As wealth managers attempt to tailor business-class investment services to the masses, banks, brokers and tech buffs vie to look after trillions of dollars on behalf of the common man. ReD’s Martin Gronemann weighs in for The Economist.

“Linda, a 54-year-old event consultant in Los Angeles, is neither disorganised nor innumerate. Ask about her finances, however, and you lose her for two hours. She opens her current (checking) account on a mobile app, then cites a rainy-day fund at another bank. She has 14 credit cards, five mortgages, six insurance policies and several pensions with ex-employers.

Ranks of pinstriped advisers have long helped the very rich to invest, minimise tax and pass money down the generations. Everyone else has had to work it out on their own. ‘People’s relationship with money is broken,’ says Martin Gronemann of ReD Associates, which uses anthropology to advise businesses. It reckons that personal finances are a bigger source of stress than worries about crime or health.

This is an excerpt of an article that appeared in the print edition of The Economist on December 18, 2019. Full text is available for paid subscribers on the Economist.com