Nest and the UK’s automatic enrolment programme are one of the world’s largest ever applications of the emerging science of behavioural economics. Such ‘nudge’ policies have become part of the standard toolkit for public and private sector bodies seeking to influence people’s behaviour. They rest on the ‘predictable irrationality’ of human beings. The core insight being that, when people make decisions based on irrational biases, they do so in predictable ways.
Given the high levels of interest in behavioural finance, Nest Insight seeks to share and promote the behavioural insights we’ve gained as the UK’s largest auto-enrolment pension plan. As part of this, Executive Director Will Sandbrook recently spoke to the Claremont, California-based Drucker Institute. The article they produced, An executive’s guide to behavioural economics, is an excellent primer in the application of behavioural science in a real-world context. It also contains an overview of Nest’s own evolution.
