Research for financial inclusion.
Academic Partners: The University of Nottingham.
Research Lead: Professor Richard Hyde.
Objectives.
The research program, developed in partnership with Amplified Global, builds upon five years of research conducted by the Principal Investigator and collaborators at the University of Nottingham.
This research focuses on enhancing the readability and comprehensibility of mandatory disclosures for consumers of financial services products. These disclosures are legally required, with their content generally defined, but specific wording and presentation left open as long as the information is transparent and prominent.
While previous work has addressed transparency and prominence, this research seeks to go further by creating disclosures that consider consumers' circumstances and emotions, encouraging them to understand and act on the provided information to avoid negative outcomes.
Methodology.
The program consists of three main aspects:
synthesis, involving the integration of law, linguistics, and computer science to model barriers to consumer understanding and action;
design and testing, which develops and tests three disclosure types aligned with the model;
and policy, which shares findings with regulators, consumer NGOs, and businesses.
Outcomes.
The results will contribute to a Machine Learning model developed by Amplified Global for automating document readability improvement, encompassing contracts and mandatory disclosures.