Joint Accounts in the Fintech Era: How Does Labelling, Transparency and Approval Rules Affect Spousal Financial Decision Making?
- Researchers:
Dr. Tara Bedi, Prof. Michael King, and Anu Puthenmadathil Jose
- Partners:
-
This research project is funded by ING, Trinity College Dublin and the Irish Research Council and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 713279.
-
- Location:
-
Kolkata, India
-
- Sample:
-
1,000 couples
-
- Timeline:
2020-2021
- Theme:
Financial Inclusion and Gender
- Description:
This study revisits the topic of joint accounts and assesses how their terms, increasingly varied due to innovations in the fintech sector, affect allocation decisions. Through an experimental setting we assess the impact of labelling, transparency and spousal approval on expenditure allocations of spouses. We also assess the impact of personally earning money on subsequent expenditure decisions of couples under different joint account terms. To achieve this, we conduct a lab-in-the field experiment with a total of 1,000 couples. At the lab we collect behavioural/demographic characteristics (including preferences, decision making and bargaining power) for both spouses. Using a two-stage randomisation, we first randomise couples into a ‘task’ or a ‘gift’ stream, before randomising 200 couples into each of five treatment arms with differing joint account terms, under which spouses are asked to complete an allocation decision. We derive important insights in three ways as follows; (1) insights that inform consumers about how best to structure their finances between individual and joint accounts, (2) insights for traditional banks on how they might allow greater flexibility in terms and (3) insights for the fintech sector on how within account labelling, transparency and approval rules affect spousal decision making.