FLIT Financial Literacy

In Ireland, 43% of individuals in Ireland have been measured as below OECD minimum financial literacy standards. Women score lower, have lesser earnings (which peak at average age 36 vs average 52 for men), and retire with approx 120K less private pension provision, and incomplete state pension contribution records. Long-term financial products such as pensions sold in Ireland are often comission-heavy in the early years, which works against women whose earnings peak sooner and are therefore impacted most by failure of long term investments to compound and grow. Despite regulation which insists on transparency around fees and charges for financial products, most providers make it extremely difficult for a consumer to obtain this information. Consumers do not understand their rights and rarely challenge the providers, partly because to do so is complex and involves raising a customer complaint, which the providers often act to supress.

Pensions and investment are not well-understood. Pensions autoenrollment, due for introduction early 2026, will impact 800,000 lower-earning people in Ireland. The same cohort are getting into difficulties with BNPL and deferred payment schemes, which potetially impacts their credit rating. Government websites (citizens information, revenue.ie, pensions.ie, ccpc.ie, centralbank.ie, mabs.ie) are informative but operate in text-heavy silos, and are therefore challenging to navigate. In recognition, the Government of Ireland has launched its first Financial Literacy strategy in 2025, however is relying on many of the existing financial providers to deliver - which leads to customers attending 'education and advisory' sessions which risk treatment as a sales funnel by biased providers.

When surveyed, 75% of survey respondents say family is their primary source of financial guidance - this generally means that middle class families, who understand the financial systems and can pay for good education and guidance, defend their wealth by using this knowledge to reinforce barriers to wealth distribution (e.g the ability for young-adult children to obtain secure housing via long term rentals or property ownership). This is particularly seen in the housing market with a rising homeless populating consisting of indigenous Irish families with children, and people who migrate into Ireland. Property rental prices have more than doubled in the last decade, with laws and practice which favour landlords. Scarcity of housing has impacted a whole generation of young adults who do not understand how to access support schemes to assist with house buying.

This problem doesn't just exist in Ireland, Financial Literacy is seen as a challenge worldwide. The increasingly digitised world, while more convenient, means that significant financial transactions and decisions can be completed quickly and with reduced friction - however this friction previously gave the chance to pause and consider a financial decision. With the rise of BNPL and access to credit, it is possible for consumers to make decisions which are not in their own long-term interests. Similarly, fraud risks to individuals have increased.

FLIT delivers education - training courses and workshops - to women and families, and at scale via a financial literacy platform at FLIT.ie Financial Literacy. FLIT is intended as a digital-first solution, with in-person workshops used to test and refine programme content and usefulness within the target community (women aged 30-55 with caring responsibilities - approx 350,000 in southern Ireland)

The FLIT website and software platform allows a user to state their lifestage, circumstances, caring responsibilities and dependent family members. FLIT alerts the user to potential government supports and entitlements, tax rebates and other opportunites relevant to their circumstances - so it achieves personalisation at scale. With an AI-enabled database of supports and entitlements, FLIT allows the user to quickly see supports and entitlements based on their family needs.

This saves the user endless hours and stress of attempting to research and read ALL of the government websites to try and determine scheme existence and eligibility. It also removes the inherent bias experienced by certain segments of the population (e.g. female single parents with young children) when seeking in-person advice from NGOs and government agencies. Women report their needs being trivialised or minimised, incorrect in-person guidance, shaming of clients, and failure to signpost a user towards the best combination of supports for their circumstances.

The platform also provides educational content, quizzes, games and 'run my numbers' calculators to asses tax and eligibility for lifestage-related government supports.

Key next 3-month activities for FLIT (to be achieved within this wealth redistribution hackathon) are:

a) Populate the FLIT educational content with structured mini-courses (anchored in authoritative, referencable information) as follows:

• - finances across a female lifetime,

• - preparing for retirement,

• - funding care in later life,

• - securing long-term housing,

• - how consumer investment works in Ireland,

• - pensions autoenrollment in Ireland

b) Enhance the AI profiling within FLIT to:

• - extend the database of entitements schemes and benefits;

• - improve entitlements-matching for FLIT users;

• - assist users with application-form completion

• c) Continue to test and refine in-person financial literacy course materials

FLIT is a digital-first, AI-enabled platform which prompts and educates users on benefits and entitlements as per their circumstances (e.g. government supports, tax credits, grants). FLIT is different because it helps people discover supports they might not otherwise be aware of, and information is delivered without judgement. It helps clients execute on their knowledge by supporting them in understanding and navigate grants, tax refunds, other schemes.

The approach is always to refer the user to authoritative information. Deirdre (project sponsor and key developer) is a Qualified Financial Advisor with a good understanding of personal finance in Ireland and the UK.

To date this project has:

• * delivered education directly to 50 women and 10 men via focus groups, online and in-person workshops for particular groups (undergoing fertility treatments, solo women, low income women)

• * directly surveyed focus groups (25 people) and surveys (75 people)

• * interviewed financial advisors, institutions & providers (100) in Ireland and the UK

• * reached a following of 2,000 users and supporters via LinkedIn

• * conducted a landscape review of existing financial literacy platforms and programmes across Ireland and the UK

• (e.g. Ellevest (EU), Rebel Finance School (worldwide), Lightning Reach (UK), Black Girls Finance (UK), Kith & Kin (Northern Ireland)

• * Through networking, advocacy, questioning and speaking at 25+ financial, fintech, business & software industry events in Ireland and the UK, the FLIT team continues to raise awareness of the importance of financial literacy to us as a society, and consumer rights to information.

• * Completed multiple business, software-building AND social entrepreneur (Rethink Ireland) incubators.

• * Iteratively built 3 MVPs - now at version3 - FLIT.ie - check it out using userid testflit1@test.com, password 12345678

• * secured partnership funding of 23K via local & national Enterprise Grants, and a 5K social enterprise grant

We are seeking to impact another 100-150 women over the next 3 months, ie by end January 2026.

Our target saving per participant is Eur1,000 - 1,500 saved per FLIT client and family