Oakley-Bell added that this was done without very many checks.
She argued the best way to address this was to introduce more financial literacy teaching for children to inform about this important subject at a young age.
However, Oakley-Bell does not just argue for this form of education and, instead, detailed her plans to move this idea forward through her involvement in a local scout group.
“I am the treasurer of a scout group and have had conversations with various scout leaders about why they don’t run more financial literacy sessions
“A lot of it, I think, is that they don’t understand things well enough to be able to run sessions on it.
“Something I’m doing personally is trying to create sessions which have the information built into them.
“Initially I’m designing it for scouts but hopefully will open it up separately so that leaders can run a session without too much prior knowledge themselves.
“Hopefully this will increase their own understanding as well.”
She detailed that it’s still “early days” at the moment but that she has created a few plans that she intends to run in her group first, get some feedback on it, and then launch it.
She added that she plans to bring the idea to the wider scouts association “once I’m a bit more comfortable with it” to see if it is possible to get them included.
Oakley-Bell also stated her desire to see this topic covered in mainstream education: “I’d love to see it built into the curriculum that all schools have sessions where people come in and talk about financial literacy.
“A lot of schools do it but it’s very school specific rather than more cohesive and that means schools that have the time and the money, those children get those opportunities and other don’t necessarily get the same opportunity.”
Company culture
Oakley-Bell additionally provided insight into what she considers important in her workplace, detailing that, above all, company values and the culture are the “really key bit” for her.
She added that she wants to see a company “that doesn't just use words”, and that instead “embodies the values it advertises”.
Oakley-Bell referenced her own employment at Quilter, which discusses pioneering as one of its values, and how this manifested in her experience with the company.
She recalled: “When I first joined, I was in a temporary role, it was very administrative.
“They had a continuous improvement programme and we were given the opportunity to suggest ideas and make changes, even at that low level.
“Those ideas, if they were feasible, were implemented so I saw from my first couple of days I was able to be pioneering and suggest changes, that was really valuable to me.”
