A new guide to help people understand everyday financial language has been published as part of National Adult Literacy Awareness Week, which kicked off yesterday.

A Plain English Guide to Financial Terms, produced by the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) in association with EBS Building Society, contains over 450 definitions of terms relating to financial services and money.

The A-Z guide is intended to help people who find the jargon and terminology which financial institutions use to explain their products and services obscure and confusing.

According to NALA, the guide will be an evolving publication with definitions added as new products and services become available. The guide is available from NALA or on the EBS website (www.ebs.ie).

The Minister of State for Adult Education, Ms Síle de Valera, welcomed the publication. "Decisions regarding financial matters are among the most important that people make during their lifetime and it is up to us, as a society, to ensure that information regarding those decisions is accessible and understood by all," she said.

The guide is part of the NALA/EBS Financial Literacy Programme, a three-year financial literacy campaign.

Ms Inez Bailey, director of NALA, said people were more likely to be victims of mis-selling by financial institutions when they had difficulty understanding the language they used.

"A lot of people with literacy difficulties are excluded from the financial sector. They have had a bad experience or just find the whole thing bewildering," according to Ms Bailey.

"But better communication, clearer information and plain English will benefit all consumers, not just the one in four who have literacy difficulties."