17 Mar 2016

Botswana Building Society (BBS) managing director, Pius Molefe, says  sportsmen and women should appreciate financial management in order to  attain skills and knowledge to enable them to make informed decisions dealing with financial resources.  

He said this at the launch of the financial literacy programme between Botswana Building Society (BBS), Footballers Union of Botswana (FUB) and Personal Management Academy (PMA).

He said BBS was looking for a long term relationship and in the first year of the programme the bank was prepared to spend around P250 000 to meet the training costs of union members.

“Through our partnership with the FUB and the PMA, members of the union will learn about budgeting, savings and investments in general and how to manage debt instruments such as credit cards and personal loans. The training will also facilitate their understanding of how to calculate basic interest and how it affects the term of a loan, total loan amount to be repaid and the monthly installments, he said 

FUB president, Mmoni Segopolo, said he was  pleased that BBS agreed to partner with them. 

He said the purpose of this initiative was to educate, inspire and connect players with opportunities through proper investments.

He said there were indications that some professional athletes became bankrupt three years after retirement. 

He said locally, it was evident that most of players did not invest and if they did, they did not succeed due to poor investment decisions.

PMA director, Oaitse Mathiba, said the programme was intended to raise the financial literacy of football players, to equip them with financial management skills and to improve access to financial services among footballers

“The content of the presentation of this project are derived from our personal financial management course. This is course is accredited with Botswana Qualifications Authority. The course is hybrid between psychology of money management and finance,” he said. Ends