Klarna, the AI-powered global payments network and shopping assistant, released the results of a national survey exploring financial language understanding across the UK.
The report, part of Klarna’s commitment to improving greater transparency in the financial industry, reveals millions of UK adults (40%) think mastering money terms is harder than learning to speak a new language – with young adults feeling the pressure most.
The study of 2,000 adults found 64% of Gen Z believe picking up basic foreign words is easier than mastering money terms like APR, capital gains and compound interest.
Millennials face similar obstacles, with 57% considering financial terms to be more difficult to learn than a foreign tongue.
But this drops to just 33% of Gen X, with the older age group feeling more confident about their financial literacy.
It also emerged Annual Equivalent Rate, (28%) County Court Judgement (28%), adverse credit (25%) and compound interest (26%) are among the terms people are most confused by. And a quarter (25%) of adults felt the language used by their banks was complicated to understand.
In a bid to promote greater transparency in the UK, Klarna recently launched Wikipink to encourage the wider industry to do the same. Where credit card companies had to be forced by the FCA to publish complaint rates, Klarna has done so voluntarily. By providing reliable, accurate, and unbiased information, Wikipink aims to educate and empower people to learn more about Klarna by sharing insights that are typically guarded secrets among traditional banks.