KBPRs Joanne Macklin discusses the importance of financial education for the next generation.

Hearing inspirational stories about gymnasts who have trained locally to me in South Essex Gymnastics Club and made it to the Olympics in Rio, compelled me to find out about classes for my own children.

But such is the motivation of an awe inspiring event like the Olympics, there is now a two year waiting list. Everyone it seems, wants to be an Olympian!

It got me thinking about my own industry.

Sadly we lack that same level of inspiration.

While it's probably unlikely that children will ever dream about being the pensions and investment industry's equivalent of Usain Bolt or Laura Trott.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to make the industry a much more compelling place to launch a career, or encourage young people to have a much better understanding of key issues and engage more, simply for a better quality of life.

Personal finance education and how to do it is an age old debate and I remember when I first joined the industry just before the millennium and doing some work with Proshare, which at that time did lots of work with schools, trying to help better educate children in the world of personal finance.

Fast forward to today and we now have fantastic companies like Redington, AHC, Cardano and Wealth at Work, which are all working really hard to stimulate financial engagement and education in many different arenas including schools and the workplace.

And I'm sure there are many other companies who do what they can in a similar way, even if there is more of a commercial objective at the end of it. Either way it doesn't really matter if it gets us to the same place in the end.

We can help as individuals too. At a journalist lunch earlier this week, one of our clients made a really interesting observation, which was that the US has a much higher engagement in pensions because in the UK we have such a taboo when it comes to talking about money.

Unlike sport which we openly encourage and sign our children up for (like my quest to have three little Olympians someday), personal finances, pensions and investment are pretty much a closed subject.

If as an industry we can open up just a little bit more with our own children, friends and family and help to make this topic, and of course talking about our own financial situation a bit less taboo, we might just be able to help make the world of pensions and investments more compelling, and more a part of everyday conversation of things you just need to know to get on in life.

In turn it could also open up a whole new world of career possibilities to individuals who may never have thought about them before.

While it's a leap to getting to the level of inspiration that is the Rio Olympics, little by little we can all do our bit to to help entice young people into the world of pensions and investments, no matter what the reason.

Written by Joanne Macklin, Consultant, KBPR.