Pointing out that “plan participants now typically make their investment choices on a screen rather than on paper,” Shlomo Benartzi writes about an experiment he and Richard Thaler conducted. (Photo: Shutterstock)
It seems counterintuitive, but the design of the website used by participants to make investment choices as well as other decisions in their retirement plans can have an outsize effect on those choices — and on the outcomes for those retirement savers.
A paper by Shlomo Benartzi, UCLA professor and senior academic advisor at the Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation, finds that such factors as how many lines are provided for investor choices of funds can result in vastly different results from, say, four to eight.
“The Digital Fiduciary: Overseeing Retirement Plans in the Digital Age” points out that it's no longer enough to make sure that the investment choices provided to plan participants are appropriate – plan sponsors also need to consider how participants behave in the digital age.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
