Nicosia, Cyprus. As financial literacy moves higher on the policy agenda in Cyprus, questions remain over whether children are being given the practical skills needed to navigate a more complex economic environment. Max Fedorov, founder of CoinTales.AI, said financial education should begin earlier, with parents and schools both involved in teaching core concepts.
Call for earlier financial education
In an interview with the Cyprus Mail, Fedorov said children should be introduced at a younger age to topics including budgeting, inflation, saving and investing. He said stronger financial literacy is important for Cyprus’ future economic resilience.
Personal experience behind the project
Fedorov said he is a software developer by profession and has long been interested in finance and economics. Born in Latvia in 1983, when it was still part of the Soviet Union, he said he began school in 1990 shortly before the regime collapsed, at a time when market economy knowledge was limited in former communist societies.
He said that lack of awareness continued into his teenage years. Recalling that period, he said he once asked his mother to buy him the textbook Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies, adding that his mother may have wanted him to understand the capitalist system that was new to her. He said this experience reinforced his view that parents play a central role in education, with schools coming second.
Perceived shortcomings in schools
After living in London for 15 years, Fedorov said his family moved to Cyprus. He said that, in his experience, even English private junior schools in Cyprus do not teach enough financial concepts.
According to Fedorov, children are introduced to coin denominations and simple arithmetic problems involving purchases, but are not sufficiently exposed to broader economic ideas such as inflation, debt, budgeting, smart spending or compound interest.
Development of CoinTales.AI
Fedorov said this gap in education was the main reason he created the platform for his daughter. While he said he already explains many of these ideas to her verbally, he wanted to automate the process.
He said advances in AI made it possible to build a platform that combines story generation, imagery, gamification and interactivity. His aim, he said, is to make financial concepts accessible to children and allow them to learn and compete with one another online.
Financial concepts introduced too late
Fedorov said his main concern is that children are exposed to economic and financial terms too late in school, if they encounter them at all. Based on his observations of his child’s school, he said formal economics lessons do not begin until the seventh or eighth grade.
He said he believes this is too late, arguing that children in junior school are more receptive to learning basic concepts early. Early exposure, he said, can increase the likelihood that students will develop an interest in these subjects and explore them further in later years.
