Proxy Accounts & Behavioural Nudges: Investigating Support for Older Adults and Financial Delegates

Abstract

Older adults sometimes delegate banking tasks to trusted close others (family or friends). Increasingly those tasks are completed online, with older adults sharing passwords or account ownership to give delegates account access, which introduces privacy, security and financial misconduct risks. We propose that proxy accounts can support financial delegation while preserving older adults’ agency and that behavioral nudges can help delegates maintain financial propriety while performing banking tasks. We developed a high-fidelity proxy account prototype that uses behavioural nudges, and present findings from a think-aloud interaction study (n=21). We present results from the first empirical study of proxy accounts in the delegated banking context. Our results show: 1) positive responses to the fiduciary controls provided by proxy accounts, 2) that some nudges may have the potential to encourage propriety, and 3) that both mechanisms improve the delegate’s experience of banking on behalf of an older adult, while legitimizing their role as delegate.

Publisher Link

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3670947.3670962

Citation

Zach Havens and Celine Latulipe. 2024. Proxy Accounts and Behavioural Nudges: Investigating Support for Older Adults and their Financial Delegates. In Proceedings of the 50th Graphics Interface Conference (GI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 4, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3670947.3670962