Banking for Boomers – A Field Experiment on Technology Adoption in Financial Services

Digitalization in banking is leaving elderly clients at risk of losing access to financial services,but little is known about technology adoption at an advanced age. We develop and evaluate training interventions to foster internet banking adoption in a field experiment with more than 25,000 elderly clients of a large German savings bank, of whom we randomize 333 into training. Our administrative banking panel data allows us to account for selection on observables and assess the sustainability of treatment effects. After the interventions, the share of clients who use internet banking increases by 26 percentage points in the treatment group relative to a matched control group. In terms of sustainable usage, the share of online transactions increases by 13 percentage points and remains elevated four months later. An extensive placebo analysis suggests that as much as 85% of the effect can be causally attributed to the training interventions. We find that training boosts non-technical adoption skills and reduces key adoption barriers. Treatment effects are larger for women and those not in charge of household finances. We further estimate intent-to-treat effects and predict dropout along the entire multi-stage adoption process to shed light on practical considerations when rolling out large-scale technology adoption interventions in this age group. Specifically, we show that the type of training (self-guided versus social learning) impacts dropout differentially despite similar treatment effects overall, with the social learning treatment being more inclusive.