When it coms to financial literacy, Australians are most savvy when it comes to personal loans, credit cards, and home loans.

On the flipside, many Australians struggle with basic details of life insurance premiums, savings accounts, and the process to follow when making a claim using travel insurance.

It’s alarming to find that so many Australians don’t have the basic knowledge about their banking products.

The data has been released by comparison website finder.com.au, who launched a Money Savvy Challenge last month in a bid to help people get up to speed with financial products.

Money expert at finder.com.au, Michelle Hutchison, warned many Australians could be wasting money because they don’t know the basics about financial products.

“It’s alarming to find that so many Australians don’t have the basic knowledge about their banking products because they could be using the wrong products which don’t suit their needs and therefore could be throwing hundreds – even thousands – of dollars down the drain.”

• How to find financial advice you can trust

Ms Hutchison encouraged all Australians to strive to increase their financial literacy.

“If more Australians made an effort to learn about their financial products and chose deals that better suited them, it could not only have a significant impact on their financial wellbeing but it could also improve competition between financial institutions.”

More than 400 Australians have already taken part in the challenge, which involves fifteen questions testing financial literacy across eight different areas: personal loans; credit cards; savings accounts; home loans; transaction accounts; life insurance; travel cards; and travel insurance.

Questions include – a yes or no on “It is possible to earn rewards points with a no annual fee credit card” and true or false “You can take out two home loans on the same property”.

State by state results

The ACT came out on top as the country’s savviest state when it comes to financial literacy, with an average score of 74 per cent, five points above the total average.

However, they also took the longest time to complete the challenge, taking over 14 minutes on average per entrant, or about one minute per question.

Western Australia finished second with a score of 71 per cent, followed by New South Wales.

Queensland was the least money savvy state with a score of 64 per cent.

While Victoria failed to make the top three in the financial literacy stakes, it can hang its hat on the fact it had the most respondents who achieved 100 per cent, with five entrants nailing the challenge.

The quiz is still open and final results will be released once it closes.

Those wishing to take the challenge can do so here.