London’s bankers continue to rely on models and numerical data for deciding on what bets to make. It’s as if the financial crisis never happened. Yet, as Michael Lewis’s acclaimed book and subsequent film, The Big Short demonstrated, it is people who actually bother to venture outside the comforts of their offices who have a chance of gaining an important upper hand. Whereas models based on past behaviour aren’t able to show shifts before it is too late, a trip to Southampton or Leeds might reveal some priceless information, if you know what you are looking for.

Last year, my company, ReD Associates, along with Cognizant, set out to conduct an anthropological study on the future of money in the US, UK and Germany. Our mission was to tackle the very question the financial services industry has been too aloof to pose – namely, how do people relate to their money? And what we found was startling. Money is the biggest source of stress for people – above health concerns, their jobs, and terrorism. People’s financial worlds are fragmented and chaotic. They acquire accounts and make investments in a disorganised and ad hoc fashion, creating complicated and unmanageable financial realities for themselves. They are either too ill-informed or intimidated to invest, unsure of which stocks to purchase and scared that the bonds they buy will default. When it comes to their money, people don’t know what they want or why they act the way they do and are desperate for someone to tell them what to do.