IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/12-055.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market

Author

Listed:
  • Santosh Anagol

    (Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania)

  • Shawn Cole

    (Harvard Business School, Finance Unit)

  • Shayak Sarkar

    (Harvard University)

Abstract

We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of uninformed consumers, even when those beliefs are wrong. We also find that agents appear to focus on maximizing the amount of premiums (and therefore commissions) that customers pay, as opposed to focusing on how much insurance coverage customers need. A natural experiment requiring disclosure of commissions for a specific product results in agents recommending alternative products with high commissions but no disclosure requirement. A follow-up agent survey sheds light on the extent to which poor advice reflects both the commission incentives as well as agents' limited product knowledge.

Suggested Citation

  • Santosh Anagol & Shawn Cole & Shayak Sarkar, 2012. "Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market," Harvard Business School Working Papers 12-055, Harvard Business School, revised Oct 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:12-055
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/pages/download.aspx?name=12-055.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Diane Del Guercio & Jonathan Reuter & Paula A. Tkac, 2010. "Broker Incentives and Mutual Fund Market Segmentation," NBER Working Papers 16312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Bolton, Patrick & Freixas, Xavier & Shapiro, Joel, 2007. "Conflicts of interest, information provision, and competition in the financial services industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 297-330, August.
    3. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick, 2009. "Reinforcement Learning and Savings Behavior," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2515-2534, December.
    4. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Sanford Grossman, 1989. "The Informational Role of Prices," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262572141, April.
    6. Diamond, Douglas W, 1985. "Optimal Release of Information by Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1071-1094, September.
    7. repec:feb:natura:0007 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2010. "Why Does the Law of One Price Fail? An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1405-1432, April.
    9. Nava Ashraf & Dean Karlan & Wesley Yin, 2006. "Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 635-672.
    10. Daniel Bergstresser & John M. R. Chalmers & Peter Tufano, 2009. "Assessing the Costs and Benefits of Brokers in the Mutual Fund Industry," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(10), pages 4129-4156, October.
    11. Marianne Bertrand & Adair Morse, 2011. "Information Disclosure, Cognitive Biases, and Payday Borrowing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1865-1893, December.
    12. Cochrane, John H, 1995. "Time-Consistent Health Insurance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 445-473, June.
    13. Carlin, Bruce I., 2009. "Strategic price complexity in retail financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 278-287, March.
    14. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick, 2009. "Reinforcement Learning and Savings Behavior," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2515-2534, December.
    15. James J. Heckman, 1998. "Detecting Discrimination," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 101-116, Spring.
    16. Sendhil Mullainathan & Markus Noeth & Antoinette Schoar, 2012. "The Market for Financial Advice: An Audit Study," NBER Working Papers 17929, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Victor Stango & Jonathan Zinman, 2009. "Exponential Growth Bias and Household Finance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(6), pages 2807-2849, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timothy F. Harris & Aaron Yelowitz, 2018. "Racial disparities in life insurance coverage," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(1), pages 94-107, January.
    2. Gabriele Foà & Leonardo Gambacorta & Luigi Guiso & Paolo Emilio Mistrulli, 2019. "The Supply Side of Household Finance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 32(10), pages 3762-3798.
    3. Bucher-Koenen, Tabea & Koenen, Johannes, 2015. "Do Seemingly Smarter Consumers Get Better Advice?," MEA discussion paper series 201501, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
    4. Jennifer Brown & Dylan B. Minor, 2012. "Misconduct in Credence Good Markets," NBER Working Papers 18608, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Roman Inderst & Marco Ottaviani, 2012. "Financial Advice," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 494-512, June.
    6. Shawn Cole & Xavier Giné & James Vickery, 2017. "How Does Risk Management Influence Production Decisions? Evidence from a Field Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(6), pages 1935-1970.
    7. Panle Jia Barwick & Parag A. Pathak & Maisy Wong, 2015. "Conflicts of Interest and the Realtor Commission Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 21489, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Sane, Renuka & Halan, Monika, 2017. "Misled and mis-sold: financial misbehaviour in retail banks?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 429-444.
    9. Renuka Sane & Susan Thomas, 2014. "The way forward for India's National Pension System," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2014-022, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    10. Santosh Anagol & Vijaya Marisetty & Renuka Sane & Buvaneshwaran Venugopal, 2013. "Distribution fees and mutual fund flows: Evidence from a natural experiment in the Indian mutual funds market," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2013-004, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    11. Daniel Stein & Jeremy Tobacman, 2016. "Weather Insurance Savings Accounts," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 41(4), pages 677-700, October.
    12. Justine S. Hastings & Brigitte C. Madrian & William L. Skimmyhorn, 2013. "Financial Literacy, Financial Education, and Economic Outcomes," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 347-373, May.
    13. Monika Halan & Renuka Sane & Susan Thomas, 2013. "Estimating losses to customers on account of mis-selling life insurance policies in India," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2013-007, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    14. Hunt Allcott & Richard Sweeney, 2014. "The Role of Sales Agents in Information Disclosure: Evidence from a Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 20048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Failing to Choose the Best Price: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 303-340, November.
    2. Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2015. "Money Doctors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 70(1), pages 91-114, February.
      • Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, "undated". "Money Doctors," Working Paper 69721, Harvard University OpenScholar.
      • Gennaioli, Nicola & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 2014. "Money Doctors," Scholarly Articles 12965657, Harvard University Department of Economics.
      • Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2012. "Money Doctors," Working Papers 464, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
      • Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert W. Vishny, 2012. "Money Doctors," NBER Working Papers 18174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
      • Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, "undated". "Money Doctors," Working Paper 228501, Harvard University OpenScholar.
      • Nicola Gennaioli & Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2012. "Money doctors," Economics Working Papers 1355, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    3. Oscar A. Stolper & Andreas Walter, 2017. "Financial literacy, financial advice, and financial behavior," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 87(5), pages 581-643, July.
    4. Ugo Panizza, 2015. "Billions on the Sidewalk: Improving Savings by Reducing Investment Mistakes," IHEID Working Papers 18-2015, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    5. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2014. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 632-660, December.
    6. Chalmers, John & Reuter, Jonathan, 2020. "Is conflicted investment advice better than no advice?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 366-387.
    7. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2012. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy in Financial Markets: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2012-14, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    8. Keane, M.P. & Thorp, S., 2016. "Complex Decision Making," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 661-709, Elsevier.
    9. Michael P. Keane & Susan Thorp, 2016. "Complex Decision Making: The Roles of Cognitive Limitations, Cognitive Decline and Ageing," Economics Papers 2016-W10, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    10. Bianchi, Milo & Bouvard, Matthieu & Gomes, Renato & Rhodes, Andrew & Shreeti, Vatsala, 2023. "Mobile payments and interoperability: Insights from the academic literature," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    11. Francisco Gomes & Michael Haliassos & Tarun Ramadorai, 2021. "Household Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(3), pages 919-1000, September.
    12. Liu, Bofan & Lu, Bin, 2023. "Can financial literacy be a substitute for financial advisers? Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    13. Kenan Kalaycı & Marta Serra-Garcia, 2016. "Complexity and biases," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(1), pages 31-50, March.
    14. Guiso, Luigi & Sodini, Paolo, 2013. "Household Finance: An Emerging Field," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1397-1532, Elsevier.
    15. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2014. "Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 663-688, August.
    16. Yang Sun, 2021. "Index Fund Entry and Financial Product Market Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(1), pages 500-523, January.
    17. Lunn, Pete & McGowan, Féidhlim & Howard, Noel, 2018. "Do some financial product features negatively affect consumer decisions? a review of evidence," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS78.
    18. Wang-Ly, Nathan & Bateman, Hazel & Dobrescu, Isabella & Newell, Ben R. & Thorp, Susan, 2022. "Defaults, disclosures, advice and calculators: One size does not fit all," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    19. Martin Hibbeln & Werner Osterkamp, 2024. "Simple is simply not enough—features versus labels of complex financial securities," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 113-150, July.
    20. Nikolai Roussanov & Hongxun Ruan & Yanhao Wei & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2021. "Marketing Mutual Funds," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(6), pages 3045-3094.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:12-055. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.