Microworlds as the locus of consumer education in financial advisory services

The complexity of financial matters and the financial illiteracy of clients prevents informed financial decision making in current financial advisory services. We propose a novel approach to improve this situation: The advisor integrates small learning episodes directly into the service encounter. These learning episodes are implemented using the concept of explorative learning and "microworlds," i.e., small self-contained simulations. The resulting prototype is called "FinanceWorlds.” An evaluation reveals that the system significantly improves client knowledge compared to traditional paperbased explanations. The paper contributes the generic principles underlying FinanceWorld's design to the knowledgebase on consumer education in financial (and other knowledge intensive) services. It thus supports practitioners in designing tomorrow’s advisory encounters.