Now reading: Behavioural interventions for financial services

Behavioural Science


Behavioural science seeks to understand the underlying factors that influence judgements and decision-making. These can relate to the individual or to the contextual environment. Someone living with very little income, for example, will find it more difficult to make long-term decisions around savings or accessing credit. Their constrained circumstances will force them to focus on their immediate needs. A good example of this is when low-income adults borrow from informal providers at very high rates for consumption.

Integrating behavioural insights into our data collection and analysis strategies can advance our understanding and predictions of financial behaviour and guide us to design financial services that really help adults achieve their goals. With current innovations in survey design and data collection, we can test these insights quicker and learn faster.

As part of our global i2i programme, we’ve looked into the barriers and opportunities for integrating new sources of data (e.g. social media) into financial service decision-making that can change the way we do business.

The Latest in Behavioural Science

Behavioural interventions for financial services
We highlight key insights from our research into behavioural interventions and how they could assist financial service providers to better understand [...]
What can behavioural science tell us about the financial decisions of women?
Women are significantly less likely to use formal banking services than men, due to a range of barriers to access and use. A lack of [...]
Behavioural interventions that advance financial inclusion
"A behavioural intervention is any customer interaction that has been explicitly designed to influence the financial decision (or behaviour) of an [...]
Behavioural Interventions for Financial Services Database
This database reflects a systematic review of behaviourally informed interventions that have significantly impacted the financial decisions of [...]
Deeper drivers of financial decision-making not fully understood
Jonathan Zinman explains why he thinks further research is required in order better understand the drivers of decision-making and the ways in which [...]
Using behavioural interventions to improve uptake and usage of financial products
Astute business executives know that their customers are not the rational decision makers that economic models presume them to be. People often make [...]
Mining the gap: Financial inclusion and gender
The importance of data for closing the financial inclusion gender gap. The 2014 Global Findex Report identified that in developing economies, [...]
i2i brochure
The availability of data in financial inclusion has grown tremendously in recent years. Data initiatives such as the World Bank’s Findex, [...]