The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shaped higher education and seen the distinct rise of e-learning as a compulsory element of the modern educational landscape. Accordingly, this study highlights the factors which have influenced how students perceive their academic performance during this emergency changeover to e-learning. The empirical analysis is performed on a sample of 10,092 higher education students from 10 countries across 4 continents during the pandemic’s first wave through an online survey. A structural equation model revealed the quality of e-learning was mainly derived from service quality, the teacher’s active role in the process of online education, and the overall system quality, while the students’ digital competencies and online interactions with their colleagues and teachers were considered to be slightly less important factors. The impact of e-learning quality on the students’ performance was strongly mediated by their satisfaction with e-learning. In general, the model gave quite consistent results across countries, gender, study fields, and levels of study. The findings provide a basis for policy recommendations to support decision-makers incorporate e-learning issues in the current and any new similar circumstances.

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Several well-known studies have remarked on the low financial literacy (FL) levels in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), which represent a problem in an economic context of change and uncertainty. This fact gives us the opportunity to evaluate the current state of literature related to FL in the region. The main list of identified keywords allowed the PRISMA methodology to guide the systematic literature review and analysis procedure. During 2016–2022, the FL search yielded around 4500 FL manuscripts worldwide, but only 65 articles were related to the scope of our analysis (which involved looking at LAC countries). Being the first review from an LAC country about all LAC countries, the findings highlight a lack of FL research focus on regional needs, gender gaps affecting women, and conceptual frameworks used to develop efficient educational program interventions. Most studies in this review build on the OECD definition of FL, but the financial attitude dimension often seems to be omitted from the analyses. These findings open the discussion about efficient policy design concerning FL development in LAC.

Due to the lack of a tool assessing the effectiveness of Financial Education Programs (FEP) imparted by the financial institutions (FI) in Ecuador by mandate, this research proposes and validates a scale to evaluate the Financial Literacy (FL) level of 314 participants (15–50 years old) after attending an FEP. The final 18-item FL scale, compounded with Financial Attitude, Financial Knowledge, and Financial Behavior dimensions, is reliable and robust according to the Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The average score for FL is 76 out of 100 points. The youngest scored the lowest, and the FI employees the highest. This contribution fulfills a needed FL scale to accurately measure the efforts of FI spreading the FE. It serves as a stepping stone for further research reconfirming its validity and applying the proposed FI’s FL scale as a pre–post FL evaluation.