Market For Retail Financial Services Research Articles

Risk-Intolerant but Risk-Taking—Towards a Better Understanding of Inconsistent Survey Responses of the Euro Area Households

The sustainable development of the EU internal market for retail financial services is based on the rules of ‘suitability’, ‘know your client’, and ‘know your product’. The rules ensure that financial institutions (including banks) offer retail clients only products and services that are adequate to their purposes and preferences, including risk tolerance. Our study, however, concerns households for which the above rules are not valid, since they declare risk aversion and possess risky assets. According to the European Union Markets in Financial Instruments Directive and Regulation (MiFID II and MiFIR), the inconsistent information they provide within survey questions should classify them to more compound suitability assessment procedures. In the study, we use nationally representative data for 16 euro area countries from the second wave of the Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey. Using logit regression, we identify sets of socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics conducive to the possession of risky assets by risk-averse households in individual countries. To assess their similarity, we use the hierarchical taxonomic method with Ward’s formula. The results of the study showed that risky assets were primarily possessed by risk-averse households that were characterised by high income, including from self-employment, and reference persons having a university degree and at least 55 years of age. The significance of their other characteristics was mainly shaped at the national level. The clear similarity of sets of the characteristics was confirmed only for a few pairs of countries. The information inconsistency that may result from erroneous self-assessments of being risk-averse was recognised in all countries and most often concerned high-income households with reference persons being males with a university degree. In 11 countries, the reason for this inconsistency could also be the inadequacy of assets held, also among senior households. The results provide insights for practitioners and policy. Identification of households providing inconsistent information to financial institutions, with the recognition of its reasons based on easily verifiable characteristics, may prove helpful in suitability assessments. The results confirming the similarity of household profiles requiring special attention between countries may be useful for entities operating cross-border. Due to the collection of information on risk aversion based on the single question self-classification method, conclusions regarding the restrictions of its use should also be considered relevant. In turn, policy implications may relate to consumer protection, since significant fractions of risk-averse households indeed participate in risky assets. Moreover, in selected countries, the risk-averse senior households were recognised as susceptible to making wrong investment decisions.

Regulating Financial Advice

Motivated by recent policy changes across many countries, this paper discusses the rationale for various policies that target financial advice in the market for retail financial services. To set the stage, we review recent findings on how retail financial consumers make use of professional financial advice. Based on our own research, as well as other recent contributions in the economics literature, we then discuss the pros and cons of, in particular, policies that target the disclosure as well as the size and structure of commissions.

An Emerging Platform: From Money Transfer System to Mobile Money Ecosystem

While it has often been described as a money transfer product, when mobile money reaches scale it can also be seen as a network infrastructure and platform facilitating the exchange of cash and electronic value between various economic actors including clients, businesses, the government, and financial service providers. In the past, the emergence of other network infrastructures that provide new ways of moving people, goods, energy or information (canals, railroads, electricity, telecommunications, internet, etc.) has had transformative effects on the economy. In this paper, we document what may be the early stages of just such a transformation in the market for retail financial services in Kenya, where the M-PESA mobile money product has achieved the scale necessary to form an infrastructure backbone to the financial system. Our investigations uncovered significant integration of mobile money into the product and services offered by financial institutions in Kenya. We find an ecosystem of firms has sprung up to facilitate the technical integration of existing financial institutions’ back end systems with the new mobile money platform. We also find a number of innovative new businesses and “pure play” startups which operate solely over the mobile money platform. That said, significant barriers remain which block the development of a more fully developed ecosystem including the high price of money transfers and the difficulty of integrating to the mobile money interfaces (especially that of M-PESA). Firms wishing to outsource their day-to-day cash transactions with clients to the mobile money system may face a new challenge, as they must find new opportunities for interactions with their clients to reinforce rapport, build trust, educate, and cross sell new products.

Legal and Economic Approach to Tying and Other Potentially Unfair and Anticompetitive Commercial Practices: Focus on Financial Services

This paper analyses the economic and legal aspects related to practices such as tying, bundling and other potentially unfair commercial practices widely used in the financial services industry. Authors draw special attention to the European financial services market. Their law and economics approach aims at illustrating the rationales for applying both antitrust and consumer protection legislation to the practices subject to analysis in this paper and observed in the retail financial services market. The author explores the main findings of the legal and economic theory as regards the applicability of antitrust rules to the practices at hand, and the possibility to treat new commercial practices under antitrust law. The paper then illustrates the economics of tying, bundling and other unfair commercial practices from a consumer policy perspective, and reports some empirical data on switching costs and patterns of consumer behaviour in retail financial services and in other sectors of the economy. Cognitive biases that may cause irrational behaviours in judgement and decision-making processes of a retail consumer are widely assessed. Finally, the author proposes a new multi-stage test for the joint assessment of selling practices under competition and consumer policy.

Consumer Protection and the Role of Advice in the Market for Retail Financial Services

This paper offers a review of key stylized facts of the market for retail financial services. Financial advice plays a key role in this market. The paper then discusses the relevant academic literature and, in particular, recent contributions that deal with the role of advice in this market. Various policy options are discussed as well.

Consumer Protection and the Role of Advice in the Market for Retail Financial Services

Consumer Protection and the Role of Advice in the Market for Retail Financial Services

Consumer Protection and the Role of Advice in the Market for Retail Financial Services

Consumer Protection and the Role of Advice in the Market for Retail Financial Services

Towards an Ecology of Retail Financial Services: Understanding the Persistence of Door-to-Door Credit and Insurance Providers

In this paper we explore the relationship between knowledge, trust, and space in the production and consumption of retail financial services as part of a wider enquiry into processes of financial exclusion. We argue that the relationship between knowledge and trust helps to explain the evolution of financial services and the production over time of distinctive ecologies of financial service production and use. We discuss the changing scales of financial knowledge and trust in relation to the evolution of the UK financial services industry. We identify two idealised ecologies and networks of retail financial services. The middle-class suburb represents an ecology and network of privilege within the contemporary retail financial services market. It displays relatively high levels of aggregate knowledge about the financial system and constitutes an important part of the retail financial services network, with strong and frequent connections to the financial services industry as a whole. Poor inner-city areas and peripheral local authority housing estates, meanwhile, have very different financial ecologies. Areas of relative deprivation and poverty, they constitute ‘relic’ financial ecologies that have been bypassed and mostly ignored by the mainstream financial services industry. They are colonised by a distinctive set of financial institutions that include firms that operate door-to-door. We look at the formation and evolution of these ecologies over time and discuss the potential of enriching the ecology of the poor inner-city and peripheral local authority housing estate through public policy.

A critical analysis of depolarisation

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is about to implement wholesale reforms of the regulatory structure of advice in the retail financial services sector. Instead of having to choose between a “tied adviser” or an “independent financial adviser” (IFA) under a “polarised” regime, consumers will have a much wider choice in terms of the range of products and scope of advice available under the new “depolarised” structure. In undertaking these reforms, the FSA aims “to improve consumer outcomes” by dealing with what it argues are market failures in the retail financial services market. This paper assesses whether the FSA’s final blueprint for financial advice can provide the improved consumer outcomes the FSA intends. It critically examines the issues of choice and quality for both products and advice, as well as considering the extent to which the reforms will create the kind of “empowered” consumers the FSA appears to expect. It argues that the reforms may not appreciably address the market failures the FSA sets out to remedy, and suggests that this is due to the likely inability of consumers to understand and take advantage of the new marketplace that is being created. This paper suggests that much greater emphasis should have been placed on financial education and extending the availability of advice before attempting such radical reforms.

Technology as an Enabler of the Global Branding of Retail Financial Services

The market for retail financial services has been transformed in the past decade by new distribution and processing technologies and their impact on consumer attitudes to banking and banks. These factors have removed the geographic and cost barriers to the global distribution of retail financial services and have led to a convergence in the key benefits sought by consumers in developed countries. This increases the need for and the effectiveness of globally consistent brand images.

To polarise or not to polarise

Polarisation has been an integral part of how the retail financial services market operates in the UK, since its implementation in 1988. The term ‘polarisation’ refers to the practice whereby financial advisers must belong to one of two groups: either independent advisers able to advise the consumer on a range of financial services products, or tied agents who can only advise on the products of one company. In this paper, the author first sets out how the process of polarisation was implemented, before going on to consider the impact of the current two‐stage review by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) of competition in financial service provision. He argues that while some change in the retail financial services market would be helpful there are considerable dangers in the FSA’s clear recommendation that polarisation should be abolished.

Segmenting the market for retail financial services

The changing nature of retail financial services, brought about by regulatory and economic forces, has prompted financial institutions to take a renewed interest in the technique of market segmentation in an endeavour to compete successfully. Traditionally employed segmentation studies in the area of financial services have tended to be simple, relying largely on demographic information. This has resulted in segment descriptors rather than segment predictors being identified. This paper argues that the lack of a behavioural element in traditional studies has been the reason for this problem and contemporary research in this area should be concerned with explaining financial services behaviour and identifying segment predictors. An approach is suggested which is quantitative and works towards the establishment of a multidimensional model for segmentation of the retail financial services market. The paper focuses primarily on two sets of variables to be contained in the model and their justification for sel...

Marketing Strategy and Company Performance: A Discriminant Analysis in the Retail Financial Services Industry

A report on the empirical findings of a research project examining the marketing practices, strategies and organisational characteristics of a sample of 23 banks and other companies in the UK retail financial services market. The better performing companies, which were identified by peer admiration, could be distinguished from the less successful companies by wealthier customers and greater skill at controlling the costs of supplying their services. The implications of these findings for banks and other financial companies are discussed.