PHILIPSBURG, WILLEMSTAD – The Centrale Bank van Curaçao en Sint Maarten (CBCS) is launching an initiative to establish an extraordinary Chair in Financial Wellbeing at the University of Curaçao dr. Moises da Costa Gomez (UoC). Through this new partnership, the CBCS and the UoC aim to strengthen the link between academic research and practical application in the areas of financial behavior, financial resilience, financial wellbeing, and the stability of the financial sector.
The Chair focuses on the connection between financial wellbeing at the individual level—financial knowledge and skills, financial behavior, and resilience—and at the financial sector level, covering financial institutions, supervision and regulation, and financial stability. The central question is how financial wellbeing can be advanced at both levels. Outgoing CBCS President Richard Doornbosch emphasized the importance of this connection: “The financial stability of a country is strongly influenced by the individual behavior of citizens and organizations—how they handle their money—and by the way in which the financial sector responds to that behavior. A healthy interaction contributes to the financial wellbeing of both individuals and society as a whole.”
The extraordinary Chair at the UoC is currently being formalized. For the first two years, the position will be held by an experienced international professor with extensive expertise in these fields. During this period, up to three postdoctoral candidates from Curaçao and Sint Maarten will have the opportunity to further their development under the guidance of the Chairholder. At the end of the two-year period, he will issue a recommendation regarding his succession, after which the regular UoC appointment process for professors will be followed. This approach ensures targeted investment in the development of local academic talent and secures the Chair’s longterm place within the region.
The Chair functions within a continuous cycle where research, policy, and practice reinforce one another. Research generates new insights and data that will, where possible, be made publicly available through the UoC Research Center to support policy development and refinement. The link to daily practice is established through education, training programs, and the National Coalition for Financial Wellbeing.
Within this coalition, public and private entities, financial institutions, civil society organizations, and educational institutions will work together to assess research findings for relevance, feasibility, and societal impact. Conversely, lessons learned in practice can inspire new research. In this way, the CBCS’s ambition to increase the societal impact of its research aligns with the UoC’s vision to contribute to Curaçao’s balanced development, within a single, sustainable model.
Activities will initially focus on Curaçao and Sint Maarten, but may eventually be expanded to Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba. In time, succession to the Chair will also take on a regional dimension. Following the initial five-year term, a new Chairholder may be appointed from one of the other participating islands. As a result, the Chair will evolve not only into a local anchor point, but ultimately into a regional knowledge platform serving the entire Caribbean part of the Kingdom.