Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets urges financial firms and lawmakers to apply behavioural insights and shares BNPL payment experiments

The Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets published a Financieele Dagblad column by its chair, Laura van Geest, arguing that the financial sector should use behavioural insights to promote prudent consumer financial decisions and that workable financial regulation should be designed with behavioural knowledge in mind. As an example, the column describes AFM research with two buy now, pay later providers that tested simple interventions to help customers pay on time and avoid collection costs, including SMS payment reminders and moving the date of transfer to a debt collection agency in combination with a reminder. It also notes limits of interventions applied only at the point of execution, with a group whose payment behaviour did not change and that likely requires stronger creditworthiness checks, and it points to sustainability disclosure rules under the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation as an area where the regulatory approach could better reflect how consumers actually make decisions. The AFM plans to discuss with the sector in late June how firms identify relevant consumer-behaviour insights, apply them to encourage prudent choices, and measure the effects of such interventions.