While the Retirement Commission had succeeded in attracting partnerships with the private sector and educating the public about financial literacy, companies selling savings and investment products had stuck to their ‘self-interested' ways, Finance Minister Bill English told a seminar in Wellington on Friday.

English said it isn't the government's job to improve the public's understanding of the sector, though he did commit to a twice-yearly meeting with the Retirement Commission's advisory committee to discuss ways to boost New Zealanders' financial literacy.

"Product providers want people to buy their products or agree with their opinion or come to their institution," he told the financial literacy summit in Wellington. Lifting financial literacy will go a long way toward rebuilding trust in the financial sector and encouraging people to engage with it, he said.

Keynote speaker Annamaria Lusardi, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the U.S., said the finance sector needs to move away from commission-based advice, which encouraged advisers to sell their more expensive products, rather than what was suitable for their client.

Still, she said, the public didn't rely on financial advisers enough, and that was one of the major causes of the credit crisis in America.

A simple way to improve literacy among the wider public was to reduce the complexity of the products available. If it's difficult for someone with a PhD to get their head around a product, imagine how hard it must be for the average person, she said.