​During 2012, “The Smart Investor” program – CMA’s awareness program for children- succeeded in expanding the scope of its participation in social, cultural and economic activities in addition to school visits and caravans. This expansion led to an increase in the targeted groups by the program.

Statistics show that the program has participated, through its different channels (Smart Investor magazine, activities and interactive plays), in many events and occasions that had more than 3.5 million visitors. The program was sponsored last year by Etihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily) as one of its social responsibility programs. It was supervised and implemented by a group of Saudi nationals who are specialized in financial awareness.

The program has participated in 32 events in 8 cities last year. The cities visited by the Smart Investor were: Riyadh, Jeddah, AlQassim, Hail, Alhassa, Al Kharj, AlKhobar and Yanbu. These visits included the exhibitions, caravans and interactive plays. It also participated in the Riyadh International Book Fair with more than 2 million visitors between the period March 6 to 16, 2012, the National Day activities, Universal children’s day, Early Childhood International Conference and Saudi Aramco’s Cultural Program. As for the schools’ visits, “The Smart Investor” program visited 275 schools in 12 cities (142 schools for boys and 31 schools for girls) where 11 thousand “Smart Investor packages” were distributed on students in those schools and tens of thousands were distributed in other occasions.

“The Smart Investor” program can be described as a social awareness program to spread the culture of correct financial interactions in youths specially those aged between nine and fourteen years old. The main purpose of the program is to build a financially aware generation that can interact positively with the society in regard to financial transactions. It also aims at teaching children the basics of daily financial transactions, saving, educational information about banks’ products and services, currency, the stock market, and instills ethical principles of Islamic teachings in those transactions.

This program comes under the Capital Market Authority’s social responsibility and it foresaw a number of other countries’ positive experiences in financial awareness for children. A specialized team of consultants and professionals in the field of financial transactions and education will take the responsibility to prepare the content and put the proper scientific and educational frameworks for the targeted groups of the program.