2nd Annual Canadian IG Financial Confidence Index: Seniors and Newcomers Beat National Average in 2019

WINNIPEG, Nov. 18, 2019 /CNW/ - To mark Financial Literacy Month, IG Wealth Management today released its second annual IG Financial Confidence Index ("the Index"), in partnership with Ipsos Canada. The annual Index tracks and reports on Canadians overall financial confidence through six survey questions, which account for short-term and long-term financial considerations.

This year's edition finds that, while Canadians are feeling slightly less confident in 2019 versus the same period a year ago, with the Index dipping three points (from 59 to 56), Newcomers (people who have been in Canada less than 3 years)  and Seniors (Canadians aged 65+) both posted higher Index scores (66 and 64, respectively) than the national average.

Newcomers are more confident (than the average) that they will be able to achieve their financial goals and reported being less anxious about their finances while Seniors are more likely to feel satisfied with the financial decisions they have made and to review their finances on a regular basis. 

"It's encouraging to see that both Seniors and Newcomers scored higher than the national average when it comes to their level of financial confidence, especially since both groups have many unique challenges," noted Mr. Carney. "For example, many Canadians are so focused on saving for retirement that they don't realize how complicated retirement can be including developing an RRSP withdrawal strategy and taxation optimization.  And those who are new to Canada face a variety of challenges, including understanding new financial systems, savings, taxation and getting access to credit to get their families settled."

Key National Findings
Interestingly, Canadians' overall confidence in a variety of areas related to macro-economics ? such as the stock market and overall performance of the Canadian and global economies ? remain largely unchanged from 2018.  What contributed to the small decline year-over-year, are areas related to personal finance.

"While this year's result showed a small decrease, the good news is that the main factors which contributed to it are well within all Canadians' control to change," said Jeff Carney, President and CEO, IG Wealth Management. "Taking control of your personal finances starts with having a better understanding of them.  That's why financial literacy is so important.  It's about Canadians empowering themselves and strengthening their sense of financial well-being so they can confidently embrace life's possibilities."

The IG Financial Confidence Index is part of IG Wealth Management's community program, Empower Your Tomorrow, launched in 2018. The program is dedicated to building the financial confidence of Canadians, especially those that need it most including: Indigenous Peoples, Newcomers, Seniors and Youth. Working with community partners and charities along with employees and clients, IG Wealth Management develops and executes seminars and workshops focused on increasing the financial confidence of these key groups, including the award-winning Money & Youth program which for more than 20 years has been helping high school students, teachers and parents with financial literacy.

Visit IG Empower Your Tomorrow to learn more about the various initiatives IG Wealth Management currently supports.

About IG Wealth Management
Founded in 1926, IG Wealth Management is a national leader in delivering personalized financial solutions to Canadians through a network of Consultants located across Canada. In addition to an exclusive family of mutual funds and other investment vehicles, IG offers a wide range of other financial services. IG Wealth Management has over $90 billion in assets under management as of September 30, 2019 and is a member of the IGM Financial Inc. (TSX: IGM) group of companies. IGM Financial is one of Canada's leading diversified wealth and asset management companies with approximately $163 billion in total assets under management as of September 30, 2019.

About the IG Financial Confidence Index
The results presented in this summary report are from an Ipsos survey conducted from September 23 to September 30, 2019. A total sample of 2,600 respondents from across Canada participated in the survey. Weighting was applied to the total sample by age, gender, region and education level to ensure that the composition of the final sample is representative of Canada's adult population according to the latest census data from Statistics Canada.

Since the online portion of the sample is not considered to be probabilistic, Ipsos cannot apply a margin of error to this survey. The precision of non-probabilistic Ipsos surveys is measured using a credibility interval. The credibility interval for a survey of 2,600 respondents is ±2.3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population.

SOURCE IG Wealth Management