Ahead of the MRS Financial Services Research Conference 2026, we caught up with Martha Doyle, Behavioural Science Consultant at Walnut, part of Accenture Song, about the research she’s presenting with RGA’s Shilei Chen, and what it might mean for the rest of financial services. 

You’re talking about annuities at the conference. Why are they such a tricky subject? 

Martha: Because they sit right in the middle of what’s often called the nastiest, hardest problem in finance: how to turn a pension pot into an income that lasts the rest of your life. 

Saving for retirement is hard enough, but spending it is worse. Nobody knows how long they’ll live, what the next decade will cost, or whether they’ll regret the choice they make. Annuities are one of the few products that solve this problem directly, by guaranteeing an income for life, yet many people still steer clear of them. It’s known as the annuity puzzle. 

Is that because people are being irrational? 

Martha: Not just that. There are some sensible reasons not to buy an annuity. But there are also some very self-defeating human biases sitting underneath less sensible reasoning, and they shape a lot of the other decisions we make in financial services too. 

We’re bad at imagining our future selves, so a reward in thirty years feels abstract next to a pot of money we can see today. We want certainty, but we also want the control that flexibility offers. We especially hate the idea of losing out. And the way financial products are usually explained, dense and full of jargon, makes the whole thing feel intimidating before you’ve got to the second paragraph. 

So what did you and RGA do about it? 

Martha: That’s a behavioural problem, so we set out to tackle it behaviourally. We didn’t stop at asking retirees what they thought. We tried to see how they’d actually behave when faced with the decision, then tested different ways of explaining the same product to see what moved the dial. 

What did you find? 

Martha: People want things that conflict, and that’s the interesting bit. Retirees wanted the security of a guaranteed income, but they also wanted flexibility. They wanted informed choice, and then found the complexity so off-putting that they avoided the decision altogether. 

It could be tempting to average those contradictions away, but behavioural science tells us that these contradictions are the finding. 

The other thing that stood out was that confidence isn’t understanding. People felt sure about their pension knowledge and plans, but that didn’t tell us much about how much they actually understood. Feeling informed and being informed are different things, and the gap between them is where a lot of poor decisions live. For people like this, keeping things simple is key. 

Financial products are complicated. Is the answer simply to use fewer words? 

Martha: No, and this is the finding I’d most like people to take away: simple isn’t the same as short. 

Brands often assume that simplifying communications means cutting them down. But you can cut half the words from a financial explanation and leave someone thinking “I have no idea what that means for me”. 

What actually helped was making things easier for the brain to process: familiar language, clear comparisons, vivid examples. Framing annuities as protection against a long life, rather than a bet you might lose, helped too. Together, these left people with a better grasp of their options and less likely to dismiss annuities out of hand. 

The better test for whether your communications are “simple” is whether someone can understand what a product means for them and know what to do next. That’s something you can test, rather than debate internally. 

Does what you learned apply beyond annuities? 

Martha: I think so, starting with a wider principle: don’t take what people say at face value. 

Not because people are lying, most are giving you the best answer they can. But needs can sit below the surface, and people hold conflicting beliefs at the same time. They’ll say price is everything when familiarity or reassurance is doing most of the work. Asking people to do something, rather than just tell you something, shows you what the trade-off really looks like. 

That’s why our study included a budget allocation exercise, comprehension questions and a risk appetite assessment, looking at the decision through different lenses. And the lessons apply just as much to customer journeys and product design as they do to communications. 

What would you want people to take away? 

Martha: That behind every “consumer decision” is a person trying to work out what to do, and good behavioural science isn’t about tricking that person into anything. It’s about making it easier to understand a choice and feel confident in it. In financial services, where the stakes are high and the products are complicated, that distinction matters. The aim is a clearer picture for the customer, not pushing particular products. 

And when it comes to research, my advice is to start with the behaviour you’re trying to understand, then work out what’s sitting underneath it. You end up with something you can actually use, rather than just an interesting finding. 

Human behaviour is messy. That’s what makes it interesting.

If you’d like to dig a little deeper into the science behind the decisions people make, take a look at how we use behavioural science to uncover the why and turn it into action.

Martha Doyle is a Behavioural Science Consultant at Walnut, part of Accenture Song, specialising in behavioural science and quantitative research. She uses behavioural thinking, experimental approaches and robust research to understand what really drives people’s decisions, turning complex human behaviour into clear, practical insight for clients. Her experience spans financial services, sustainability, technology, retail and media, and she is passionate about making behavioural science accessible, useful and genuinely impactful.