Whereas FinTechs and digital financial applications are labeled “disruptive forces” and “game changers” shaking up the existing world of finance and beyond within industry and even politics, academics tend to hold the view that by a bare change of the platform or transaction setting of our financial decisions, existing theoretical frameworks are not challenged too intensively.
However, not only does digitalization allow for more collaboration – between humans, distributed humans as well as between humans and technological entities – but also for different ways of collaboration. Imagine you consider buying Apple stocks in four different situations:
i) Analyzing your finances, you consider you are liquid enough now to invest and Apple seems a solid start for that. You open your online depot and fulfil the transaction.
ii) When opening your interactive depot, you just saw your boss sold his 120 Apple stocks just a minute ago. You still continue your transaction?
iii) When opening your online depot which you share with your baseball mates, you need to get the majority of them on board before the buying trade is possible. Do you consider researching a bit more? Are your mates going to agree to this transaction?
iv) While surfing on your phone, a push-up from your online trader pops up – their chatbot informs you it is a good time to buy Apple stocks now. Do you follow this advice on the go?
Considering these, a mere selection of possible scenarios of a trading situation, it becomes obvious that human financial decisions are shaped through contact, if online or offline, direct or indirect, if in the form of advice, communication or the pure existence of a social group within which an individual makes a decision. Keeping in mind the vast financial and strategic decision-making literature on nudges with the numerous examples of how framing a decision context changes our decisions, FinTech applications with their diverse setups, designs and defaults are definitely worth having a second glance from an academic perspective. FinTech applications give a new angle to financial decision-making transforming the way of collaboration. Does online and task-related communication such as in a collaborative investment app free individuals from halo effects? Does advice from AI remove or strengthen critical thinking? It remains the joint task of practitioners and academics to understand and design these applications as frames for inclusive, unbiased decisions so that research can serve its purpose – society.
by Barbara Voelkl, FINDER ESR
FINDER 