Infographics and Financial Decisions: An Eye- Tracking Experiment

“Salient infographics help index mutual fund investors to minimise costs”

Consumers who save for their pension in a DC pension scheme and the self-employed often invest in index mutual funds. They tend to invest in expensive funds because they fail to take fund fees sufficiently into account. A Key Investor Information Document (KIID) is mandatory for many investment and insurance products in the EU. The KIID should make a fund’s costs and benefits clear. We used eye-tracking equipment to investigate how the saliency of infographics and tables in a KIID enables investors to make optimal investment decisions and minimise avoidable costs.

Key Takeaways for the Industry

• Replace the past return graph in the mandatory KIID with a net expected return graph.
• Easier graphical comparison of financial products enables untrained or inexperienced investors, in particular, to reduce avoidable costs.