In the presence of honorary chairman H.M. Queen Máxima, the celebration of the 5th anniversary of the SchuldenlabNL Foundation took place yesterday in our office in The Hague. Not only were the successes of the past five years celebrated, but on behalf of Nationale-Nederlanden, Tjeerd Bosklopper made a plea for financial health and called for young people and SME employers to be approached and involved in the right way.
For more than ten years, Nationale-Nederlanden has been committed to increasing financial self-sufficiency in the Netherlands and reducing poverty caused by problem debts. "You have to tackle problems in this area as much as possible in collaboration," says Tjeerd Bosklopper. "From our partnership with SchuldenlabNL to a social debt collection policy to the voluntary deployment of employees as financial coaches, we are already doing a lot in this area." At the same time, there are many incentives that work against financially healthy behavior: "Finfluencers with risky advice, online gambling, buy now, pay later purchases, golden crypto mountains, and much more. You have to act quickly, but we are not reaching all target groups in the right way yet. That's why I'm glad that we, together with other partners of the National Coalition for Financial Health, have started to help SME customers with the financial health of their employees. That is important because SMEs are still relatively untapped territory."
Pressure cookers in the morning
SchuldenLabNL is one of our social partners and aims to make the Netherlands debt-free. By scaling up successful initiatives, they are combating fragmentation in this area. Nationale-Nederlanden was the host for the fifth anniversary. The main guest was H.M. Queen Máxima, alongside the presence of Minister Schouten of Poverty Policy, loco Commissioner of the King for South Holland Van Leeuwen, Mayor Van Zanen of The Hague, and many other representatives from the public and private sectors.
Prior to the plenary program, two "pressure cooker" sessions were also held, which the Queen also visited. The task for the sessions was to look at possibilities for various savings forms to allow people to build up a financial buffer. Representatives from both the public and private sectors participated in the pressure cookers on Save now, buy later and Social Debt, including some experts from NN.
SchuldenlabNL x NN
In addition to Nationale-Nederlanden, SchuldenLabNL works with several private and public partners. Together, they develop national initiatives to help improve the financial health of Dutch society. Well-known examples include the National Coalition for Financial Health, in which employers collaborate on the financial health of their employees, and the Temporary Emergency Energy Fund that was launched earlier this year for vulnerable households.
