching How to Save
Saving as a “task of moral and economic elevation”. The organizers of the first World Thrift Day of 1924 very clearly had in mind what it should be about: Saving as an expression of the maturity of both the people and the country.
October 31 was declared World Thrift Day at the end of the first International Thrift Congress in 1924 in Milan. In the resolutions of the Thrift Congress it was decided that ‘World Thrift Day’ should be a day devoted to the promotion of savings all over the World. In their efforts to promote thrift the savings banks also worked with the support of the schools, the clergy, as well as cultural, sports, professional, and women’s associations.
Of course the idea of World Thrift Day was not born out of nothing. There had been some examples of days that were committed to the idea of saving money in order to gain a higher standard of life and to secure the economy, e.g. in Spain where the first national thrift day was celebrated in 1921, or in the United States. In other countries, such as Germany, the peoples’ confidence in savings had to be restored because many people didn’t even think of saving since they had lost close to everything in the German monetary reform of 1923.
The celebration of the World Thrift Day took various forms: posters, lectures, brochures, leaflets, press-articles, chorus singing, broadcasting, educational and propaganda films.
In 1928, even a Hymn of Thrift was composed by Gino Valori and Giuseppe Pietri. For the subsequent editions of the Hymn of Thrift, it has been proposed consecutively to Belgium, Great-Britain, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Spain and finally Germany.
Special interest was also paid to the promotion of savings in schools and several savings campaigns were organized in the schools. In the week of thrift, special courses were organized to educate children about the virtues of “Thrift”. Money boxes and savings bank passbooks were distributed in schools. Overall, the introduction of the World Thrift Day had a clear influence on the increase of school savings.
Indeed, World Savings Day was at first an educational activity, at least partly. In 1928, the WSBI stated that saving was “a virtue and a practice which are essential to the civil progress of each individual, of every nation, and of the whole of humanity!” Correspondingly, the World Savings Banks Congress declared schools the most reliable ally in the field of teaching future customers. As they put it, thrift education was not only about “the usefulness and necessity of spending their money wisely and of fortifying themselves against the uncertainties and adversities of the future”, but also about “opposing and fighting everything which may be an obstacle to the practice of thrift”*, such as gambling and lottery.
After the Second World War, World Thrift Day continued and reached the peak of its popularity in the years between 1955 and 1970. It practically became a veritable tradition in certain countries. In Austria, for instance, the official mascot of saving, the so-called ‘Sparefroh’ (literally: ‘Happy Saver’) reached a higher degree of brand awareness than the republic’s President and even a street was named after him. In the 1970s the ‘Sparefroh-Journal’, an educational magazine for younger people, reached a circulation of 400,000 copies.
Nowadays, it can be said that thrift education in developed countries, where most people save money, was a success since there are practically no people that do not yet own a bank account. The field that is now to be played is the developing countries where, in the worst case, the number of saving accounts does not exceed 10%. Savings banks play an important role in enhancing savings in these countries with certain campaigns and initiatives such as working with the Bill and Melinda Gates in order to double the number of savings accounts held by the poor.
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