Bi Project Policy Area: Finance
This study focused on switching in payment accounts and mortgages, exploring the reasons why consumers do not switch and possible behavioural remedies.
BI Project
Increasing consumer engagement in the annuities market: can prompts raise shopping around?
In June 2016, Oxera and the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) published the results of an experiment testing the effectiveness of different ‘prompts’ in encouraging consumers to shop around. The study, commissioned by the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), found that personalised messages were the most effective in stimulating product comparisons, while generic messaging appealing to social norms also had a significant impact.
How does the presence of consumer protection affect decisions at retirement? Oxera undertook a behavioural experiment for the UK Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) to understand the role of FSCS protection—in both how consumers select their retirement income products, and whether they choose to obtain financial advice. This revealed how people behave in a realistic environment, providing insight into actual consumer behaviour and the importance of the FSCS in their decision-making.
Oxera and the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) conducted a behavioural experiment on behalf of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to identify the effectiveness of certain summary cost metrics in aiding consumer selection of income drawdown products
BI Project
Redesigning the Mortgage Statement and its Impact on Consumers Mortgage Purchase Decisions:…
Chilean mortgage loan market is characterized by debtors' limited understanding of financial information an low level of loans' renegotiation. As a result, there is a high risk that consumers are missing benefits from economic opportunities. That's why Chilean financial institutions must, by law, send to their customers every three months, a Mortgage Statement designed by the regulator.
This policy paper is an executive summary of a study that shows qualitative and quantitative evidence about…
BETA partnered with AFSA on two projects to determine how to best communicate about the consequences of bankruptcy.
In the first project, over 6,500 Australians completed one of six educational tools online that explain the consequences of bankruptcy and then assessed their levels of understanding. A pop-quiz and video were most effective, improving people’s understanding by 27 percentage points above the group that saw no educational tool.
In the second project, we introduced five additional…