Do Financial Advisers Influence Savings Behavior?

By Jeremy Burke & Angela A. Hung

There is substantial evidence that Americans tend to have low financial literacy (Lusardi and Mitchell, 2013) and are struggling with building sufficient wealth for a secure retirement (Helman et al., 2014). Financial advisers can play an important role by helping individuals make better financial decisions and improving their financial situations. However, there is limited and mixed evidence about the benefits to using a financial adviser. For example, as summarized in Burke et al. (2014), there is a substantial body of work that finds that individuals who invest through a broker earn lower returns than those who invest directly (Bergstresser, Chalmers,…

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