Americans may price-watch on a lot of things, but investment fees aren't one of them.
That's according to a new study from Hearts & Wallets, which found that not only do people not have a good handle on what various financial products cost them, many believe they pay nothing.
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In the study, only 28 percent of respondents say for certain they are charged a fee by retail financial "stores." (Hearts & Wallets defines those "stores" as retail and defined contribution providers that work directly with investors.)
Of the 41 percent who say they pay their financial store "nothing" and instead pay through actual products, a whopping 72 percent say they pay nothing for the product.
And 31 percent of respondents said they didn't know what they paid for their financial products. That's an increase of four percentage points in one year. In addition, just 1 in 5 consumers has a clear understanding of their providers' incentives; that hasn't improved year to year.
Yet among consumers' top 10 "wants" from financial service providers are for "fees [to be] clear and understandable" (56 percent).
Next, they want providers to be "unbiased, puts my interests first" (54 percent), and to "[explain] things in understandable terms" (54 percent).
About half of investors are highly price sensitive, and want providers to have "low fees" (54 percent) or at least "fees that are reasonable for the service provided" (53 percent).
Interestingly, high-net-worth customers are growing less picky, while people with less than $100,000 in assets, and the millennial generation, are the most demanding.
Post-retirees are more demanding in access and reliability attributes, while "people close to retirement are more anxious, so the reliability service dimension of 'is unbiased, puts my interests first' is much higher than for a millennial," Laura Varas, founder and CEO of Hearts & Wallets, said in a statement.
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