Future Finance Fest (3f)
Amsterdam, The Netherlands • 5 June 2026
Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
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Daily Overview |
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Session 405
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Set it and Forget it: Engineering Investment Habits with FinTech 1University of Houston, United States of America; 2Georgetown Univesity, United States of America We study how automated investment rules affect saving behavior and investment outcomes using detailed data from a FinTech app designed to help retail investors access mutual funds. Users choose how to design these rules, which vary along dimensions such as frequency, amount, and triggering conditions. Using a randomized encouragement design, we show that automated rules causally increase average savings without crowding out manual contributions. We also show that automated rules reduce trend-chasing behavior: while manual deposits respond strongly to recent returns, automated ones do not, narrowing the gap between fund returns and realized investor returns. However, rule timing remains performance-sensitive—users tend to activate rules after periods of strong returns and suspend them during downturns, especially for equity funds. A survey deployed on the app user population reveals that adopters of automated investment rules are primarily motivated by a desire to avoid procrastination, reduce cognitive load, and simplify decision-making, while non-adopters cite preferences for flexibility and concerns about income volatility. Our findings highlight both the promises and the limitations of automation in improving individual financial outcomes. | ||