Due to the complexity of financial information and decision-making situations, non-professional investors usually have a high need for information both in analyzing their own economic and financial situation today and in the future as well as in terms of potential problem solving. The majority of these investors are likely to need a high-quality exploration, education and recommendation based on their high level of information requirements and their low level of security. In this context, high-quality means primarily to obtain information that is needed in the face of the available knowledge and experience (competences) and the individual situation. In practice, consulting situations are regularly characterized by information overloading and overloading of the customer (information overload, choice overload) inter alia.
Against this background, developments in the digital world must be analyzed and assessed. It is also helpful to always keep a glance at the development of digitalization in the financial sector. Since the 1990s and particularly in retail banking, a comprehensive digitization campaign has been launched: Letter banks as niche providers have been replaced by large-area direct banks or online banks, branch banks have since then offered self-service systems (money issuance, transfers, bank statements etc.) on the basis of digital data processing, brokers buy and sell seemingly non-advisory securities and other forms of investment, and private Internet exchanges allow for worldwide trading. The financial sector can thus be regarded as prototypical for the progressive digitization of the business models of service providers whose products directly or indirectly affect or indirectly affect the financial basic and additional requirements of most citizens.
Link to publication