Behavior science led technology for financial wellness

Abstract

Financial wellness is regarded as a significant constituent of the overall well-being of individuals. Financial wellbeing is defined as having financial security and freedom of choice, in the present and in the future. This has a direct correlation to overall wellbeing: including productivity experienced at work, quality of relationship, quality of health and hence quality of life. Financial wellness is also challenging as everyone desires to achieve a state of wellness while the pathways to its achievement are not straightforward and can be easily overwhelming to many. In the Indian context, recent reports point to the fact that financial wellness emerges as a top stressor for a majority of people which has also heightened due to the pandemic. A lack of financial wellness thus emerges as a major problem in the country. The prevalence of concerns on financial wellness in fact, is witnessed across the globe. An approach to ameliorating this is through the field of behavioral finance which has uncovered many behavioral biases and barriers which impact how financial decisions are taken. Examples include lack of awareness of financial needs or awareness of the right products, lack of self-control, confusion in making financial choices or being unable to save/invest at the right time. To address this, we present a holistic and hyper-personalized approach that combines technology and behavioral science to influence financial behavior. The solution aims at enhancing financial wellness of individuals using behavioral levers and nudges. This combines two aspects: (1) an engaging user interface at the front-end and (2) a customer insights/behavioral analytics and intervention recommendation system at the back end that suggests appropriate hyper-personalized actionable steps to the user. The solution helps users to visualize their financial needs, set financial goals and receive appropriate personalized nudges to help them in implementing financial plans as they go through various phases of career/life stages. We present our thoughts on how financial wellness can be extended to address financial inclusion in India.