Informed financial decision-making interventions : systematic literature review

Young investors are quickly entering the retail investment space. These consumers are at financial risk due to low financial literacy and heuristics-based decision making. Policy recommendations should include ways to increase informed financial decision making to increase consumers’ financial well-being. Our systematic literature review investigated information presentation types used within financial decision-making trials and interventions to provide insights into how a successful information presentation intervention might look like. The review uncovered that information presentations that are aligned to psychological drivers perform better than education-based presentations. Information framed such that consumers can fulfil their needs to learn/achieve and belong (e.g. social comparison frame) were most successful. Information prompts at the moment of decision making (e.g., low-intrusive phone-app prompts) – making behavioural patterns salient – provided the best trigger. These findings provide insights into what elements in information interventions may provide retail investors with the intrinsic motivation, self-determination, and ability for prolonged behaviour change.

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