RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 78 DO SOME FINANCIAL PRODUCT October 2018 FEATURES NEGATIVELY AFFECT CONSUMER DECISIONS? A REVIEW OF EVIDENCE PETE LUNN, FÉIDHLIM MCGOWAN, NOEL HOWARD FO NCE R PO DE LI VI C E Y DO SOME FINANCIAL PRODUCT FEATURES NEGATIVELY AFFECT CONSUMER DECISIONS? A REVIEW OF EVIDENCE Pete Lunn, Féidhlim McGowan, Noel Howard Economic and Social Research Institute September 2018 RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 78 Ó The Economic and Social Research Institute Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2 ISBN: 978-0-7070-0469-3 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26504/rs78 This Open Access work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. 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The remaining funding comes from research programmes supported by government departments and agencies, public bodies and competitive research programmes. Further information is available at www.esri.ie. THE AUTHORS Pete Lunn is an Associate Research Professor and head of the Behavioural Research Unit at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI). Féidhlim McGowan and Noel Howard contributed to this report while working as Research Assistants at the ESRI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work is funded and supported by the Central Bank of Ireland. The authors are grateful to members of the project steering group for guidance and feedback. The authors would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. All errors or omissions are our own. This report has been accepted for publication by the Institute, which does not itself take institutional policy positions. All ESRI Research Series reports are peer reviewed prior to publication. The author(s) are solely responsible for the content and the views expressed. Table of contents i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 1 2. METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ................................................................................................................... 3 2.1 Scope of the Review ............................................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Sourcing Material ................................................................................................................................... 3 2.3 What Constitutes a Product ‘Feature’? ................................................................................................... 4 2.4 Assessing Decision-making Quality ......................................................................................................... 4 2.5 Broader Evidence Linking Features with Behaviours ............................................................................... 5 2.6 Triangulation of Methods ....................................................................................................................... 6 3. CREDIT PRODUCTS....................................................................................................................................... 8 3.1 Credit Cards ........................................................................................................................................... 8 3.2 Personal Loans ..................................................................................................................................... 21 3.3 Mortgages ........................................................................................................................................... 26 4. RETAIL INVESTMENT PRODUCTS ............................................................................................................... 33 4.1 Non-Structured Investment (Mutual) Funds ......................................................................................... 33 4.2 Structured Investment Products ........................................................................................................... 39 5. INSURANCE ............................................................................................................................................... 46 5.1 Add-On Insurance ................................................................................................................................ 46 5.2 Excess-Premium Trade-Off ................................................................................................................... 50 6. CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................................................... 55 6.1 Summary of Findings ............................................................................................................................ 55 6.2 Policy Implications ............................................................................................................................... 58 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................................. 61 ii Financial product features and consumer decisions ABSTRACT This paper reviews international evidence on consumer decision-making in retail financial markets. Specifically, we identify and evaluate research from multiple disciplines and methods that links specific features of products to the quality of consumer decisions. The notion of product ‘features’ is broadly defined to include not only product attributes, but also emergent properties such as product complexity and the salience of information disclosure. We document areas of concern from a consumer protection perspective, and describe some common themes, including the inability of consumers to consider all important attributes and whether they can easily discern how the provider is making its profit. We conclude that there is a case for closer integration of empirical evidence and financial regulation. Summary iii Summary • Behavioural economics and behavioural finance have brought into economic analysis a richer psychological perspective on how individuals make financial decisions. • Theory suggests firms may have an economic incentive to exploit or confuse consumers who display behavioural phenomena such as overconfidence or inattention. • Evidence suggests full disclosure of information is unlikely to be a sufficient remedy, as transparency does not eradicate consumer mistakes. • Specific errors are systematically related to the context in which they are made. Therefore, whoever determines the decision-making context, or ‘choice architecture’, can influence the outcome of decisions. • This review is international in scope; it locates, describes and evaluates evidence that specific financial product features have negative effects on financial decision-making. • Product ‘feature’ is broadly defined, encompassing not only specific attributes of the product, such as whether it has a variable rate or a capital guarantee, but also emergent properties of the product and how the product category presents itself to the consumer. • The review covers three broad areas. The first is credit products: specifically, credit cards, personal loans and mortgages. The second is investment products: specifically, retail investments and structured investments. The third area is insurance, with an emphasis on add-on insurance and the excess-premium trade-off in types of insurance such as car and health insurance. iv Financial product features and