For Filipinos tired of feeling lost when it comes to money, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rolled out a solution: the revamped SEC Academy that offers free courses designed to help anyone—from students to retirees—navigate budgeting, investing, and protecting themselves from scams.

Accessible at academy.sec.gov.ph, the platform offers free courses led by SEC officials, government policymakers, and industry experts.

Users can gain practical skills in budgeting, saving, launching businesses, making informed investments, and spotting predatory schemes.

“We must invest in knowledge—dahil ‘yan lang ang investment na hindi mananakaw sa atin. That is why we are also relaunching the SEC Academy, a free online learning hub where anyone—from students to retirees—can learn about saving, budgeting, and investing responsibly. 

Because financial education should not be for the few, but for everyone who dreams of a better life,” SEC Chairperson Francis Lim said Wednesday.

The platform pushes to make financial literacy a core subject in high schools and to raise public awareness of illegal or abusive lending practices. Lim said he supports the House Bill No. 686, which seeks to integrate investor education into the Enhanced Basic Education Act.

“We see too many lives destroyed by scams promising ‘easy money.’ These are not just financial losses; they are losses of trust. And trust, as we always say, is the invisible currency of our markets,” Lim said.

Financial literacy remains low, with only two percent of Filipinos able to correctly answer six basic financial questions, according to the 2023 Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Financial Inclusion Survey. 

Digital fraud also poses risks, with the country's suspected digital fraud rate at 13.4 percent in 2024, the second-highest among analyzed markets, according to TransUnion. Investment scams cost the country around P25 billion in 2021, affecting one in every 100 Filipinos.